Google Panda vs. Google Penguin SEO
08/16/2012 by Brian K. Trembath in Search Engine Optimization
| PENGUIN | PANDA |
| When was it introduced? | |
| April 2012 | February 2011 |
| How broad was the impact? | |
| 3.1% of English language queries | 12% of English language queries |
| Target | |
| Unnatural links, link exchanges, paid link exchanges, and article directories. | Low quality content, content scraping, content farms. |
| Did it achieve the desired effect? | |
| Sure, Google holds most of the cards in the SEO game and they generally get whatever they want. | Sure, Google holds most of the cards in the SEO game and they generally get whatever they want. |
| What was that desired effect again? I was so busy rebuilding page rankings that I forgot. | |
| To improve user experience by increasing the value of organic shares, particularly those stemming from social networks. Penguin achieved this by radically reducing the value of backlinks that come from paid, unnatural link networks and article directories. | To improve user experience by punishing sites that offered low quality, irrelevant content. It especially focused on content farms like Demand Studios that were producing thousands of low quality articles a day that offered little in the way of end-user value. |
| How often is it updated? | |
| Every six weeks or so. | Every six weeks, give or take. |
| How often do webmasters think that it’s being updated? | |
| Every time their page rankings drop. | They don’t think about Panda so much anymore, unless their page rankings drop. |
| Where did the name come from? | |
| According to Danny Sullivan, Penguin was originally called the, “Webspam Algorithm Update,” but Google didn’t want the Internet masses creating their own nickname, so they belatedly added the Penguin moniker. | This one is sometime known as the “Farmer Update” because it targeted high volume content farms. Eventually, the name of Google engineer, Navneet Panda was used to describe this now legendary update. |
| What’s the best way of bouncing back from this update? | |
| Focus on building organic link networks through Google approved, white hat SEO techniques like guest blogging. Also, get rid of all those spammy backlinks…by hand if necessary. | Focus on creating high quality, original, relevant content. Quit scraping/stealing content from other sites and just put up actual articles that people will want to read. |
Related posts:
We hate spam as much as you do. Please review our
Thanks this really helped, I was so confuse with the difference between Google panda and penguin.
That was by far the best and easiest explanation I’ve read on Panda vs Penguin. Thanks for the great write up.
This is the front office drivel about the Panda update. Sounds like you work for Google. What really happened is that Google was not making money on millions of transactions being generated by the queries in the high ranking positions, so they replaced small business and affiliate based creatives with their corporate friends in thousands of market sectors over the course of the updates (Feb 2011 through March 2012) – This had absolutely nothing to do with quality content, duplicate content or any of that stuff. That is the official front office stuff. Sounds like you fell for it totally. Some areas like gambling didn’t really fit the program like the other niche sectors they were replacing so it got shuffled around and it “APPEARS” to be about original content, har har. All of it is lies Google has perpetrated in order to control all the content on the front page, including SERPS, to funnel more income their way – featuring big advertisers in 15,000 markets is much more profitable than allowing small business and affiliate based businesses to profit, so they were displaced by Panda. Panda is nothing more than good old fashioned corporate greed in it’s ugliest form. Walmart has been taking others out of business for decades, and now Google too. Wake up
And so says the guy who has a link to a spam search page as his ID link.
We believe you. Thousands wouldn’t, but we do.
->”Penguin achieved this by radically reducing the value of backlinks that come from paid, unnatural link networks and article directories.”
Don’t forget the off topic links.
Links on non-relevant pages count heavily against you.
Thanks for the kind words and interesting debate. Hezakiah, I agree that money motivates Google. At the same time, people often forget that Google’s customers are end users and that’s what they focus on.