How Google Panda works
Key Takeaways
Google Panda was launched in February 2011 with the goal to fight spam. Panda has become a major part of Google’s overall algorithm, known as “Hummingbird”. The target of this update was low-quality websites, with thin or stolen content from other websites. The aim was to reduce their rankings in organic search results.
Panda, along with the Penguin, is one of the greatest updates to the Google algorithm. At the time of its release, it had a severe impact on organic search results.
An algorithm update was necessary to combat the rise of a multitude of websites whose rankings were unduly high in organic search, especially with regard to the Google quality guidelines they didn’t follow. The target of Google Panda was low-quality websites with low-quality content. These websites existed in the first place merely to get revenue from Google ads. A large number were scraping (stealing) content from other websites to present as their own. Before Panda hit, they were even managing to rank higher than the websites they stole the content from.
Panda is rewarding high-quality websites with a higher position in search rankings, whereas it pushes the websites with low-quality or scraped content down the ranking ladder. There are no specific guidelines to what Panda considers “low-quality content”, which has caused a lot of speculation in the SEO world.
Word count
The assumption that Panda is disqualifying websites because of “thin content” led to the belief that articles need to be at least 300 words long. This is not accurate. There are cases where much shorter articles will rank high if they have sufficient authority on other levels.
However, regardless Panda influence, articles with more content, over 1000, even 2500 words have a much better chance of ranking higher.
Technical SEO
The technical SEO part of website optimization has no impact on Panda itself, since it looks only at the content, not the form.
Spun content
Spun or copied/scraped content will definitely get Panda to down-rank the website. The content itself might be useful, but if there is already a version of previously existing content that is in the Google index, the chances are that the more recently added content will fare very poorly.
How to prevent penalisation by Panda
How to avoid Google Panda penalties is a frequent question and here are some useful guidelines:
- produce high-quality content
- write for humans and not search bots
- help searchers get answers to their questions
A good way to determine quality is to first look at other websites in the top 5 results for a certain query. Compare their content with your own. It is also helpful to read the content out loud. This way, any syntax errors you may have made are more noticeable, as well as helping to decide if the entire article sounds natural.
Panda updates
The most recent, yet unconfirmed update to Panda was in July 2015. It seems to be a refresh of this specific part of the overall algorithm and not a major update. Judging by its implementation and effectiveness to this day, it is safe to assume that there will be no major updates to this specific part of the algorithm in the near future.
If you’d like to check whether or not your site has been hit by Google Panda or Google Penguin, try the Website Penalty Indicator Tool. The tool uses SEMrush organic traffic data as an indication of actual organic traffic.
