On May 20th Google announced that they had rolled out a new algorithm with the release of Panda 4.0. A big thing to note here is that Panda 4.0 is not a simple algorithm update, it’s a completely new release.
Make no mistake, this is a major update and searchengland.com are predicting its impact will reach 7.5% of English search queries, making Panda 4.0 one of the biggest updates in the last 3 years.
That being said, the chatter in SEO communities indicated that Panda 4.0 brings with it more ‘soft and gentle’ changes and will, according to Google’s Head of Web Spam, Matt Cutts, serve as a basis for future adjustments to the algorithm. This is good news for now, but does also indicate that Google intends to keep up the pace of change to its algorithms.
Early reports are indicating that many sites that were slammed with the infamous 2011 Algorithm updates are showing some signs of recovery under the new Panda 4.0. I would assume that this will be more to do with changes that people made to their websites to become more compliant as opposed to Google back tracking on its fight against web spam.
Not surprisingly, this new algorithm focuses predominantly on web content with the biggest losers being content aggregators who previously ranked with content from external sources.
I’ve said before that Google’s goal is to provide its customers (people searching) with the best possible search experience. With that in mind, all of the algorithm updates in the last few years have been geared towards removing poor quality web content from Search Engine Results Pages. Quite rightly so, good quality, relevant and unique content will forever more play a huge part in the visibility of your website in search engines.
WHAT TO DO NOW..
Ok, so what should you do now? Well check your web stats on Google Analytics and also login to your webmaster account and make sure all looks well.
You should then keep an eye on things over the next couple of weeks and if you don’t see any radical changes in traffic and keyword performance you can relax till the next time Google decides to change everything.
If however you see any negative results showing up you need to get your website audited by an SEO specialist as quickly as possible to minimise the potential damage of this latest algorithm change.
Check out our Search Engine Optimisation services.
