14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced that the latest Panda update is being rolled out this week and it should provide some help to medium-sized and small sites, the company said.
“Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week. Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice,” wrote Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google.
He added that the update would only be affecting between 3 and 5 percent of queries, depending on location.
The company claims that the new search is supposed to return more precise results and allow high-quality sites, both medium and small, to shine in the spotlight by ranking higher.
The effects Panda updates have on sites
The last Panda update has affected quite a few sites and many were penalized due to the algorithm changes, effectively lowering their traffic. Those who were affected in the past and have since made alterations to their sites should see some improvements in the near future. The next couple of weeks should be enough proof about how the changes affect sites.
On the other hand, those sites that were not affected during the previous Panda update might get slammed this time around. If there has been a sudden traffic drop from Google in the past few days, then you’re probably going to have to start improving the site’s content to get a new ranking from Google.
The latest Panda Update that was announced and confirmed by Google happened back in May, although some more minor changes may have taken place since then without Google announcing them. The other option is that Google has completely changed the way it implements algorithm changes. For several years, updates came monthly. If this is the first update Google makes since May, then we might be moving on to a quarterly update schedule.
Google has been getting pressured from all sides to change its algorithm, especially over in Europe, where the company’s competitors want to have their products displayed more visibly.
The European Commission has been investigating the company and asking it to start making better proposals if it doesn’t want to face huge fines, like Microsoft did.