Google's Panda Now Integrated into Algorithm
Everyone used to be scared and worry about the next Panda update. It meant that businesses could be killed or strike it rich overnight. While we’ve not had problems with Panda updates, those who do “blackhat” SEO are always frightful of what might happen. For the most part, our websites and our clients, either stay where we’ve ranked them or rank higher after updates! But anyway,
We’re not sure when the change happened, as Google hasn’t specifically stated this. We have seen some client websites increase in rankings and we’ve also heard from other sources that some websites have tanked. This is because Google’s Panda is now part of the main algorithm that they use to rank a website. The main purpose of Panda was to fight spam. Google strives to provide the most relevant information for a search and so a big part of doing so would be to make sure the results are not spam filled articles meant to get people to click on stuff.
This is a quote from a Google Rep:
Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.
So, this means no more Panda updates to be scared of, but what could take its place? We still have many questions – like does this mean that the updates for Panda ranking signals are in real time?
Overall, we’re finding that this new update will value in-context links and unique content. This means that keyword density will play even less of a role and will focus more on relevancy to the topic rather how many times a keyword is mentioned.
Luckily, this doesn’t change much of anything for us.