The popularity of Google Search Engine has meant that the company has to constantly update and upgrade its Search Engine algorithm in order to ensure that only the most relevant results get priority over the inferior ones. To this end, Google recently released two updates – Panda and Penguin. Undoubtedly, it has affected the ranking of almost every website in either positive or negative way. The following paragraphs will give you a brief insight into these updates and their impact.
Google Panda 3.5 update is related to the content on the website. Accordingly, if the content on your website is poor, poorly maintained, duplicate, irrelevant or otherwise of inferior quality, the indexing of your website will be on a lower side. Therefore, the pages comprising of copied and/or low quality content are the prime targets of Google Panda update. It was unleashed on April 19, 2012 and its impact was widely felt across the globe affecting almost every website. Some of the wide ranging effects of Google Panda update include:
1) Upgrading of websites containing high quality content, like reports, research work, analytics and presentations; and at the same time, downgrading of websites with low, manipulative content.
2) The traditional Search Engine Optimisation techniques are rendered ineffective in the wake of Google Panda update. Now, the internet marketers need to deploy content-centric approach to the websites, and not keyword-stuffing, which was rampant earlier.
3) The websites with static, stale content suffered significant loss of ranking. Google Panda has made it mandatory for the webmasters to regularly update the site with unique content, if they wish to rank higher in the index.
4) Google Panda has come down hard on duplicate content. All the suspect websites are downgraded with impunity.
Within 5 days of the launch of Panda, Google released another update to their powerful search engine, with Google Penguin (April 24, 2012). Google Penguin is an algorithmic update, which primarily targets links spam. The problem of spam links had assumed epidemic proportions on the Web. Through Penguin update, Google has tried to address the issue by penalising domains that have too many backlinks using the same anchor text. The impact of Google Penguin was immediately felt by several websites that comprised excessive, unnatural, fabricated and low quality backlinks. The effects of Google Penguin update include:
1) The websites that were not heavily reliant on link building as an SEO tool were spared the blues. In fact, some of these websites apparently got a raise in the index rankings.
2) The role of “Negative SEO” played by abuse of linking technology has been considerably reduced. For instance, excessive links through keyword was a common practice prior to this update. However, Google has realised its folly and has sought to address the issue through some tweaks in its algorithm. Similarly, link farming and anchor text link building through irrelevant sites are also disallowed through Penguin update.
3) Google Penguin update has vigorously attacked Black-Hat SEO practices. The tweaks in the algorithm affected by Penguin update has meant that Google has started scanning the website content with a lot more vigil, and those websites that do not satisfy its strict yardsticks concerning links are punished with low ranking.
4) Penguin update has also led to the growing importance of brand links. Such links establish a brand identity and Google algorithm tends to give priority to brand websites, especially post-Penguin update.
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