New Google Panda Update Approved, On the Way

Google’s Matt Cutts spoke in a Q&A session with Danny Sullivan at SMX Advanced this week, and discussed the Panda update, among other things.

A lot of sites have been critical of Google for returning results that are scraped versions of their orignal content. Cutts is quoted as saying in a liveblog of the session, “A guy on my team [is] working on that issue. A change has been approved that should help with that issue. We’re continuing to iterate on Panda. The algorithm change originated in search quality, not the web spam team.”

He says there’s another change coming soon, and that he still doesn’t know when Panda will be launched fully internationally (in other languages). He also says they haven’t made any manual exceptions with Panda.

You may recall that the Mac blog Cult of Mac was hit by the original Panda update, and then after exchanging some dialogue with Google the site ended up getting some new traffic. Matt says, however, “We haven’t made any manual exceptions. Cult of Mac might have been confused because they started getting all this new traffic from blogging about it, but we haven’t made any manual exceptions.”

Yesterday we looked at some poll results from Search Engine Roundtable that found 4% of sites were saying they had fully recovered from the Panda update. Some other sites have been finding partial recovery.

Search Engine Roundtable Shares Panda Poll

Image credit: Search Engine Roundtable

On the prospect of sites having recovered from the update, Matt is quoted as saying, “The general rule is to push stuff out and then find additional signals to help differentiate on the spectrum. We haven’t done any pushes that would directly pull things back. We have recomputed data that might have impacted some sites. There’s one change that might affect sites and pull things back.”

You may also recall Google’s list of questions that webmasters could use to assess the quality of their content. Cutts talked briefly about those questions, saying, “It could help as we recompute data.”

He also said that what is being called “Panda 2.2″ has been approved but has not yet been rolled out. “If we think you’re relatively high quality, Panda will have a smaller impact. If you’re expert enough and no one else has the good content, even if you’ve been hit by Panda that page can still rank.”

That says a lot about original content.

There are 16 Comments. Add Yours.

jordanstella
July 11, 2011 at 7:47 am

Republish content problem still is not solved in this Google panda update 2.2.
Cary Bergeron
June 16, 2011 at 9:03 am

There are ways to build sites that are Panda proof. The scraper thing is bulls*** and I hope they do fix that.
Tivi Star
June 12, 2011 at 11:02 pm

According to Matt Cutt Panda 2.2 will tackle the issue of sites that republish content, its not going to affect white hat SEO followers
Aviran
June 12, 2011 at 4:51 pm

I hope the legit SEO marketers wont get hurt.
hope spammers do.
Mikko
June 12, 2011 at 9:51 am

It is interesting to see where all this eventually will lead. From my stand point this is just interesting to follow, because I don’t try to earn my living from the internet. I can understand the worry that many have beacause their livelihood depends on internet marketing revenues.

For me all the drama and suspence changes like this create are like a made for tv thriller movie, but maybe just a nerdy version. Best of luck…
Boiling Springs SC Real Estate
June 11, 2011 at 11:24 am

My sites are actually ranking better after the Google change but I have all original content and no ad words.
Glen Woodfin
June 11, 2011 at 4:19 am

Google formerly announced the algorithm change towards the end of February, but I saw changes towards the beginning of February. They were drastic changes, so I’m convinced that they began their rollout earlier than they announced.
sri lanka
June 11, 2011 at 3:49 am

when did Panda 2.2 coming ?
Nigcareer
June 10, 2011 at 5:55 pm

I actually spent a lot on Adwords but I think Advertisers should be provided with the details of the clicks on their adverts.
Lisa
June 10, 2011 at 2:18 am

Hi,

will this affect article sites
for example i write a content of 450 words and publish it to 50 or 100 article directories then will that be considered duplicate content or would tat affect ranking?
gino
June 9, 2011 at 11:09 pm

Chris, the scrapers a making copy from tweets websites, they get the links and ad more words and the in webmaster it shows that the original website is broken link and the scraper gets away with the high rank. Others use their web applications systems that are coping pages from good webs and adding symbols at the end, right after .htm or .html, so they can keep the page title and getting the higher positioning.
The funny part comes when search engines give them the point and the original -0. Reporting them is a waste of time because there is a hidden monkey business behind.
Lucado
June 9, 2011 at 3:49 pm

According to Matt Cutt Panda 2.2 will tackle the issue of sites that republish content, its not going to affect white hat SEO followers.
Shun
June 9, 2011 at 11:25 am

Brace yourself! The morons at Google this time are really going to kill your site for good. This is the Grizzly Bear update. Now they are playing God. There is no way to know what content is scraped or not unless you manually review the site and even still… Adsense/Adwords are the only winners here. Google needs to be regulated.
- Robert
  June 9, 2011 at 3:17 pm
  
  Adsense/Adwords the only winners? Makes no sense. Most sites of original content have very little adsense advertising, if any, compared to sites that have duplicate content. If anything this will raise reputable websites that have less adsense advertising and lower poor websites with lots of adsense advertising.
  - Guest
    June 9, 2011 at 8:16 pm
    
    You are assuming Google knows how to identify original content which obviously they don’t. That’s why we have the mess we have now. They will never know, no matter how many top of the line engineers they hire, how to identify scraped content from original. That is a job that has to be done manually to be reliable.
    
    1. Adwords benefits. Scraper sites obviously will rise to the top. Users either exit those sites with adsense or go back and redo search. This time Adwords ads are clicked. Original sites are forced to use adwords to promote their business.
    
    2. 90% of informational sites on the web have adsense on it, whether they have original content or not. Adsense stands to gain A LOT.
    
    It’s very clever for google to discriminate against thin pages. Most thin content doesn’t have adsense on it as they are product pages.
    - AL
      June 13, 2011 at 8:49 am
      
      There are ways now of establishing yourself as the original writer. You’re right, Google can’t guess. But if you use some of the tools available to you, you can TELL them you are the original content creator.