It has been two weeks since Google announced the change to their search algorithm, known throughout the Internet as the Farmer update. Since then the update has officially been dubbed by Google as the Panda update (from the Googler who developed it). Last week we offered Groove’s take on how the update would affect our strategy moving forward. This week I wanted to look at the three questions most often associated with a search algorithm change. What (and why) did Google change the way it ranks websites? How do you determine if your site was affected? What are some best practices to prevent this type of change from impacting your website in a negative way?
What was the Farmer/Panda update?
Google makes hundreds of changes to its algorithm every year and most everyday users of the search engine don’t even notice. They make these not so publicized tweaks to increase the speed and overall quality of the results to give you a better search experience. Well that is what they say anyway. However the Farmer / Panda update was made public by Google’s Matt Cutts with the intention of telling some site owners what they were doing was not in line with how Google wanted things done. He explained that approximately 11.8% of websites within Google would see a change in rakings. Some sites would drop and others would move up. This update targeted lower quality sites that were often deemed as spammy or otherwise lacking in quality content for the user.
Google wants content to be useful and relevant to users. Cutts did explain that some of the bigger brands were given a pass and not affected by the update, which means smaller businesses might feel much more of an impact. Google acknowledged that removing low quality results is an ongoing issue that they have by no means fixed. It is important to understand that the websites impacted negatively are still included in Google’s index, just not necessarily included in the top search results.
Is my website impacted by Farmer /Panda?
Simply looking at your keyword rankings may not be the best way to determine if your website is feeling the effects of the Farmer/Panda update. Depending on how often you check your rankings and the method chosen may not give you the complete picture. Hopefully you have some type of analytics attached to site tracking visitor interactions. Using Google Analytics to look at the searches that your visitors performed to get to your site will help clear up the situation. Looking at the non-branded keywords that brought visitors to your site from Google’s non-paid only (remember it’s Google’s update) will give you a baseline to measure from. I recommend looking at weekly increments from January 26th through March 9th, that way you have six weeks of data to evaluate. Comparing the visits from non-branded keywords over these six weeks shows trends that basic keyword ranking reports do not highlight.
Dive deeper into your analytics to find pages with high bounce rates over the course of those six weeks. Bounce rates on pages of 100% are perfect indicators that your users are not finding anything on that page useful enough to continue through the other parts of your site. Compare pages over the same time frame to confirm that it wasn’t an isolated bounce. These are the pages that the Farmer/Panda update is targeting and should be removed to prevent any negative impact to your website.
What can we learn from Farmer/Panda update?
One of the first things to consider is how you can improve the elements of your site that Google was targeting when looking for lower quality. Are there pages on your website that have suspect content?Low quality content can range from simply outdated over used generic product descriptions to a page that has only a few sentences of non-relevant fluff that was written by someone who lacks the correct grasp of the English language. Look to improve any sections of your website where the content was poorly written and doesn’t add anything to the focus of your website. If you have to ask more than one person at your company why a specific piece of content exists, then it is most likely not good quality.
Google made it known that quality websites with only handful of suspect pages can pull down the rankings of the entire site. Try condensing any questionable pages down, rewriting the content, or better yet have your visitors generate new content to improve the quality of the website. Remember that Google is trying to provide the best results for its users by weeding out the bad content apples.
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