Unless you’ve been living in a cave without WiFi then you know that Google made a big change to their algorithm this year. What you might not know is that this update was called Panda. Sounds like a nice soft cuddly bear doesn’t it? At SMX last week Google’s own Matt Cutts spoke-out more about the latest update in Google’s Algorithm, here are some of the highlights:
- Low quality content can reduce rankings
- Google recommends using a “noindex” on pages that have low quality content
- A site with no content and only ads above-the-fold could be penalized
- Sites with a low quality score are crawled less
- Most of these algorithm changes are US-only
- More algorithm changes are to come – the target is still low-quality content and content farms
Search Engine Land did a great article about Lessons Learned at SMX which I highly recommend everyone to read. No matter how you slice it Google has made some dramatic changes this year and as Domainers whether you’re a developer or not it’s important to understand these changes so you can plan for the future.
I’ve said it over and over again – I think Google made some much needed changes here that put the focus back on the user. Remember, whether you’re a Domainer or not you are a user of the web and the Panda update is already helping all of us find what we’re looking for faster.
