The Google Panda update, which has also been referred to as the Farmer update, has negatively impacted a great deal of sites on the internet and positively influenced some of them as well.
How Did It Occur?
The update was perceived to be released in response to a large number of complaints that had been surfacing about the quality of the search results in Google. For example, recently there have been high profile cases from companies being called out on their SEO strategy – for example JCPenney was outed for it’s large number of irrelevant links. However in my opinion Google have been wanting to devalue content farms for a long time, and in my thinking the outing of companies such as JCPenney sped things along.
What Are Content Farms?
A “Content Farm” is a loosely defined term that refers to sites with content that might be friendly to the search engine algorithms, but not to actual human beings.
Michael Wyszomierski, of Google, spoke on the subject, saying that the changes were primarily focused around bad content. Perhaps the most important piece of information that he released was that “low quality content on part of a site can impact a site’s ranking as a whole.” He went on to say that removing this low quality content, or improving it, could also improve rankings.
Manual Reviewing
While algorithms likely played an important part in the update, there is also a strong possibility that manual review did as well. Companies such as Leapforce have been contracted to work with Google in order to review articles for quality. They have also increased the number of avenues for people to give feedback about the relevance of search engine listings, a process that is likely to become more common in the future if it turns out to be helpful.
Some of the hardest hit sites were mahalo.com and ezinearticles.com, both sites that have enormous amounts of content without a great deal of accountability on behalf of the writers. Most of the sites that have been hit do have plenty of high quality content on them, but most of this content is buried under thin content that many readers do not consider useful or trustworthy.
Another aspect of many of the sites that have been hit is the ad to content ratio. If a site seems to exist primarily to advertise, even if the ads are “by Google,” the site appears more likely to lose ranking. If everything else is on the fence, this may be the deciding factor.
It is unlikely that Google has an algorithm capable of detecting “bad content,” something that is hard to define even in human terms – in my eyes some of the biggest blogs on the internet aren’t always the best. It is more likely that the search engine is using manual reviews to locate bad content, and to reduce the trustworthiness of affiliated sites. The bottom line is that bloggers are advised to make sure they are comfortable with the quality of their site, as well as the sites that link to it.
How You Can Protect Yourself as a Blogger
Due to the relative size and nature of most blogs, unless you were actively creating a blog filled with poor quality content or had a site with no editorial nature, then you should be alright. However, to avoid false positives and protect yourself as a blogger, here’s a few things that I recommend:-
- Avoid Using Poor Content - Write for your readers, and avoid using poor or duplicated content, especially from article directories. Poor quality content from these directories in large quanities can cripple your website in the rankings.
- Be Careful of Ad Placement - A lot of these websites that use large amounts of poor quality content often have overly agressive ad placements. Whilst not a huge factor in itself, it does seem to be a ranking factor. If you’re a blogger, having ad placements littered throughout the content can now not only lead to less readers, but also lead to a Google penalty.
- Build Up a Community - Ultimately though, the best way to protect yourself from negative Google equity is to not rely on Google at all. Build up a community surrounding your blog and then traffic from Google will not be needed. This will in turn lead to an increase in traffic in Google, because you have what they are looking for – useful content with plenty of links from a variety of sources.
Twitter: BlazingMinds
says:
I thinking building a community is a must for a blogger, afterall it’s the community that helps the blog on it’s way with comments and sharing the posts that we make as a blogger.
Karen´s recent blog post ..Blazing Minds Interviews Lauren from Think Spin
Twitter: rhyswynne
says:
Totally agree! Plus that way you build a link portfolio up automatically for free.
rhyswynne´s recent blog post ..What Is The Most Accurate Search Engine Rank Checker
Twitter: kermedia
says:
I think a lot of people have lost sight of the purpose of links. In the early days of the web, you linked to something simply because it was interesting, relevant, useful, entertaining or because it was made by your friend. We linked to things that were “cool” – not for payment or necessarily for exchange. Now it seems that many only view links as a form of currency.
Google, as big and all encompassing as they are, still understands this and is attempting to give its users the most interesting relevant useful or entertaining answers to their search queries.
So the answer to that oh so common question, “how do I get links to my site?” is simple:
Be cool.
Ker Communications´s recent blog post ..How To Get More Links to Your Website- Be Cool
Twitter: rhyswynne
says:
Don’t necessarily agree. Plenty of good content has been missed due to not being marketed properly.
rhyswynne´s recent blog post ..Using tag-description in WordPress To Create Unique Tag Pages
In theory I think the panda/farmer update is a good idea; however, if manual review appears to be the main way vehicle for deciding whether or not a site is “thin” I think the update will be ineffective overall. Google will manually review the sites like Ezine Articles that are getting 1 million hits a day, but it they won’t manually review the little spam sites all over the Internet that cause far more harm than a thin article on Ezine. Until Google finds better ways of truly ferreting out poor content through an algorithim, we will still be plagued by these thin sites.
markfitzpatrick´s recent blog post ..Increase Your Restaurant’s Profits With A Secondary Product
It’s hard to fathom how hard Google has to work to keep it’s search returns relevant. Still, they have the same, simple search interface!
Anyway, we have to work with the means that are available to us! If google wants good content, let’s give them good content! It’s not so hard is it? All we have to do is be our normal human selves. This is probably what would be interesting for people to read about anyway, instead of our ‘Become a Millionaire in Ten Easy Steps!’ E-zine.
timmilli´s recent blog post ..Bounce Rate
Good post, though I feel that organic search results are still important even if you have a community. This will help your community to snowball in size
wayne from ectomorph workout´s recent blog post ..Ectomorph Workout Revealed
Twitter: andrewrondeau
says:
Rhys
Sine the rollout of Panda, my visitors have increased by over 18% and the number of visitors direct from a Google search has increased by over 30%.
It could be a coincidence but it started happening on the day of the rollout.
We all say…content is king…but it is true. High quality unique content is a must. Plus I would mix up the format a little. Include videos and a video sitemap plus do some internal linking.
Andrew
Andrew Rondeau´s recent blog post ..10 Nice To Have WordPress Plugins For Your Blog
Twitter: linknami
says:
Even though the Panda update went for mass sites publishing duplicate or identical content and you can still submit articles with less than 100% uniqueness with some success, finding similarities in content is something that google engineers and are still improving on and you will need to spin more and more, resulting in more and more manual work in the future to the extent that spinning alone is no longer productive.
Twitter: rhyswynne
says:
Of course you can. Just you won’t rank. Of course for article marketing you don’t care for duplicate content, just the backlinks
rhyswynne´s recent blog post ..Using tag-description in WordPress To Create Unique Tag Pages
The Panda update effected some of my work, not because of poor quality content, more to do with the fact that a lot of our sites share similar product data. It was a little unfair I feel, but it may get taken back in the future, it wouldn’t be the first time Google have rolled an initiative out then realised it doesn’t work.
its good that google did an update against content farms
but where do you draw the line?
just about everything is copied or taken from somewhere else online
zoopco´s recent blog post ..DNJournal CO Domain Sales
Twitter: tospider
says:
I think building community is very important,as it enhances social media sharing also
nipon´s recent blog post ..New Samsung E2230 Mobile Phone Reviews
Twitter: hupseymedia
says:
I got slapped by the panda, and I se my rankings going down every week. I don’t beloved I have poor content, but I have a lot of poor links commingle from footer credit on a theme. Get shows 500.000 inlinks and most are from unrelated and untrusted sites.. I probably have to idea nofollow tag on the credit links next time..
hupsey´s recent blog post ..See how I lost my position in Google ranking after farmer update