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Panda 2.5, The Lucky
The latest Panda Update 2.5 seems to have put life back into some sites that were negatively effected by the first Panda updates. An example of this is Hupages.com, which was originally smacked down by Google for “content farming”. Now they have been rewarded with more traffic than they had prior to the first Panda Update. Their Panda recovery was partially due to the advice Matt Cutts gave Edmondson (Hubpages founder) in an email. While I wasn’t CC:ed on the email, I have learn from dependable sources that Cutts, suggested the use of sub-domains and other to improve siloing content along with a handful of other helpful Post Panda SEO Tips. Hubpages.com is definitely the lucky ones as they got to consult directly with Matt Cutts himself. Moving on, lets take a deeper look at some of the winners and losers of the Panda 2.5 update and the reasons behind the outcomes.
Panda Update 2.5, The Bad
Some of the top losers were, Today.com, Entrepreneur.com and Savings.com. They all lost more than 50% of their SE traffic coming from long tail keywords. The fact that it was their long tail that was effected just confirms the aim of the Panda Update 2.5, to continue the battle against sites that use content farming as a method of increasing traffic. Most of the keywords that they lost were either not within Google’s “High Quality” guidelines or in cases where the content was unique and high quality, it did not adhere to relevancy within the correct silos.
Panda 2.5, The Good
As for some of the winners, Google’s own Youtube.com, TV.com and USmagazine.com were some of the top beneficiaries of Panda 2.5 as they saw in immediate increase of around 30% or higher. While you can accuse Google of promoting their own content the truth of the matter is that the merely took their own advice by reorganizing Youtube in a Post Panda friendly manor by cracking down on plagiarized and duplicate content, reorganizing low quality content based on user activity and improving the sites siloing effects
by enhancing their eternal link structure. In the end, one can conclude that its actually okay to build a content farm full of low quality content as long as you structure it accordingly.
More Panda 2.5 Results
The following results are based on the increase or decrease of search engine visibility and long tail keywords.
The Bad and Ugly…
- newjerseynewsroom.com -93%
- aceshowbiz.com -93%
- faqs.org -85%
- prnewswire.com -83%
- inemablend.com -83%
- news-medical.net -80%
- consumeraffairs.com -78%
- longislandpress.com -78%
- savings.com -76%
- hollyscoop.com -76%
- technorati.com-73%
- automobilemag.com -70%
- bettermedicine.com -69%
- businesswire.com -69%
- entrepreneur.com -68%
- ohinternet.com -67%
- medicalnewstoday.com -66%
- gamepro.com -65%
- cafemom.com -65%
- actressarchives.com -62%
- starpulse.com -61%
- thehollywoodgossip.com -58%
- today.com -58%
- thecarconnection.com -56%
- nowpublic.com 60.028 -54%
- killerstartups.com -49%
- 1-coupons.com -37%
- motortrend.com -31%
- thenextweb.com -48%
- blogcritics.org -7
The Good and Lucky…
- usmagazine.com 32%
- metacafe.com 32%
- zappos.com 29%
- tv.com 25%
- ign.com 21%
- perezhilton.com 12%
- foxnews.com 12%
- youtube.com 10%
- wsj.com 10%
- android.com 10%
- hubpages.com 10%
- washingtonpost.com 9%
- last.fm 8%
- aol.com 7%
Lets hear some of your thoughts on what else the Panda Update 2.5 means in the comments below.