Malcolm's thoughts

Panda Watch Update – Google Panda Deployed To The UK

SEO Project Manager
Malcolm has been working in Search since 2005, when he joined Epiphany as the first employee. His speciality is technical SEO. Malcolm likes to think of himself as an “approachable nerd”, able to talk equally well to social and technical audiences.

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Panda Watch! The mood is tense; I have been on some serious, serious reports but nothing quite like this…

For a few days now we have been seeing ranking fluctuations beyond the everyday EveryFlux effect across certain sectors and data centres.

This has now been officially validated as Google Panda hitting the UK. In a post yesterday, Google’s Webmaster Central channel posted – http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html letting us know that the English language roll out of Panda is now complete along with some “new user feedback signals.”

We (like hopefully everyone else) have had a look at the direct impact of Panda on all our clients and I am happy to say…. there hasn’t really been any! I have however noticed a few non-clients get a bit of a kicking.

But if you read my earlier Panda post – http://www.epiphanysearch.co.uk/blog/panda-farming-for-beginners-demystifying-the-google-panda-farmer-update/ you would probably be expecting that anyway.

One thing worth noting is that Panda doesn’t seem to have been a “flick the switch” kind of role out as many people seem to think. I’m pretty certain that it may even have started as far back as Friday 8th April.

For now, it is business as usual. Keep creating good creative content. Link build way outside of that box and embrace the Panda.

Regards

Malc

@seomalc

4 Responses to “Panda Watch Update – Google Panda Deployed To The UK”

  1. Robert Kirk says:
    April 12, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    Hi Malcolm

    Do you think people could still see an affect on their websites, even if they think just now they are safe? surely these things may take a time to be fully rolled out?

  2. Mtron says:
    April 12, 2011 at 3:41 pm

    Hi Robert, we were seeing things start to change on Friday so that’s 3 days now. Although I’m not against the notion of late changes etc. from the stuff I have been reading, people who I have spoken to etc. The US roll out had an immediate effect with many (many) US webmasters up in arms instantly.

    I think the only real delay in knowing will be via e-commerce sites and sites dependant on the long tail. A few days of data will provide a good comparison but I have looked at a large number of keywords and have seen nothing negative so far for clients. I have however seen some major kickings on some pretty high profile insurance terms etc.

    If I am wrong I stand ready to eat Humble Pie :)

    Cheers

    Malc.

  3. Mtron says:
    April 12, 2011 at 9:32 pm

    When I say nothing has changed I’m saying that from a clients, good sites point of view. On the other end of the spectrum, the backside seems to have fallen out of the thin content business.

    Hopefully now we can all search for really random stuff (it is what we do!) in peace.

    http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2011/04/12/googles-panda-update-rolls-out-to-uk/

    I for 1 am going to bed happy.

  4. Robert Kirk says:
    April 13, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    Yeah Malcolm, we are also very pleased with our own websites, and also our clients. We have actually “touch wood” seen some nice little increases in a few of our websites, some highly competitive keywords. We where a little worried about one of our ecommerce stores, due to the horror stories I was hearing about duplicate product descriptions being hammered, but thankfully “touch wood” again lol, we havent seen any decrease in this website either. From what I have been reading today, many of the online voucher websites have been hit badly..

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