Why Panda Update Was So Obvious For Google?

Google is refining its search quality frequently. Hence, search metrics that a website can pass through is becoming tougher and competitive. After Google Panda update, many websites dropped in its search ranking and lost a huge amount of traffic. It’s becoming a very difficult to maintain traffic and search rankings. Why Google is so desperate to introduce new update in algorithm?

Before Panda:

Google is trying to include new parameters or metrics to evaluate a website standard. Previously it was just page rank algorithm and back Link concept that decided a website’s visibility. Google relied on traditional search quality tactics to measure a website. Hence, SEO guys were rocking with all white, grey and black hat techniques. They submitted the website links everywhere on the web they can. They did much tricky stuffs that absolutely dribbled search bots and got the exact results that they were planned to. A few of those tricks were:

1.      Keyword Stuffing
2.      Hidden texts with links
3.      Doorway pages
4.      Content duplication
5.     Aggressive Link Submission
6.      Link Exchange
7.      Paid Link Services
8.      Blog networks
9.      Parked Domains

Many other tricks and techniques helped these websites to beat the search algorithm so easily. It was cakewalk job for SEO guys to place a brand new website into #1 position in search engine results within a month or two. There were certain services that intentionally selling back links with a minimal cost to increase visibility.  Hence, at particular point of time, SEO was all about submissions. In between, they even started BOMBING.  People appointed to monitor respective competitors and started de-promoting these competitors. These smart boys were totally mixed the search results according to the wish.

Therefore, the result was quiet predictable. Websites that hired SEO services was placed on the top results of Google for their targeted keywords regardless of the quality of service.  Even many spam websites that just manipulated certain parameters in such a way that they can rank well on search engine within a short period. Eventually, Google’s search quality had started reducing. All the qualified websites were left down on the search rankings. It became a big head ache to Google in terms of quality of their service.    

Solution:

Google wants to reduce the importance of back link concept to crack down spam results. Hence, Google search quality team started thinking to find other parameters that can substitute the back link concepts. Finally, they decided to go for user centric approach. How a user land up a webpage and whether they like the page or not, are they spending more time on the site or not etc.

Later, they listed out certain points that make a normal user happy and hence they will stick with the service. It’s very common belief that if the service of a website is fantastic, then users will find them so easily and will stick with the service for a quiet long time. Even in terms of Google search algorithms also, they decided to go with a user’s point of view. They created many other parameters that can ensure user’s belief and collided into a single term called “Panda”.

Result:

Panda affected websites

• Many websites experienced a sudden drop in their organic search traffic
• Lost Page Ranks and Keyword Rankings
• Found many of the low quality websites
• Websites with much advertisement lost its importance
• It changed the definition of SEO
• Penalized paid blog networks
• Increased importance of Social Media Involvement & mentions
• Websites those who were into a business/service since very long time got advantage in terms of SERP rankings

Now What Next for SEO?

Since, search metrics are changing frequently, web marketers has to step very carefully. At present, whatever they do online, can also influence their work. Submitting your links on many websites and driving traffic is not going to work out much and all SEOs should find out a new way to tackle this situation. However, all hope is that Google will surely support those who believe in “white hat”. So happy SEO…

Penguin Update: Why Google Wants to Target Webspam in Search Results?

We all are discussing about Panda updates since last year. It was a major search algorithm update by Google in 2011. Again, Google had launched a new algorithm called ‘Penguin Update’ on 24 Apr 2012.

Google is trying to catch people or bots that spam the search results on the web. It can even describe it as Google wants to lock any activities that purposefully try to manipulate search results of Google to get better rankings on search results. Google warns people who go against Google’s quality guidelines. This new update is going to affect 3% of the search results worldwide.   

What is Webspam?

Webspam is an activity of manipulating search index pages. Effectively, it affects in the search results. It’s also known as search spam or spamdexing. It’s of two types: Content Spam and link spam.

Content Spam:

Manipulating content of a page for better rankings comes under content spamming [Please here I meant only black hat techniques] such as keyword stuffing, hidden texts, meta tags stuffing, doorway pages, spinning articles by using one single original post, scraper sites etc…

Link Spam:

The malfunctions that can be done with the links between pages only to get high rankings other than its actual merit. Link farms, hidden links, cookie stuffing, page hijacking, buying expired domains, link exchange communities etc.

I will write a detailed explanation of Webspam in future.

Why Are They Taking Action Now?

Google was fighting against Webspam since long ago.  Google gave many warnings and fought with such spam techniques from the day one of their history. However, still we can see many examples that Webspam remain works.  Hence, they were working against Webspam from a quiet long time.  

According to the latest update, Google believes that 3% impact can happen in the search queries. So what all we have to do is just sit and wait.

Let’s see how much impact that this penguin can make against web spam. Anyway, if Google succeeds on it, then it would be a great encourage for “white hat” SEO guys…