algorithm-updates

On Tuesday, September 23, Google began rolling out a new Panda update. Pierre Far from Google announced the update on Google+ (on Thursday) and explained that some new signals have been added to Panda (based on user and webmaster feedback). The latter point is worth its own blog post, but that’s the not the focus … Read more

My last blog post explained that Panda is now running in near-real-time and what that means for webmasters and business owners. Well, that was perfect timing as Panda just made another trip around the web as kids head back to school and the NFL kicks in. I’ve seen multiple Panda clients see recovery starting on … Read more

In June of 2013 I wrote about the maturing of Google’s Panda algorithm and how it started to roll out monthly over a ten day period. Google also explained at that time that they wouldn’t be confirming future Panda updates. In my post, I explained how the combination of monthly updates, over ten days, with … Read more

Panda 4.0 arrived in late May with a fury not seen by many previous updates. It was a HUGE update and many sites were decimated by P4.0. Most businesses reaching out to me after the May 20 update saw drops of 50%+, with some losing 80% of their Google organic search traffic overnight. And on … Read more

After Panda 4.0 rolled out, I analyzed many cases of both strong recoveries and severe fresh hits.  Based on analyzing over 40 websites hit by P4.0, I wrote two blog posts detailing my findings.  You can find my initial findings on my blog and then additional P4.0 findings in my Search Engine Watch column. I … Read more

On May 20th, 2014 Google’s Matt Cutts announced that Panda 4.0 was rolling out.  Leading up to that tweet, there was a lot of chatter across the industry about an algorithm update rolling out (based on reports of rankings volatility and traffic gains/losses).  I was also seeing lots of movement across clients that had been … Read more

Summary: Google has rolled out multiple algorithm updates in April that heavily impacted song lyrics and mp3 websites. This post provides more information about those updates, documents specific sites that were hit, and provides some possible problems that the algo targeted. I plan to update this post as I analyze more sites impacted by the … Read more

As a consultant helping a number of companies with Panda recovery, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the March Panda update.  Based on the data I have access to, I was able to pick up and analyze Panda UJan14, UFeb14, and the infamous UFeb14Rev (where Google re-rolled out the algorithm update after mistakenly hammering movie blogs).  Needless … Read more

Summary:  Google ended up rolling out two major algorithm updates in February of 2014.  The first, which seemed like the monthly Panda update, caused serious collateral damage with a number of prominent movie blogs. After hearing from one movie blog owner, Matt Cutts of Google got involved, and Google refined the algorithm.  Two days later, … Read more

As of July 2013, Google will not confirm Panda updates anymore.  And as I explained in my post about unconfirmed Panda updates, this can lead to serious confusion for webmasters.  For example, if Panda updates are not documented, then it becomes that much harder to understand why a serious drop in organic search traffic occurred. … Read more