What is Google Panda?
Google Panda is an update to Google’s algorithm. It was created at the beginning of 2011 with the aim of improving Google searches. Launched at first in other countries for testing purposes, it only arrived in Brazil in August and is taking many Webmasters’ sleep away. There are those who say they are being unfairly punished by Panda, which is constantly being updated, but there are also those who are benefiting greatly from the new algorithm, so we shouldn’t consider Panda as the Terror of Webmasters, but rather as a stimulus for creating attractive and, above all, original content.
Those who get most of their traffic from search engines will be able to feel what it’s like to be punished by Google Panda. My forum has almost 90% of its traffic coming from search engines, mostly Google, so a punishment would be absolutely destructive and it happened:
Another month like any other, with some variations in traffic, which has always been common, until September 23rd, 2011. Average traffic fell from 4500 to 900, a drop of around 80%. Until then, I didn’t even know what Google Panda was and why it was punished. I discovered that my forum had been punished because of SPAM and duplicate content, my forum was the victim of BOTS that posted duplicate content and completely in English and due to my negligence it was an action that lasted for months and was not fought until the arrival of Google Panda. After fighting the bots and removing the topics, my forum was back to normal within a week.
From the event above, I concluded that one of the main reasons Google Panda came was to punish Webmasters who benefited from SPAM, duplicate and unoriginal content.
What most SEO blogs and more experienced Webmasters say, and what I agree with, is that desperation at this point is the fuse for making the situation worse. It is recommended that you take the measures calmly and allow time to pass, as Google will not remove the penalty overnight.
Which websites will be punished by Google Panda?
- Duplicate content – Websites with duplicate content, i.e. sites with two or more pages with the same content, will certainly be penalized by Google Panda.
- Copied content – Avoid copying articles from other websites. Not only is it not cool, but you won’t have your page listed at the top of searches.
- Advertising Pollution – One of the novelties of the new algorithm is that it also punishes those who have “Advertising Above All” in mind.
- Fake Backlinks – Blackhat SEO techniques such as buying backlinks or creating fake pages that point to your site is a big risk.
- Heavy Pages – Pages that take a long time to load due to, for example, the abusive use of images and other things that can cause the page to take a long time to load are also considered infractions by Google Panda.
- …
In a nutshell:
In short, your site is unlikely to be penalized if it keeps visitors attracted to the content, making it what they were looking for. Google has always called for quality articles from Webmasters, this is one of the rules that will never be changed in any algorithm change, what Google tries to do with these changes is filter out those who do not comply with what has been said.
- Tags:
- google panda
- SEO
