Google Panda is one of Google's best-known - and feared - algorithms, and also one of its longest-running.
It began operating on February 23, 2011 to analyze the quality of texts and verify their originality, which is why it is so important because its appearance marked a before and after in content marketing.
A penalty from this algorithm is very difficult to correct, which is why domains began to pay special attention to how to avoid it, improving the quality of their texts and, most importantly, the user experience .
In this post we review all the main aspects of this algorithm starting with the most important one, defining what Google Panda is.
We then go on to explain what it aims to solve and how it has affected content strategies.
We will also answer other questions such as what its updates are, whether it is still present in SEO, its influence on the business model or who were the main losers after the introduction of this algorithm and how they are today.
Create SEO-friendly content
Ideas to be among the top 10 results
Enter your keyword here
Take the test! →
ADS illustration
What is Google Panda?
The Google Panda algorithm , which is entirely focused on the study of content, was developed with the dual objective of rewarding high-quality websites and reducing the presence of "garbage" or "spammer" domains in Google SERP results; garbage domains being understood as those that duplicate information from other websites.
Since Google Panda was born, websites have increased the amount of content they publish on their media.
In fact, as a curiosity, articles used to be much shorter, but since it appeared, the average number of words per URL has increased.
Similarly, there was also a growing interest in creating quality content .
Taking a look at the following Google Trends graph, we can see how interest in the term “ Content marketing ” skyrocketed after the first few months of Panda’s circulation.
A trend that, as we can see, continues to rise at present, despite small, one-off decreases.
Google Panda - Content marketing on Google Trend
Google trends data: https://trends.google.es/trends/explore ... 0marketing
What does it aim to solve?
Before this algorithm appeared, we could find exactly the same content in the first positions and dutch email list providers this made the user experience not correct.
The main objective of Google Panda was to combat duplicate content and low-quality websites, although we cannot forget that Google is only a mathematical processor and that the definition of content quality is only a value.
A penalty can be triggered by different aspects.
Below we highlight some of the problems that this algorithm addresses:
Thin Content : High concentration of content that is considered to be of low quality or little relevance to the user compared to a limited quality offering.