We are back as per our commitment that we are going to share the complete series of Google Panda and it’s updates in our previous blog,“What is Google Panda? Implications of Google Panda on web world”. We are going to explore the first Google Panda Update 1.0 in this blog.
Panda Update 1.0 was released back in February 24, 2011 and it was a Big Earthquake for SEO industry. It influenced badly almost 12% of the search queries in the US only. Later Google applied it across the world. It is also known as “Farmer Update”in the industry.
Let’s move to the straight discussion that which types of websites were affected? Panda 1.0 affected basically scraper sites, having content farm and link farm websites. This update negatively affected the websites having un-original content. Let’s discuss the most important points in detail.
Scraper sites
What does it mean by “scraper website?” In the simple words I can say, all the websites who had copied their content from other websites are scraper websites. How these types of websites affect web word? The scraper websites causing the problem on search results that are polluting internet. The people copy the content from higher ranked websites for particular keywords to rank high in very short period. Few fraudulent people buy a domain and achieve high rank for particular keywords by scraping and then sell the domain to others.
There are so many tactics and techniques to do scraping from human copy to automated scraper tools. What happens when such types of scraper sites rank higher? It reduces the search quality and leads to bad user experience.
Search quality engineers at Google have developed algorithms which effectively find the copy content (scraper sites).
How to avoid being scraper?
In reply, write original, unique and fresh content manually. If I am not wrong, you are thinking that about a situation, where someone has written original content and someone else has copied it. Now to which one Google will consider as copy content? Don’t worry for the same if you have original content holder. Google takes the server update log regularly and implies so many techniques to find out original and copied content. Hence if you are original content holder, you are safe.
More than one pages with same content in your website are also considered as copied content. A single page that can be accessed by more than one different URLs is also called as copy content. Take care of it especially in your dynamic website. In addition the same product description in website of manufacturer and re-seller is also considered as copy content by Google Panda. It is strongly recommended that spend few minutes every day to check your content.
Content Farms
What is content farm? As per the Industry definition“content farm is a website which allows publishing articles for few bucks without taking care of quality of the article”. These types of websites pass the link juice to you by paying them. The sites may have low quality content means not in-depth to the topic. This type of content more often written by professional writers which may not be subject experts. Google found those websites in SERPs for many search queries and not much useful for users. Google intend to justify the sites with original and outstanding content such as in-depth analysis, research paper, thought full ideas etc.
“link juice is the juice passes your back links that will drive up your website’s ranking and bring visitors to your websites.“
After Panda, content farms are no more valuable. Publishing articles on those websites to get back-links and attention is not a good practice. It is the time to get quality back-links not just back-links. Put the quality, fresh and unique and outstanding content on your own website. People will link back to you and your website will rank higher. Avoid to fall back on such content farms and to be content farm as well. Be careful when hiring link building services and ensure that they are doing only ethical SEO.
Link Farm
Link farm is generally a group of websites which links to each other in the group to pass the link juice. It is clearly a web spam tactics. These types of websites are spoiling search quality. Google has found to improve search quality by preventing such websites from getting higher rank in SERPs. Google has developed an algorithm to find those web spammers. Google can categorize your back links as per the patterns of the domains linking to you. According to Panda guidelines, the only websites will pass the link juice, which are related to your subject.
“web spam is when somebody tries to cheat or take shortcuts so that their website shows up higher [in search results rankings] than it deserves to show up,” – Matt Cutts
Quality of the back link is more preciousthan quantity. Link exchange, reciprocal links, link wheel, link bait and many more unethical techniques are not good practice any more. Avoid getting back links from such link farms.
These three types of websites are targeted in first Google Panda 1.0 update. If you are a webmaster, stay away from big fat Panda’s kick. We will explore more in our next blog will be on “Second update of Google Panda 2.0”. Be a smart and hardworking webmaster!
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