Panda to be Rolled Out Worldwide
April 12th, 2011 by John M
Google really want to be clear about their mission statement. They didn’t become the world’s largest search engine by luck alone – they did it by listening to their users and implementing changes for the better when required, to improve the quality of their search results time and time again.
For a while most tweaks to their search algorithm have been small and minor. But, determined to improve the overall user experience and put a bit more distance between themselves and Bing, they announced a pretty hefty overhaul of parts of the algorithm – dubbed ‘Panda’ – which their official blog claims impacted approximately 11.8 per cent of their search queries.
Panda was designed to help weed out websites that try to get higher up search rankings without offering much in the way of real quality. Link farms and sites with a poorly thought-out, black hat search engine optimisation strategies should slip away, leaving only the most relevant sites available for searchers to choose to visit. With Panda, the average searcher should be the real winner, with quality sites topping the list.
Google called it a ‘ranking improvement’ when announced on their official blog, and they must be happy with the results because they’ve announced today that it’s being implemented ASAP to all English-language Google users. They cite positive feedback from searchers, say that publishers of real quality are getting more traffic and users are getting results that matter to them.
So will it be rolled out worldwide? In time – Google say that they want to tweak and refine the new update a little bit more before they add new languages, but it’s certain to hit a search engine near you sooner rather than later.
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I am a webmaster that focuses heavily on SEO as the bingo sector that I operate in is hugely competitive and my experience is that this update has actually raised my SERPs, although for some reason visitor numbers have not increased much. What I read on the Google blog is that the intention of the Panda algorithm update is to reward quality websites better. They are also due to release a +1 button soon that give visitors the ability to give a website their vote, which will go into the ranking calculation. Sounds like another bright idea from Google.