It appears the Google search spam team has a busy year planned. Matt Cutts recently attended SMX west and gave details on what updates they have planned for 2013. And guess what? There will be an update of both Google Panda and Penguin this year.
Surprised? Probably not. Google's updating their algorithm all the time -- some updates bigger than others, of course. What's the result? An unnerving feeling that your SEO standard operating procedures aren't totally up to date, because you're not sure if you are totally up to date on all the algorithm changes.
So with the Google Panda update expected to happen this weekend -- and if you have any ideas as to what it is, please leave it in the comments -- we thought it was the perfect opportunity to give a recap on all things Panda. That way, you can ensure you're caught up to date, and decrease the chances this pending algorithm update will hit you where it hurts. (In your SEO, that is.)
The Story So Far
The first Google Panda update appeared on February 24th 2011 and if you were unlucky enough to be hit, your traffic probably looked a lot like this:
Since that first update, Google went on to release a further 23 updates, with the latest happening on January 22nd of this year. The update this weekend is the last manual update of Google Panda, as Google is planning on making it part of its overall continuous algorithm. What the heck does that mean? It means good news for webmasters, as forthcoming refreshes to the update will be less intense, and by extension less noticeable to marketers. So going forward, Panda updates really won't rock your world like they might have been the past couple years.
The Google Panda Victims
Since the first Panda update, a lot of people have tried to figure out what marketing practices the updates affect. Google’s top search engineers, Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal, gave an interview to Wired in 2011 on the purpose of Panda, but instead of making you watch that and try to suss out what you need to know, we're just going to tell you right here what you need to know. If you know all this, good; you're totally prepared for the upcoming Panda update. If you're not caught up on some of this stuff, it's time to permanently update your SEO strategy so Panda doesn't take you down with a big, fuzzy (but adorable) punch. Here's what the major Panda updates have been created to address:
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