Google Panda

Google debuted its Panda algorithm on February 24, 2011, as part of its goal to improve the quality of its search results and show users quality content. Since the initial launch, Google has implemented eight updates of varying degrees aimed at perfecting the algorithm to ensure search queries always produce results most likely to satisfy the user.

Start Date	Headline	Text
2/24/2011	Panda 1.0	The first appearance of Panda impacted 12 percent of search results. It targeted duplicate and shallow content, decreasing the visibility of content farms and other sites serving low-quality content on the web.
4/11/2011	Panda 2.0	Panda 2.0 rolled out to all English-language queries around the world and helped eliminate low-quality sites missed by initial update. It also seemed to incorporate users’ site blocking data as a quality signal.
5/10/2011	Panda 2.1	Panda 2.1 was the first of the minor adjustments made by Google in its Panda updates. (It was initially believed to be Panda 3.0.)
6/16/2011	Panda 2.2	Panda 2.2 was the first update that was widely anticipated. It mainly targeted sites scraping content from other URLs on the web.
7/23/2011	Panda 2.3	Following the larger 2.2, Panda 2.3 was a minor update that affected fewer sites than the initial Panda roll out.
8/12/2011	Panda 2.4	Google rolled out Panda across most languages, excluding Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Between 6 and 9 percent of queries were affected across different languages.
9/28/2011	Panda 2.5	Matt Cutts and the Google search team launched Panda 2.5 to revisit several websites that had rebuilt traffic after the initial roll out. Sites that improved traffic without focusing on high-quality content were hit hard once again.
11/18/2011	Panda 3.1	Panda 3.1 was a small data refresh that affected less than 1 percent of searches.
1/18/2012	Panda 3.2	The first Panda update of 2012 was another small refresh with no adjustments to ranking signals.
2/27/2012	Panda 3.3	Despite expectations of a major update, Panda 3.3 was a small refresh with minimal impact.
3/23/2012	Panda 3.4	While not a substantial shift, Panda 3.4 was a larger scale data refresh that impacted about 1.6 percent of queries.
4/19/2012	Panda 3.5	Panda 3.5 was minor data refresh that came just before the launch of the webspam algorithm known as Penguin.
4/27/2012	Panda 3.6	In the wake of the first Penguin update and news of an expanded search index, Panda 3.6 was a minor data fresh.
6/8/2012	Panda 3.7	A minor Panda update, affected less than 1 percent of searches.
6/25/2012	Panda 3.8	A data refresh that impacted less than 1 percent of all queries
7/24/2012	Panda 3.9	Another small update of the algorithm, but Google said the change was “enough notice.”
8/22/2012	Panda 3.9.1	Minor update of the Panda search quality algorithm days after Matt Cutts said new Panda iterations are unlikely to be particularly large moving forward.
9/18/2012	Panda 3.9.2	Minor adjustment for Panda that affected less than 0.7 percent of searches on Google.
9/27/2012	Panda 20	The first major update of Panda in 2012. The move affected 2.4 percent of search queries.
11/6/2012	Panda 21	Panda 21 noticeably impacted 1.1 percent of English language queries.
11/21/2012	Panda 22	Google rolled out Panda 22 without an official announcement. The tweak impacted 0.8 percent of queries.
12/21/2012	Panda 23	Panda 23 impacted 1.3 percent of English queries.
1/22/2013	Panda 24	Google announced Panda 24, which impacted 1.2 percent of English queries.
3/15/2013	Panda 25	When Google updated Panda in March of 2013, Matt Cutts indicated the algorithm was being incorporated into the indexing system and future updates were unlikely to be announced.
7/18/2013	Panda 26	Content efforts rewarded. The “softer Panda” update released on July 18 was more finely targeted, with reports of SEO boosts for sites with good content.
5/20/2014	Panda 4.0	Matt Cutts makes a cryptic Tweet, heralding the latest major Panda update in almost a year. Panda 4.0 appears to have been implemented to help small businesses gain visibility.
9/26/2014	Panda 4.1	Panda 4.1 is released and targets “thin” content that, unlike news and blogs, doesn’t provide much value and simply tries to lure clicks from SERPs.
8/27/2015	Panda 4.2	The update no one cared about? Google announced an algo refresh that is most likely a Panda tweak, supposedly impacting 2-3% of queries. Winners and losers are unclear.

Panda is just one of the algorithms used by Google to rank web content in its search results. However, of all the recent Google initiatives, Panda has certainly had the biggest impact on SERPs in terms of eliminating websites that contain low-quality content. Almost immediately after launching the first Panda iteration, content farms and other websites with poorly written, keyword-stuffed information lost rank or disappeared completely from Google search results.

Following the first Panda update, Sistrix came out with much discussed list of the biggest Panda losers based on its own Visibility Index. As the company’s chart suggests, the sites that suffered the most seemed to lack a clear, niche focus in their content, instead offering shallow information on various topics.

The Development of Google Panda

The name “Panda” comes from Google engineer Navneet Panda, who developed the technology that made it possible for Google to create and implement the algorithm.

The technology Navneet Panda pioneered allows the search giant to algorithmically assess websites by many of the same quality categories (including site speed and content’s uniqueness and value) initially used by Google’s human website testers. Additionally, marketers and site developers believe the Panda algorithm factors visitors’ site interactions into search rankings. This suggests high bounce rates,low dwell times and related factors are all signals to Panda that a website is low quality.

Google distinguished engineer Matt Cutts gave an in-depth interview with Wired magazine talking about the development of Google Panda.

Google Panda and Quality Content for SEO

Since Panda was launched, Matt Cutts has been adamant in saying that the easiest way for websites to avoid negative consequences is to focus on creating strong content. In fact, Google came out with a blog post that essentially gave marketers the SEO tip to focus on content. In it, Google posed a series of questions marketers should ask themselves to determine whether their content is Panda-proof, including:

Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?

Writing content that focuses on informing website visitors, rather than trying to achieve search rank by using shallow content filled with keywords, will likely generate higher SERP standings. Common SEO concepts, such using keyword-rich URLs (that are relevant to specific web pages), opting for exact match domains, cultivating inbound links, etc, are still likely to help a company boost their its rankings. The difference, however, is that Panda is programmed to decipher between natural, effective keyword use as part of a quality content marketing campaign and forced keyword placement designed solely to force a company up rankings.

Signs of a Panda-healthy Site

There are certain metrics marketers can look for to ensure that their websites are not being negatively impacted by Panda. Signs of a Panda-healthy site also indicate that the content being published is effective for SEO.

Panda-healthy indicators include:

Growth in the number of cached pages over time as more content pages are added
Organic traffic levels remain steady or (ideally) increase over time and through Panda updates
Keyword rankings remain fairly steady or increase over time and through Panda updates
The number of referring keywords to a site remains steady or (ideally) increases as more content is added to a site