So, why did Google change things so dramatically?

What exactly is the Panda update?

In short, their main goal was to bolster the quality of their search results. Over the past few years,  people had become very good at getting their sites ranked.  As a result, there were a lot of content farms popping up. These were sites that had fairly useless content that were designed to funnel traffic elsewhere. These sites don’t deliver a lot of value to the user and Google is all about supporting websites that have quality content on them. Pair this desire with the launch of Caffeine, and you have the right  conditions for a major algorithm  change.  As  you  recall,  Caffeine  made  Google  more  effective  at indexing websites.

The first algorithm update began with the Mayday update which didn’t affect a  large  number  of  sites  and  ended  with  the  latest  Panda  update  which happened in February of 2011 and again in April of  2011. However, since Mayday really didn’t have a huge impact, it isn’t going to be the focus of this report.

Mayday’s focus  was  on  long-tail  keywords.  Those  who  noticed  or  were impacted by this update,  which were mainly eCommerce sites, saw that the searches returned for long tail queries achieved a noticeable boost in quality. While this update was an important change, it didn’t have the impact that the latest update of Panda had. The Panda update focused on a variety of issues such as

Quality. The search queries experienced a noticeable boost in the quality of the  sites  that  were  returned.  In  addition to this, the algorithm change basically requires webmasters to focus on the quality of their site content.

Authority.  Another  change  is  that  the  Panda  update  allows  for  higher authority sites to come up with the keyword search. A way to do this is to make sure that the content on the sites is as god as it possibly can be.

Trust. Users can trust that the websites that are returned will supply them with the information they are looking for.

Credibility. Another thing the algorithm updated focuses on is credibility – is the site considered a credible source for information?

As always, the exact nature of the algorithm itself is a closely guarded secret at Google. This means that we can never know all of the details that will help us change our rankings

The good news is that, as always, we are able to figure out the big picture and apply it to our websites, blogs, and other online projects.

Sure, everything we’ve always known has changed – but the sooner we stop being hung up on this concept, the easier it will be for us to adapt the changes to our online projects.

NEXT:  PANDA UPDATE–What Will Be Covered in This Series Of Posts