Farmer-Panda algorithm goes global

[djbaxter]

High-quality sites algorithm goes global, incorporates user feedback
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Monday, April 11, 2011

Over a month ago we introduced an algorithmic improvement designed to help people find more high-quality sites in search. Since then we?ve gotten a lot of positive responses about the change: searchers are finding better results, and many great publishers are getting more traffic.

Today we?ve rolled out this improvement globally to all English-language Google users, and we?ve also incorporated new user feedback signals to help people find better search results. In some high-confidence situations, we are beginning to incorporate data about the sites that users block into our algorithms. In addition, this change also goes deeper into the ?long tail? of low-quality websites to return higher-quality results where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before. The impact of these new signals is smaller in scope than the original change: about 2% of U.S. queries are affected by a reasonable amount, compared with almost 12% of U.S. queries for the original change.

Read more...

 

[djbaxter]

New Google Panda UK Stats: Article, Price Comparison Sites Slammed Hard
Search Engine Watch
April 13, 2011

Searchmetrics was first to put out its list of winners and losers yesterday after Google's Panda update arrived in the UK. New early data released today by SISTRIX indicates that article sites, price comparison sites, and business directories have taken the biggest falls in Google's organic search results.

Websites that were hammered in the U.S. have now been hit in the UK search results, including: ezinearticles.com, hubpages.com, suite101.com, associatedcontent.com, articlesbase.com, howtodothings.com, and mahalo.com. As SISTRIX notes (and Searchmetrics noted yesterday), price comparison sites were hit particularly hard in the UK, including Microsoft's Ciao, which is also at the center of the Google antitrust probe in Europe.

...

Fourteen of the 30 sites SISTRIX identified as most damaged by Panda didn't appear on Searchmetrics list (bizrate.co.uk; findarticles.com; tradekey.com; answerbag.com; encyclopedia.com; vodpod.com; brighthub.com; zazzle.co.uk; howtodothings.com; life123.com; wn.com; docstoc.com; faqs.org).

Read more...

 

[C0ldf1re]

The new algorithm seems excellent. Google search is returning much better results, and lots of rubbish sites have disappeared from SERPS.

 

[loanoptimize]

I agree that the algorithm is good, but it's definitely just the beginning of Google's efforts to weed out low-value content. This shows that they are serious about the importance of valuable content, and I think that more businesses/websites will put more resources into creating high-value content rather than just content in quantity.

 

[Sabrina178]

Google will now count social media conversations such as tweets, facebook page links , youtube...our tactic now is more focused on VSEO (Video SEO) and so far so good


way to go social media channels

 

[janellelk]

Sabrina178 -- that is awesome! And really exciting. Do you have any sources for that info? Thanks!

 

[PatriciaStewart]

Google now seem to use branding for ranking

 

[djbaxter]

Google will now count social media conversations such as tweets, facebook page links , youtube...our tactic now is more focused on VSEO (Video SEO) and so far so good


way to go social media channels

Google now seem to use branding for ranking

Making unsupported claims about factors what search engines use for ranking is unhelpful and serves only to perpetuate myths and superstitious thinking.

If you are going to make such statements, provide some basis - documentation or at least the personal observations that you think support the claim.