Panda Update: Cutts Call for Review of Site Content

by Lazarus Rankish Hunt - 9/12/2013 12190 Views

Google’s maintains stress on “quality” of content with Google Panda-Index Integration

Google has always been pushing webmasters to better the quality of content on their sites, or face the penalty by being pushed to the far end of the search pages. Google’s “site quality algorithms” are designed to reduce the rankings of sites found to be hosting low-quality content as the recent Panda update tackles the difficult task of algorithmically assessing website quality based on content. What this means is that the sites with good “quality content” will gain their way up on to the first pages of search, enabling people (searchers) find sites with good quality first, which is, falling in line with Google’s overall intent of “enhancing the user experience.”
Cutts’s call on Content

Google’s Anti-Spam Chief Matt Cutts, in answer to a question on Panda’s integration in to Google indexing said, “If you are not ranking higher as you were in the past, overall it is always a good idea to look at the quality of the content in your site. If there is content that is scraped, or duplicated or not just not as useful ... (you should think of remedies like ) .... Can I come up with something that is original, something that people would really enjoy …. those kinds of things tend to be a little bit more likely to rank higher in our rankings.”

Panda Integrated into Google Indexing

The integration of the Panda into the normal indexing happened sometime in mid-March 2013. Unlike the explicit, sudden changes that have hit sites with every Panda or Penguin update, the integration of Panda into indexing will be less noticeable though the site with low quality content are sure to feel the heat.

In SMX West, Cutts revealed “In 2011, we launched the Panda algorithm change, targeted at finding more high-quality sites. We improved how Panda interacts with our indexing and ranking systems, making it more integrated into our pipelines… You are more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we rebuild the index. So you are less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes.”

What this Means to webmasters

As sites with good content pick their way to the top in the search pages, sites with thin and duplicated content, scrapped content, outdated content, will be slipping down in rank till they become invisible on the search pages. Getting right to the point, Matt Cutts calls for an immediate assessment of your site’s content, in case you have done everything possible including optimizing internal pages and carrying out a site audit in the recent past. What webmasters should do is replace old and thin content with quality content that is interesting, engaging and influencing. Google wants you to build the quality of content on your site, page by page, as just one page of bad content could pull the site down, altogether.

Here is the original Matt Cutts’s Q/A video on Youtube and the transcript below.

“Recently Google integrated the Panda update into the normal indexing process. Now, how will webmasters get to know their site is hit by Panda? And, if the site is already hit, how will one know the site has recovered from Panda? (after having done remedial SEO)

Panda is an update we rolled out a couple of years ago, targeted towards lower quality content. It used to be that roughly every month or so we had an update. We used to say there is something new, we’ve got a launch, we got new data and lets refresh the data. And it got to a point with Panda that the changes were getting smaller, more incremental we had pretty good signals… we pretty much got the low hanging winds. So there were a lot of really big changes going on with the latest Panda changes, and we said lets go ahead and rather than it be a discreet data push, ie. something that happens every month or so at its own time, when we refresh the data, let’s just go ahead and integrate it into indexing.

So at this point we think that Panda is affecting small enough number of webmasters on the edge. We put out a blog post, which I would recommend, penned by Amit Singhal. It talks about the sorts of signals we look at whenever we are looking to assess quality within Panda….basically we are looking for high quality content. And if you think you might be affected by Panda, the kind of over writing rule is trying to make sure you got high quality content, the sort of content that people really enjoy, that’s compelling, the sort of thing they would love to read, that you might see in a magazine, in a book, that people would refer back to, or send to friends, those sorts of things. And that would be the overriding goal and since Panda is integrated into our indexing that remains the goal of our entire indexing system. So if you aren’t ranking higher as you were in the past, overall it is always a good idea to look at the quality of the content in your site. If there is content that is scraped, or duplicated or not just not as useful…. can I come up with something that is original, something that people would really enjoy ….those kinds of things tend to be a little bit more likely to rank higher in our rankings."

Category :

SEO News

Tags :

Panda Update, Quality Content, Google Indexing, Matt Cutts Panda Video

About Lazarus Rankish Hunt

Hi … I am Ranki, a Journo by profession now enjoying a free fall into the future of SEO. Writing is a flow of my being, an extension of the self that is unstoppable, even if it isn’t embraced, embalmed and mummified by recognition. I am here to enjoy the ride, since I have no fixed date with destiny. I Manage Media and Strategize Content at Submitinme. I fill up spaces on pages with the feeling that I am shouting from the roof tops for the Eared crowd to hear and find the latest break-outs in the field. There could be more or less of me, if you care to .... more info about the author