Previous Panda Updates

Here’s the Panda update schedule so far, as we’ve tracked and had confirmed by Google:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about 4 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011 (about 7 week gap)

Panda Update - 2011

Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, published a blog post on the Google Webmaster Central blog named More guidance on building high-quality sites.

Amit’s goal with this post is to have those webmasters impacted by this Panda Update, which rolled out internationally about a month ago, with some direction and guidance to help explain what sites Google likes and which they dislike.

Amit said that he cannot document publicly the “actual ranking signals” but will share questions you should ask yourself and consider when trying to understand why a site was impacted by this update. Those questions include:

1. Would you trust the information presented in this article?
2. Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
4. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
5. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
6. Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
7. Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
8. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
9. How much quality control is done on content?
10. Does the article describe both sides of a story?
11. Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
12. Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
13. Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
14. For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
15. Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
16. Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
17. Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
18. Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
19. Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
20. Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
21. Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
22. Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
23. Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Source: http://searchengineland.com/impacted-by-googles-panda-update-google-asks-you-to-consider-this-76050

Social media and Google’s Panda update

The introduction of Google’s recent Panda update changed its search engine algorithm with a view to diminishing a site’s ranking that provide “low-quality content”. The “Panda” update, as Google refers to it after a Google engineer, or the “Farmer” update, as Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has been calling it because its apparent target is content farms, has been received very cautiously by the SEO community.

As a result, some of the web’s most popular sites have seen a huge drop in traffic. This marks a major change in Google’s rankings, which has affected around twelve per cent of Google’s overall search results. The SEO industry is still digesting its impact and implications.

The RSS feed, a dynamically-generated summary of information or published news, either in the form of a blog or a dedicated news site, provides a glimpse of the article by providing a headline and, generally, the first few lines of the story’s introduction.

Some media sites have described the practice of using “authoritative” sites’ RSS feeds as “spam sites”. Not exactly, perhaps, but one could for example plug in the RSS feed from Search Engine Watch, as your own.

Quite simply, you can grab the feed url, paste it into feed2js.org, customise it, then grab the generated Javascript code and publish it on your website. As soon as new articles are added to the SEW website, and therefore the RSS feed, the content is then displayed on the “low-quality” website that has uses its content.

Read More: http://www.sitepronews.com/2011/04/14/social-media-and-googles-panda-update/