Google Panda and Google Penguin: Big Changes with a New Name

Under the seemingly harmless names of “Panda” and “Penguin”, a large and influential series of updates have been made to the popular search engine. We all know that Google is in continual improvement, but do we understand the real importance of such changes and the degree they influence our website or business?

Some businesses have been adversely affected in recent weeks because of a decrease in the number of visits from Google. This decline is caused by two revolutionary new updates: Google Panda and Google Penguin. What are they and what are the steps to follow to avoid being affected by them?

Panda vs Penguin

Google Panda is a change in the ranking algorithm of the search results. In other words, Panda modifies the way that Google ranks and measures each website.

Google Penguin is a filter that measures the overall quality of web content, and penalizes bad search results which it considers irrelevant to the user.

As you can see, it’s important to start thinking about the quality of website content. While it is important to keep a well-optimized page, do not fall into the trap of exploiting traditional optimization techniques (SEO).

How you can avoid being affected by the changes

1. Provide relevant and useful web content to the user performing the search. Google makes it possible to display only quality websites and rich content in their search results.

2. Do not load your page with irrelevant keywords. Avoid the “over-optimization” of your website for search engines.

3. Do not use hidden text or links, forwarding techniques, or misleading.

4. Try not to fall into the mistake of creating landing pages for the sole purpose of optimizing your page for search engines. Such pages are known as doorway pages, and your ranking will fall in Google results.

In addition to the above, we recommend analyzing the statistics of visitors coming from Google to see if any of your pages has been affected by these changes. Note that the latest update to Google Panda (version 3.6) was launched on 27 April and Google Penguin a few days earlier, on April 24.

Do you think your site has been affected? What measures have you taken to improve your search results in Google?