It appears that more sites are recovering from Google’s Panda update thanks to Google’s continued algorithm tweaking. Some are speculating that Google’s Panda update is updating automatically, as opposed to being updated by Google manually, as it has been in the past.
Similar speculation was voiced the last time Google confirmed a Panda tweak (when DaniWeb reported its recovery), though Google stated:
“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.
In a WebmasterWorld thread titled “Panda Updates Now Processed In Real Time“, member SEOPTI says, “I’m quite sure since two sites have completely recovered. One last week on Friday and the second one today which means +400% for each site.”
Member AnkitMaheshwari chimed in, “I am also seeing traffic bouncing back from 4-Aug-2011 on one of my client’s site which was hit by panda2.3. Now the traffic is almost equal to pre-panda 2.3 period.”
It’s important to keep in mind that, like Google said in the above statement, it makes about 500 changes each year. Many of them are not Panda-related, but may still have positive or negative impacts on sites. That’s not to say this wasn’t a Panda tweak, but Panda tweaks aren’t everything. Regardless of Google’s continued iterations on Panda, Google’s philosophy behind Panda will remain the same – ranking high quality content better than low quality content. See Google’s list of questions to ask yourself in assessing quality.
It doesn’t hurt to work to diversify your traffic sources either.
Yesterday, Demand Media released its earnings report for the second quarter. During its earnings call for Q1, CEO Richard Rosenblatt revealed that search referrals were down by 20%. Back then they also announced a clean-up initiative for the eHow site – the site hit hardest by Panda, and most criticized for quality. During the call for this past quarter yesterday, he said they have removed 300,000 eHow articles and continue to edit the rest to improve quality. He said only a small percentage of revenue was impacted by search algorithm changes, and that eHow had over 70 million uniques in June (comScore).
“We feel confident that our auditing and removal of content and improvement of overall quality will continue to attract traffic from all different sources,” he said.
Of course, the company also expanded its ad partnership with Google, including a new presence in Google’s Display Network.
Update: Google has said that no Panda update is currently happening, but that sites may just now be seeing affects from the last Panda update.