google's panda algorithm
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Presented at InnoTech Oregon 2013. All rights reserved.TRANSCRIPT
Google’s Panda AlgorithmMake that big bad bear chew bamboo for you.
Michael [email protected]@Michael512
2 May 2013
What is Panda?
• Not a bear.
• Meet Navneet Panda, a Google Engineer
Seriously, why “Panda”?
• Danny Sullivan called the algo change “Farmer”– Targeting content “farms”
(eHow, article factories, etc.)
• Sorry Danny, that’s BORING
• Navneet Panda was a key engineer on that team
• He’s a machine learning guy
Panda is:
• A new ranking factor– NOT a new algorithm on its own– NOT a manual penalty
• Overall idea: use an estimation of “quality” of the content as a ranking factor
• So…does it penalize or boost sites?
Dissection of the Panda
• Human quality raters rate pages• Machine learning: what’s common
between pages that suck? – Or that rock?
• Tweak the algo, and see if the new results have better sites in the top spots – Feb 23 2011 Panda 1.0 - affected 12%
of search results
2+ Years of algo changes: it’s not all Panda
• Over 500 little updates to the algo/year• Penguin (of course)• Reduction in impact of EMDs• Venice (“local universal” results)• # of results from the same domain• Emanuel Update: penalty for DMCA take-
downs• Knowledge Graph• Parked domains • Search + Your World• Freshness update• Rel=next, rel=prev for pagination
What is “quality”?
• It’s definitely NOT:– Content farms– Thin affiliates– Scraper sites– Sites with excessive ads
• Especially above-the-fold
– Made-For-Adsense– Thin price-comparison sites
Grrrr….make Panda angry
• http://www.fixya.com/support/t6451689-switch_rival_programmable_crockpot
Mmmm…make Panda happyQuality, measured by:
• Low bounce rate• Dwell time on site• Original content (inc. images!)• LOTS of content
• Rich content (maps, video, pics)• Trust signals• Expert/authority signals
Google Dance/Panda Dance
• The Bear Dances Slowly
• Each page gets a quality “score”
• Calculations to come up with scores for all pages in the Google index takes WEEKS
• Algo hasn’t changed much, but…
• “Data refresh” comes every month or two
•Last one was supposed to be March 18th
•Panda is getting rolled into the main algo
Make that furball chew FOR you
• Rich content• Consolidate similar pages• Consolidate paginated content• Maximize content above the fold• Use original images
Examples:• Best time to visit Tahiti• Corvair at Keels • BMW M1 at Monterey
References• Navneet Panda’s resume:
http://www.shmula.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/navneet-panda-google-pandaresume.pdf
• SEOmoz chart of Google algo changes: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
• Matt Cutts video: “quality raters don’t affect the algo directly”: http://searchengineland.com/video-google-speaks-about-search-quality-raters-119986
• Google’s public declaration of what makes quality in a page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
• Google’s reverse image search: http://images.google.com/imghp?hl=en
• Great reference on Panda from .NET Magazine: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/10-things-you-need-know-about-google-panda-and-penguin
• Library of recent Panda update articles from SEL:
• http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-panda-update