A Google employee has announced an important SEO update last week: Google is rolling out an improved Panda algorithm. Unofficially the update is called Panda 4.1.
According to the Google announcement additional signals have been discovered to help identify bad quality content. Small and medium-sized websites providing high quality content are expected to benefit from this update. Around 3-5% of all search queries are affected.
Initial information is available about which types of websites are the winners and losers of the Panda 4.1 update.
According to data from Searchmetrics the winners in Google.com and Google.de are websites with high quality content.
Based on the currently available data the losers in Google.com are mainly websites with thin content. Sharp decreases in the SEO visibility have for example been identified on games and lyrics portals as well as websites providing medical content. The following graphic shows an excerpt of the losers based on the Searchmetrics data. It is important to note that not all losses are caused by the Panda update. Technical problems can also be a reason for worse ranking positions.
The losers in Google.de are mainly content scraper websites, which are websites with little own content such as coupon portals, dictionaries, industry portals and some adult websites.
If you publish your own high quality content on your website you are likely to benefit from the Panda 4.1 update and will be rewarded with higher ranking positions.
You are welcome to contact us if you would like to know more about the Google algorithm updates or search engine optimization in general.
