Nine-years ago today, February 24, 2011, may have been one of the most memorable days for an SEO in their SEO career. It was the day Google released an algorithm update that was later to be known as the Google Panda update.
February 24, 2011. That was the date, February 24, 2011, where 12% of Google’s search results were changed with the click of a button. Google told us this update aimed to drop the rankings of sites that had “low quality” and “shallow” content. It had a massive impact on sites making a lot of money through Google search and changed the way content was written on web sites for the long-run.
Panda has changed. Google use to run Panda updates all the time. Those updates would often find new sites to hit, or readjust sites that were originally hit by the update after the sites made improvements. Now, Panda is part of the core ranking algorithm and Google does not run standalone updates for Panda anymore. It is rare to hear a Googler or even an SEO talk about Google’s Panda updates these days.
SEO has changed. Panda is one of those algorithms that you can look back at and say it changed how SEOs do their work. It has not just changed SEO, it changed how web sites build out their content. Just like the old Penguin updates, and now the newer Core updates, SEOs and web site owners have to adapt to build out sites that Google deems worthy of ranking highly in its search results.
SEO easier now. Some may say SEO is much harder now with Panda and Penguin, and now the new core updates. But at the same time, Panda and Penguin were aimed at reducing manipulation of Google’s ranking algorithms at scale. Now, SEOs need to focus on building great web sites, as opposed to trying to find loopholes in the search ranking algorithm. Building great sites is not easy but in the long term, it does help you future-proof your site from getting hit by a new Google algorithm update.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.