Google Panda 4.0 search algorithm update: what entrepreneurs can learn from the winners and losers

You have probably heard about Google’s Panda 4.0 search algorithm update by now. You might even have seen a list of the winners and losers from this update.

eBay received the most attention. The company lost 33 per cent of its organic traffic, according to several rank-trackers. And when big brands are penalised by Google, the search engine optimisation (SEO) community goes berserk and experts begin to speculate why.

However, it turns out that eBay wasn’t hit by the Panda 4 update at all. An anonymous source has revealed that eBay was hit by a manual penalty, which Google released in conjunction to Panda 4. As opposed to algorithmic adjustments like Panda 4, a manual penalty is the result of a human review of the website.

The Panda algorithm in fact would have affected entire domains, not individual pages. If eBay had been hit by Panda, you wouldn’t find their website when you search for “eBay” on Google.

So despite all the expertise of the SEO community, it’s still not clear why eBay was penalised – only Google and eBay know that.

Remember: eBay is a company with a team of some of the brightest SEO experts on the planet. If it was a known and obvious “black hat” violation, they wouldn’t have done it.

That’s the thing about SEO that few experts will admit: it’s often hard to identify the exact cause of a penalisation. Heck, sometimes it’s hard to tell what is and isn’t OK in SEO. What was hailed as “white hat” a few years ago is frowned on today. Read More>>

Google's Final Manual Panda Refresh Here? #25

All signs are pointing to a Google update being pushed out yesterday afternoon into today. The speculation across the SEO forums is that this is the Panda refresh we were expecting to see this weekend. 

Google's Matt Cutts said we should expect to see a refresh of Panda sometime this Friday or Monday. It seems like the Panda update started actually yesterday afternoon and is continuing to propagate throughout now. 

The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has dozens of SEOs and Webmasters claiming rank changes for better or worse. Here are some examples:

Past Google Panda Update:

• Panda #25 on March 15, 2013
• Panda #24 on January 22, 2013
• Panda #23 on December 21, 2012
• Panda #22 on November 21st
• Panda #22 on November 21st
• Panda #21 on November 5th
• Panda #20 on September 27th
• Panda 3.9.2 on September 18th
• Panda 3.9.1 on August 20th
• Panda 3.9 on July 24th
• Panda 3.8 on June 25th
• Panda 3.7 on June 9th
• Panda 3.6 on April 27th
• Panda 3.5 on April 19th
• Panda 3.4 on March 23rd
• Panda 3.3 on about February 26th
• Panda 3.2 on about January 15th
• Panda 3.1 on November 18th
• Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
• Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
• Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
• Panda 2.5 on September 28th
• Panda 2.4 in August
• Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
• Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
• Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
• Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
• Panda 1.0 on February 24th

  Source: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-25-16506.html

It’s “Top Heavy 2″ As Google Rolls Out Update To Its Page Layout Algorithm

Google has just updated the Page layout algorithm 2 or Top heavy 2 affecting 0.7% of English queries noticeably.

The page layout algorithm, which was introduced in January 2012 to penalize websites with high number of ads above the fold. The decision was taken by Google after receiving complaints from users about more ads on the top or initial visible part of landing pages. There by hampering the user experience.

Updates

It’s the fourth Google update in the past two weeks. The rundown so far:

    Panda Update 20: Sept. 27, 2012
    EMD Update 1: Sept. 28, 2012
    Penguin Update 3: Oct. 5, 2012
    Top Heavy 1: Jan. 19, 2012 (impacted less than 1% of English searches)
    Top Heavy 2: Oct. 9, 2012 (impacted 0.7% of English searches)

The news was broke by Matt Cutts via a tweet on October 9, 2012.

Minor weather report: Update of goo.gl/OpIDL launching today. ~0.7% of English queries noticeably affected.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 9, 2012

One thing is clear, whether it is Google AdSense or any other ads, above the fold placement performs the best. And, placing one or two ads with some content above the fold will not be penalized by Google straight away for top heavy algo.

Google Panda algorithm update 20 Released, 2.4% Of English Queries Impacted

Google has confirmed with us that on Thursday, September 27th, they released a Panda algorithm update – this would be the 20th Panda update and thus we are naming it Panda 20. This is a fairly major Panda update that impacts 2.4% of English search queries and is still rolling out. Late Friday

This is actually a Panda algorithm update, not just a data update. A lot of the most-visible differences went live Thursday 9/27, but the full rollout is baking into our index and that process will continue for another 3-4 days or so. This update affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice, with a smaller impact in other languages (0.5% in French and Spanish, for example).