Are you paying close attention to Google’s algorithm updates these days? Are you looking forward to the updates, or are you afraid of what they will bring? Let us know in the comments.

Cutts is careful to note that any of this information is subject to change, and should be taken with a grain of salt, but this pretty much the kind of stuff they have planned at the moment.

Penguin

We already knew the Penguin update was on the way, and he touches on that.

“We’re relatively close to deploying the next generation of Penguin,” says Cutts. “Internally we call it ‘Penguin 2.0,’ and again, Penguin is a webspam change that’s dedicated to try to find black hat webspam, and try to target and address that. So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper in have a little bit more of an impact than the original version of Penguin.”

Before the video came out, Cutts was already talking about this update on Twitter, saying that it would be “larger” and roll out in the “next few weeks”.

Updates To Panda

Google recently changed its updating strategy for Panda. Webmasters use to anxiously await coming Panda updates, but Google has turned it into a rolling update, meaning that it will continue to update often and regularly, to the point where anticipating any one big update is not really possible any longer. On top of that, Google stopped announcing them, as it just doesn’t make sense for them to do so anymore.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t Panda news, as Cutts has proven. It turns out that the Panda that has haunted so many webmasters over the last couple years may start easing up a little bit, and become (dare I say?) a bit friendlier.

Cutts says, “We’ve also been looking at Panda, and seeing if we can find some additional signals (and we think we’ve got some) to help refine things for the sites that are kind of in the border zone – in the gray area a little bit. And so if we can soften the effect a little bit for those sites that we believe have some additional signals of quality, then that will help sites that have previously been affected (to some degree) by Panda.”

Sites And Their Authority

If you’re an authority on any topic, and you write about it a lot, this should be good news (in a perfect world, at least).

“We have also been working on a lot of ways to help regular webmasters,” says Cutts. “We’re doing a better job of detecting when someone is more of an authority on a specific space. You know, it could be medical. It could be travel. Whatever. And try to make sure that those rank a little more highly if you’re some sort of authority or a site, according to the algorithms, we think might be a little more appropriate for users.”

Advertorials

Also on the Google menu is a bigger crackdown on advertorials.

“We’ve also been looking at advertorials,” says Cutts .”That is sort of native advertising – and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines. So, again, if someone pays for coverage, or pays for an ad or something like that, those ads should not flow PageRank. We’ve seen a few sites in the U.S. and around the world that take money and do link to websites, and pass PageRank, so we’ll be looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement as advertorials that violate our quality guidelines.”

“There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial,” he adds.

Queries With High Spam Rates

Google will also be working harder on certain types of queries that tend to draw a lot of spam.

Cutts says, “We get a lot of great feedback from outside of Google, so, for example, there were some people complaining about searches like ‘payday loans’ on Google.co.uk. So we have two different changes that try to tackle those kinds of queries in a couple different ways. We can’t get into too much detail about exactly how they work, but I’m kind of excited that we’re going from having just general queries be a little more clean to going to some of these areas that have traditionally been a little more spammy, including for example, some more pornographic queries, and some of these changes might have a little bit more of an impact on those kinds of areas that are a little more contested by various spammers and that sort of thing.”

Denying Value To Link Spam

Google will continue to be vigilant when it comes to all types of link spam, and has some new tricks up its sleeve, apparently.

Cutts says, “We’re also looking at some ways to go upstream to deny the value to link spammers – some people who spam links in various ways. We’ve got some nice ideas on ways that that becomes less effective, and so we expect that that will roll out over the next few months as well.”

“In fact, we’re working on a completely different system that does more sophisticated link analysis,” he adds. “We’re still in the early days for that, but it’s pretty exciting. We’ve got some data now that we’re ready to start munching, and see how good it looks. We’ll see whether that bears fruit or not.”

Hopefully this won’t lead to a whole lot of new “fear of linking” from webmasters, as we’ve seen since Penguin first rolled out, but that’s probably wishful thinking.

Hacked Sites

Google intends to get better on the hacked sites front.

“We also continue to work on hacked sites in a couple different ways,” says Cutts. “Number one: trying to detect them better. We hope in the next few months to roll out a next-generation site detection that is even more comprehensive, and also trying to communicate better to webmasters, because sometimes they see confusion between hacked sites and sites that serve up malware, and ideally, you’d have a one-stop shop where once someone realizes that they’ve been hacked, they can go to Webmaster Tools, and have some single spot where they could go and have a lot more info to sort of point them in the right way to hopefully clean up those hacked sites.”

Clusters Of Results From The Same Site

There have been complaints about domain clustering in Google’s results, and Google showing too many results from the same domain on some queries.

Cutts says, “We’ve also heard a lot of feedback from people about – if I go down three pages deep, I’ll see a cluster of several results all from one domain, and we’ve actually made things better in terms of – you would be less likely to see that on the first page, but more likely to see that on the following pages. And we’re looking a change, which might deploy, which would basically say that once you’ve seen a cluster of results from one site, then you’d be less likely to see more results from that site as you go deeper into the next pages of Google search results.”

“We’re going to keep trying to figure out how we can give more information to webmasters…we’re also going to be looking for ways that we can provide more concrete details, [and] more example URLs that webmasters can use to figure out where to go to diagnose their site.”

So Google has a lot of stuff in the works that SEOs and webmasters are going to want to keep a close eye on. It’s going to be interesting to see the impact it all has. Given that Google makes algorithm changes every day, this has to be far from everything they have in the works, but I guess the video makes up for the lack of “Search Quality HIghlights” from Google in recent months. Still wondering if those are ever coming back. They were, after all, released to keep Google more transparent.

What do you think of the changes Matt Cutts talked about. Looking forward to any of them? Dreading any? Let us know in the comments.

Have you felt the effects of the latest Panda update? Noticed any improvements in Google’s search results? Let us know in the comments.

Barry Schwartz is pointing to some forum chatter about webmasters already seeing the effects of the refresh, indicating that it has likely begun to roll out. As others have pointed out, it’s not uncommon for Google to do this on a Friday. Schwartz says signs point to the roll out starting on Thursday afternoon and into Friday.

This isn’t just your typical run of the mill Panda refresh, however. This could very well be the last time Google manually pushes one, as Panda is becoming more of a “rolling” update. Schwartz quotes Cutts from SMX:

Rather than having some huge change that happens on a given day. You are more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we rebuild the index. So you are less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes.

As of the time of this writing, Google has not made a formal announcement about this latest Panda refreshed, and it’s entirely possible that they won’t. Given the nature of Pand deployment going forward, it’s unlikely that Google will do so from here on out. We have to just accept Panda as an ongoing thing. No more anticipation of the next big Pand update. You can just count on it happening on a regular, ongoing basis. Actually, Google has come out and said that it’s unlikely to confirm Panda updates from now on.

It remains to be seen just what kind of an impact this will truly have on sites, but it’s not likely to make things much easier.

Don’t worry though, you can still anticipate the next big Penguin update, which Cutts also discussed at SMX. He said they’re working on the “next generation of Penguin,” which he is implying is going to be a big one. Google is also talking about cracking down on “bad online merchants”. It will be interesting to see how this affects ecommerce sites, and what Google really considers “bad”.

“We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results,” Cutts said about that.

We have been waiting for the next Panda/Penguin. Maybe that’s the one we’re looking at. You have to wonder how many sites it will impact. I can easily envision a firestorm of merchant freak-out.

Cutts also reportedly said Google will be targeting more link networks this year.

We’re also still waiting on Google to put out what used to be its monthly lists of algorithm changes (or “search quality highlights” if you will) for the past several months, dating back to October. This is the longest Google has gone without releasing the lists since they started doing it, which they were doing in the name of “transparency”.

Panda recently turned two years old, and opinions of Google’s search results since its implementation vary. With the latest refresh, Google has gone through 25 iterations of Panda.

Now that Google has a new approach to how it deploys Panda, are you more or less worried about its impact? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Tekken 5 (via YouTube)

Speaking at the SMX conference, Cutts said that the next Panda update will take place this Friday, March 15th or by Monday, March 18th at the latest.

The last Panda update rolled out on January 22nd, and Google said that it affected 1.2% of queries. Even if a Panda update launches this Friday, it will have been the longest time between updates in recent memory. Google previously released a Panda update a few days before Christmas, and two back in November.

Although the Panda refresh is coming sooner, a Penguin update is also on the horizon – and Cutts said that it’ll be a big one. Cutts said that it will be one of the most talked-about updates of the year.

They are “working on the next generation of Penguin,” said Cutts.

More algorithm changes were discussed at SXSW last week. There, Cutts announced a possible crackdown on bad online merchants.

“We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results,” he said.

Check here for more on the future of Panda and Penguin in 2013

Do you think Google’s search results have improved significantly in that time? Let us know in the comments.

As you probably know, the update was designed to promote higher quality content from sites in Google’s search results. Shortly after launching Panda, Google laid out some unofficial guidelines for what it means by “quality”. Victims of the update strived to recover from the huge drop in search visibility suffered as a result of it, by following these guidelines as best as possible. Few have been successful.

Let’s revisit these guidelines, and see if Google is living up to its part of the bargain.

Would you trust the information presented in this article?

How often do you find search results with information that appears untrustworthy? This was a big issue when Panda was launched. So called “content farms” were cluttering up the results, and often getting top rankings with articles written by people with no real trustworthy credentials. Google continues to try and tackle this issue with authorship, but that’s completely separate from Panda. How do you think it’s done on the Panda front?

Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

In my opinion, this is kind of a trick question. This gives the impression that a result needs to be a long, in-depth piece on any given subject, yet when it comes down to it, a more “shallow” post (or even a tweet) from the right “expert” can carry a lot more weight in credibility. You can just browse Techmeme on any given day and get that impression (though that site certainly has its share of other issues).

Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

Is Google doing well at delivering trustworthy ecommerce results? Is it burying legitimate ecommerce sites because it doesn’t think they look trustworthy enough?

Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

Let’s be honest, these things happen to even the most highly-read publications on the web from time to time. The fast-paced culture of web content often breeds a “get it out, and update later” nature, and I’m not sure Panda has done anything to change that.

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?

As Rafat Ali, the founder of media industry follower PaidContent recently said:

That said, isn’t it Google’s job to provide content that’s useful to its own users (searchers) as opposed to what’s useful to any given site’s audience? Sites typically want to expand their audiences anyway.

Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?

It’s a good question, but how often is this kind of content truly rewarded by the Panda update?

Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

Ditto from last question.

How much quality control is done on content?

Ditto from question about spelling, stylistic, or factual errors.

Does the article describe both sides of a story?

I’m curious to know how Google might algorithmically approach this one. I’m also curious to know how much Google is really holding content accountable to this. What do you think?

Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?

Nothing wrong with showing users content from recognized authorities, but this also begs the question: How does one gain recognition without visibility?

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?

If a piece of content is relevant for a query, isn’t that more important to the user experience than what content on some other page looks like? Sure, it’s good practice to maintain quality control, but should good, relevant content suffer because of lesser content on other parts of a site?

Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?

Once again, this goes along with the other questions about quality control and errors.

For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?

I think we pretty much covered this with the “trust” question, though for medical queries, the stakes can go up. In fact, this was one of the big concerns before Panda launched. Has Google gotten better at providing trustworthy medical-related results? It has launched its own Knowledge Graph results for some of this stuff. But again, that’s not really Panda-related.

Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?

Sites who are more authoritative on certain subjects often cover a much broader range of topics. This should really be more about the author of the article (along with other factors), should it not? Again, Google is really into this authorship thing, and probably with good reason, but I’m not sure Panda has all the answers on this one.

Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?

Frankly, this is not always needed in every article. That’s why the web is based around links. It’s probably also why Google loves Wikipedia so much.

Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

Can this be determined algorithmically?

Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

Wouldn’t it be helpful if Google tapped into Facebook for the social relevance of content?

Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?

I think this is covered by the page layout update.

Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?.

Isn’t print dying?

Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?

Does the right answer always have to be long?

Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?

Didn’t we already cover this?

Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Not the most specific of guidelines.

Some companies had to rethink their entire business models because of Panda. Smart content providers found ways to diversify their web traffic better as to not have to rely as much on Google. Demand Media’s site eHow has been the prime example of this. While it did go through a massive quality clean-up initiative to get back in Google’s good graces, it has also largely expanded its social media strategies, and increased partnerships, and the site is in as good of shape as ever, based on recent earnings calls from the company (which is now separating its content business from its registrar business).

Demand Media ranked as a top 20 U.S. web property throughout last year, and was ranked at number 13 in January, according to comScore. The company reached over 125 million unique visitors worldwide in January, and eHow itself was ranked number 12 in the U.S. with 62 million unique visitors in January.

Not everyone has been as successful as Demand Media. Matt McGee at Search Engine Land has put together some articles (apparently the first two in an ongoing series) looking at Panda victims two years later. He finds, citing Searchmetrics data (which has been questionable at times in the past, for the record), that none of 22 victims from the original Panda update, as listed by Searchmetrics, has returned to pre-Panda visibility, and that only two have improved compared to their post-Panda visibility.

MotorTrend.com, which was hit by the original update for some reason, has managed to bounce back, and McGee calls it the “true Panda recovery” in terms of search visibility. Today, he says (again, citing Searchmetrics data), it appears to have better visibility than it had pre-Panda.

For sites like EzineArticles, HubPages, and the like, no such luck. He says that even eHow’s visibility is down 63% from pre-Panda levels.

But again, the Demand Media strategy is not as reliant on Google as it was pre-Panda. And that’s probably the best thing to take away from the whole thing. ChaCha, another Panda victim, has adopted a similar approach, as CEO Scott Jones recently described to us.

Last year was all about Penguin, though Google continued to push Panda refreshes on a regular basis. Panda was kind of in the background as the Internet was already accustomed to it. Still, it’s Panda that tends to rear its head more often than Penguin.

Google has been pushing out a major update early in each of the past couple years. We’re still wondering if they have a 2013 counterpart to Panda and Penguin in store. We’re also still waiting for Google to release months worth of its “search quality highlights”.

Google announced the launch of its latest known Panda refresh in late January. The company said it affected 1.2% of English queries.

Have Google’s results gotten better since it first launched Panda? Has quality gone up? Let us know what you think.

Photo: Ken Bohn, San Diego Zoo (via National Geographic)

Follow @google

A Googler
@google

New Panda data refresh rolling out today: 1.2% of English queries affected. Background: http://t.co/EMBEJqGZ

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
44 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Lately, Google seems to be launching these Panda refreshes at least once a month. There was one in December, a few days before Christmas, and two in November.

Google launched Panda in early 2011, then Penguin in the first quarter of 2012. We’re still waiting to see what (if any) major algorithm update the search engine will implement in 2013.

More Panda coverage here.

Image: Panda Express

What do you want to see Google get better at in 2013? Let us know in the comments.

Of course, Google Search has been in the news early this year, with the Federal Trade Commission having settled with the company with only a couple voluntary concessions made by Google with regard to search. Meanwhile, Google still has Europe to deal with on the antitrust front, but regardless of what happens with that, Google is not going to stop tweaking its algorithms and striving for better search results.

The last two years each saw major Google algorithm changes that had sweeping effects on sites all over the web, and they just happened to be named after cute little animals. For those who lost a substantial amount of search visibility (and ultimately web traffic and revenue), there was nothing cute about them. I’m, of course referring to Panda and Penguin, though there were plenty of other algorithmic changes that didn’t get nearly the same amount of attention.

In 2011, Google unleashed the Panda update, which continues to get refreshed periodically. I’m sure you know the story. Content farms were cluttering up the search results with low quality content, leaving the better stuff buried, and pretty much invisible. Panda was designed to reverse that, or at least establish some guidelines (in addition to Google’s official webmaster and quality guidelines) on what kind of content Google wants to rank well in its search results.

The Panda update was controversial, and a lot of sites felt they were unfairly hit by it. Either way, Google sent a message loud and clear: Don’t create poor quality content and expect to rank in search results. Create useful, trustworthy content that users will be happy they found. It’s not perfect (no algorithm is, as Google will tell you), but it has arguably made a pretty big difference. There are still plenty of issues with Google’s results, but with regards to quality in depth content vs. thin, non-helpful content, I believe Panda has made a difference. I believe Google believes it has.

As the webmasters and marketers came to grips with Panda, 2011 eventually gave way to 2012, and not foo far into the year (in April, actually), Google launched another huge update with Penguin. Like Panda, it too was designed to improve the quality of Google’s search results, but this one wasn’t as much about content as it was about ways people were beating the system by violating Google’s Quality Guidelines.

Basically, Penguin was designed to do algorithmically, what Google had been doing manually for years. The penguin had a bloodlust for suspicious link activity, and a low tolerance for any kind of link schemes.

Once again, a lot of webmasters felt that their sites were being penalized unfairly, and even those that accepted their fate worked rigorously at escaping the Penguin’s clutches, possibly even going overboard in trying to clean up their link profiles, requesting that sites remove links that they would otherwise have liked to have out there, regardless of whether or not they were helping in Google.

Google’s grip on webmasters was never as abundantly clear as it was in 2012. Not all webmasters (plenty had already found other ways to diversify their web traffic), but for those who have historically relied on Google for traffic, they didn’t want any links out there that Google may not approve of. The problem was that they were getting rid of more than what Google probably did have a problem with.

Eventually, Google launched the Link Disavow tool, which lets webmasters tell Google specific links to ignore, but some feel this tool is really more of a burden than a blessing, and it’s still a hoop webmasters have to jump through to make sure they’re in Google’s good graces. Of course, Google says most sites shouldn’t even use the tool.

2012 also saw the transitions of Google Places to Google+ Local and from Google Product Search to the paid Google Shopping model, both of which have had their share of controversy among businesses.

What will Google tackle in 2013? Will we see another huge animal-named algorithm change that affects a large number of webmasters? Regardless of the name, will there be a new update that webmasters have to sweat on a month to month basis. Will mores strategies that have helped for years start working against webmasters?

Google makes over 500 changes to its algorithms every year, and makes changes every day. It’s been a while since there has been a really big one, and it seems like the big ones usually come in the first quarter of the year or so. We haven’t even seen Google’s lists of search quality highlights for the last three months of 2012 yet.

What’s on the horizon? What do you see in Google’s search results that need to be improved? What things do you see working that shouldn’t be? How can Google improve its search results in 2013? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Search Engine Land is reporting that it has confirmed with Google that the refresh occurred on November 21, and affected 0.8% of English queries “to a degree that a regular user might notice”.

That would be the second known data refresh of the Panda update in November, with one having taken place around November 5.

We’re now at the end of November, heading into December, which means there are now two full months for which Google hasn’t released its lists of “search quality highlights” and algorithm changes. Lately, they’ve been doing them two months at a time, so we may be able to expect the latest lists very soon. Then, we can look at the other types of changes Google has been focused on.

More on Panda here.

Image: Panda Cam (San Diego Zoo)

It’s easy to hear “thin” content, and associate that with content in which there is not a lot of actual content. In other words, you might take this to mean that Google does not like short articles, and would favor a longer article in a case where these two pieces of content are competing for rankings.

Have you seen search ranking success with short content? Let us know in the comments.

The fact is, Google may very well favor the longer, more in depth piece, but that does not mean Google will not value a short article.

In a Google forum thread, a webmaster asked the question: Is short content = thin content?” As Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points out, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, weighed in on the discussion. Here’s what he said:

“Rest assured, Googlebot doesn’t just count words on a page or in an article, even short articles can be very useful & compelling to users. For example, we also crawl and index tweets, which are at most 140 characters long. That said, if you have users who love your site and engage with it regularly, allowing them to share comments on your articles is also a great way to bring additional information onto the page. Sometimes a short article can trigger a longer discussion — and sometimes users are looking for discussions like that in search. That said, one recommendation that I’d like to add is to make sure that your content is really unique (not just rewritten, autogenerated, etc) and of high-quality.” Emphasis added.

Last year, Google shared a set of questions that one could ask himself when assessing the quality of a page or an article. One of these was: “Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?”

Shallow does not mean short. The beginning part of that, which talks about experts and enthusiasts, is likely to have a stronger bearing on how Google views the content. Who you are matters to Google. That’s why they’re looking to push authorship as a stronger signal in the future. Length of a specific piece of content is not necessarily as much of a factor.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not a factor. If one piece of content is simply more informative, which it may very well be if it is longer, it might still be the better result, regardless of who you are. There’s still something to be said for a well researched, insightful article. Google is not looking to ignore this kind of content, by any means.

Another of Google’s questions is: “Does the article describe both sides of a story?” Sometimes, it may take more text to answer that with a yes.

One thing about Mueller’s comments that stikes me as interesting is the part about comments. In an article a while back, we looked at the SEO value of comments. Blogger Michael Gray, who turned off his comments several years ago, told us, “It was one of the best decisions I made, and regret not doing it sooner.”

“Does Google take a look at factors like time on site and bounce rate?” he said at the time. “IMHO yes, but you should be looking to increase those with good information, and solid actionable content, not comments. The biggest effect comments have is giving Google a date to show in the SERP’s. This is a huge factor who’s importance can’t be unstated. If I’m looking for how to fix the mouse on my computer, or what dress Angelina Jolie wore to an awards show, having the date show up in the SERP has a lot of value for the user. If I’m looking to learn how to structure a website, the date plays almost no role. The author’s expertise and understanding of information architecture trumps the date.”

It should be noted that Google’s Matt Cutts has reportedly said since then that Google doesn’t use bounce rate.

Interestingly, according to Shoemoney blogger Jeremy Schoemaker, who we also spoke with for that particular article, a Google engineer said at the time that, if anything, comments were diluting the quality score of a page, by possibly diluting overall keyword density. There is also the possibility that the few comments that go through that are clearly spam, could send poor quality signals to Google.

“So he said he did not see a positive to leaving indexable comments on my site,” Schoemaker told us at the time.

But now, here we have Mueller talking up the value of comments.

Of course, it’s not as if this is the first time that Google has sent mixed signals to webmasters and content creators. But on the other hand, you can’t really hold every person at Google, speaking candidly, accountable for knowledge about every aspect of how Google works, especially when it comes to the search algorithm – Google’s secret recipe.

It stands to reason that Google would look at comments in similar fashion to how it views the rest of the content on the page. Some comments are obviously of higher quality than others, even if the spammy ones have been cut out. But if quality is there, Google may just see how such comments could be valuable to users.

Perhaps webmasters should be more stingy with the comments they allow, but then you’re talking about censorship, which is not necessarily a path you want to travel.

Do you think comments on your blog have helped or hurt you in search? Do you believe they’ve had any effect at all? Should Google take them into consideration? Tell us what you think.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable was talking about a Panda refresh possibly having occurred over the weekend. That didn’t happen, but Google did reportedly tell him that they’re planning on launching one in seven to ten days, “if all goes on according to plan.”

It’s not very often that we hear about Panda updates or data refreshes before Google actually launches them (maybe they should start pre-announcing them more often). Webmasters can at least brace themselves and/or get prepared for a new one.

Of course, at this point, you’ve had plenty of time to prepare. You know what Panda does, and what its purpose is. If you’re putting out the kind of content that Google has discussed repeatedly (with regards to how it views low quality), and you’ve managed to escape thus far, it’s probably only a matter of time before the Panda update gets you. You should be taking quality seriously if you want to continue to perform well in Google search results.

Frankly, you’ve got enough other battles to deal with in that war, even if you do produce high quality content. If your’e not producing Panda-friendly content to begin with, the odds are not stacked in your favor.

For more on all things Panda, peruse our coverage here.

Have you been hit by the Panda update at any time since it was first launched? Were you able to recover? Share your story.

Demand Media paid attention when its major content property eHow fell victim to the update last year. Now, the company has released its quarterly earnings report to record revenue and popularity. If that’s not a Panda recovery story, I don’t know what is. It appears to be safe to say that Demand Media has conquered Panda, and is flourishing.

Revenue was up 20% year-over-year at $98.1 million, with $3.2 million profit (compared to a $4.1 million loss for the same quarter last year).

CEO Richard Rosenblatt said, “Demand Media’s audience surpassed 125 million monthly unique visitors during the third quarter, as we delivered record revenue and profitability. For the first time in over a year, we increased our content investments for two consecutive quarters as we expanded the distribution of our content platform. We remain focused on our long-term growth initiatives, which include continuing to increase our investment in core content as well as in opportunities across mobile, video, international, and new generic Top Level Domains.”

Now, to be clear, Demand Media has revenue sources that have little to do with Panda. For one, the company runs a major registrar business. However, the content side of things, and even eHow itself, continue to improve in performance. Make no mistake. Demand Media has come back from the Panda update.

The company’s owned and operated page views increased 33% year-over-year, driven primarily by strong traffic growth on eHow.com and LiveStrong.com, the company says.

eHow has historically been the poster child of the Panda update, you might say. Some believe Demand Media was one of the major drivers in Google even creating the update. If you can remember back before the update was first unleashed, there was a lot of discussion in the media and Blogosphere about content farms. eHow was often cited (if not the most often cited) as falling into this category. In fact, many were shocked when Google finally pushed the update, and eHow appeared to escape unscathed.

That did not last, however. As Google continued to push out more updates for Panda, Demand Media eventually felt the effects, and by then it was a public company, and had to answer to investors. It deleted tons of articles. At first the number it gave was 300,000. In May, Demand Media revealed that it had deleted as many as 600,000 articles. It’s unclear whether they’ve deleted more since then. They didn’t just delete articles they found to be of low quality though. They also sent numerous articles through a more rigorous editing process, and added a feedback tool to all content so users could indicate any problems they come across. They also got rid of a lot of non-professional writers, and added more “expert” and celebrity curators. Essentially, eHow got a big boost in the quality control department.

Since the clean-up initiative, the company has hardly looked back. eHow has increased its audience steadily. Now, eHow is ranked as the #13 site in the U.S. according to comScore. That’s up even from the previous quarter, when it was ranked #16. ehow had over 100 million unique monthly visitors worldwide for the 11th consecutive quarter, according to Rosenblatt, who cited internal numbers.

Demand Media’s properties are seeing a billion worldwide monthly uniques, which is a record for the company. Demand has been so pleased with the progress it has made in the content area, the company promoted Michael Blend, who had been leading its content and media services, to President and COO earlier this year.

Rosenblatt discussed the progress during the company’s earnings conference call, attributing the success largely to articles, videos and mobile apps with quality content and engaged communities. “All in all we really raised our game,” he said, noting that they have expanded the diversity of articles and added assignment curators.

He also noted that almost half of the company’s articles are being published to its network of content partners.

One important thing to note about all of this, with regards to the Panda update and search referrals, is that this whole quality control initiative has greatly helped the company to gain traffic from social media (especially Facebook). I think it’s safe to say that a decreased dependence on Google is really the cornerstone for a true Panda recovery. That way, if you do get hit by Panda at a later time, it doesn’t kill your traffic entirely. Of course, if you’re producing the kind of content that people want to share on social networks, it’s highly unlikely that you’re doing things that Panda wouldn’t like.

If you still haven’t taken the time to assess the quality of your site’s content. You may want to do so. The next Panda refresh is likely just around the corner.

What do you think of Demand Media’s efforts in bouncing back from Panda? Let us know in the comments.

Here’s Demand Media’s earnings release in its entirety: 

SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nov. 5, 2012– Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD), a leading digital media company, today reported financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2012.

Source: Demand Media, Inc.