Google Made a Minor Tweak to the Panda Update

Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm every year. Some days it makes more than one (obviously). One day last week, the search engine reportedly made a small tweak to the Panda part.

Barry Schwartz posted the following statement from Google regarding the matter:

“We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.

So, take that for what you will.

Google has not given any new indications of what it is doing differently on the Panda front, but as the company has said in the past, they will continue to “iterate” on it.

A few webmasters recently took to the forums to express that their sites had suddenly changed rankings, and interestingly quite a few seemed to be for the better. That’s kind of a change of pace from the grumbles we’ve been hearing for the better part of the year.

We still haven’t heard of any full recoveries, though HubPages is taking an interesting approach, as we looked at recently, by giving authors their own subdomains, as to separate content author by author, so one author who writes poorly doesn’t drag down the content of a higher quality author.

In early tests, HubPages has seen some success in rankings for certain content employing this strategy. The jury is still out on how this will impact the site as a whole.

Update: Dani Horowitz tells us that Daniweb, which we discussed at length in an interview with her, has made a full recovery (see comments below). More on DaniWeb’s recovery here.

There are 13 Comments. Add Yours.

Adsense Publisher
July 26, 2011 at 7:23 pm

Using sub domains is nothing new, and expect Google to make another change in their algorithm to handle the influx of sub domains that people are going to be using to try and game Google into giving them better rankings instead of using sub directories like a lot of sites currently are.
- Chris Crum
  July 27, 2011 at 8:42 am
  
  Google is evidently who gave HubPages the advice on subdomains. It’s just about separating the content out. If the quality is still poor across all subdomains, it shouldn’t do much to help them game Google.
  - Adsense Publisher
    July 27, 2011 at 9:10 pm
    
    Most of the content on Hubpages is still junk.
    
    Most of it’s publishers (not all) are relatively brand new publishers who don’t know the first thing about writing good content, or how to publish a website on their own. Some of them are out of work and turning to internet publishing because they’ve been told how it could solve their financial problems. This is just a move for hubpages not to police it’s own publishers too closely and reward those who actually do write good content by using a known SEO trick. SEO has turned into knowing the tricks of the trade rather than writing good actual content.
    
    Let’s not forget the real reason Google made the suggestion to Hubpages. Most of their publishers sign up for and use Adsense ads on their pages. Hubpages pushes for publishers to use Adsense on their pages as well.
    
    It’s the same thing over and over again. Once people abuse the use of sub domains Google will make another algorithm change and Hubpages will be infected with the Panda once again.
    - Kye Etherton
      July 28, 2011 at 12:08 pm
      
      I changed our webpage at work to have a subdomain for all of our ‘about us’ while keeping all the server information on the main domain. That was in February.
      
      So far it still lists all the keywords and results of the subdomain in the main domain as well. So I have no idea if there will be any effect from this change, but if there is it will take a long time to enact.
David Jenkins
July 27, 2011 at 5:48 am

Iterate is not a word I hear used in the UK so I looked to see what Google search brought up. This was how Wikipedia defined it:

“Iteration means the act of repeating a process usually with the aim of approaching a desired goal or target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an iteration, and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.”

After so long it is hard to believe there is “a desired goal or target or result”. I have yet to see quality results return to Google search . . . and this is now 5 months down the line.

It would just be nice if Google would be straight with webmasters. Most have access to Google Webmaster tools where they can receive messages so if a web site is crap why not just put us our of our misery, tell us it’s crap and we can go out and look for a job. At least that way we would be able to pay the bills.

No-one is asking for a free ride but Google put us up there in the first place so forget all your spouting about iterate and no more prevaricate which Wikipedia defines as:

”A lie (also called prevarication, falsehood) is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others.”

(Interestingly Google does not list Wikipedia as one of the top results for “prevaricate”.)
- Kye Etherton
  July 28, 2011 at 12:01 pm
  
  Hi David,
  
  I’m from London and would like to say Iterate IS a word that is in the UK. I use it a lot when programming.
  
  In fact some languages it’s it is an actual command! (see Java)
Dani Horowitz
July 27, 2011 at 9:36 am

DaniWeb made a full 110% recovery as a result of this last Panda update.
- Chris Crum
  July 27, 2011 at 9:49 am
  
  Now that is interesting!
- David Jenkins
  July 27, 2011 at 11:02 am
  
  Did DaniWeb do anything or did it just happen?
  
  I know a site that does the same as me which has recovered without doing anything yet I am still dying.
  - Chris Crum
    July 27, 2011 at 11:56 am
    
    Read here.
Nick Stamoulis
July 27, 2011 at 10:17 am

I actually think HubPages made a smart move by creating the subdomains. It won’t work for every site, but it was a good idea to separate the site itself from any low quality content that gets published. It’s nice to hear that some sites are seeing an uptick, hopefully more sites that made changes post-panda will see the benefits soon.
Managed Hosting
July 27, 2011 at 10:28 am

I don’t know why hubpages wasn’t using sub-domains to begin with. Google has clearly stated from the beginning to use subdomains if content is different. Just look at blogger – some good quality and some bad quality. None of the content is the same, hence subdomains.
Plumbers
July 31, 2011 at 8:34 pm

How do you track the overall traffic of all of the subdomains? It seems like an administrative nightmare, if you had to go into the Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts of each of the subdomains to track your results.

Any suggestions?