Panda 4.1

Content is built to help inform and educate users. Google’s algorithm handles multiple areas focused on quality and content. To ensure the search results are as relevant as possible, the Google algorithm has several components that focus on separate values. Panda is aimed at identifying low-quality content. The latest update to Panda, released on September 25 and rolled out over the span of 2-3 weeks, is designed to help SMBs and their sites. This update, like others, only affects certain queries.

“Depending on the locale, around 3-5% of queries are affected.” According to Pierre Far. Furthermore, Pierre said, “Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.”

The latest version of Panda (4.0) was released in May of 2014. Websites with low-quality content and content that is overly duplicated were impacted by the release of 4.0. Popular websites PRWeb and PRNewswire were impacted, losing up to 70% of their search engine traffic according to Forbes. That original release (Panda 4.0) affected about 7.5% of all English queries by comparison.

The Wrapper

What can be taken from this latest Panda version and Pierre’s comments is that the algorithm has been further refined to improve the way content is evaluated. Websites that offer little unique or informative content may find themselves loosing visibility; while small businesses with good localized content may see a slight increase in search rank.