Over the past 12 hours, we’ve had confirmation from Google that they’ve rolled out two web spam updates; Panda 4.0 and Payday Loan 2.0. Panda 4.0 was confirmed by Matt Cutts on Twitter, whilst Payday Loan 2.0 was initially announced via Search Engine Land and later tweeted by Matt.
Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014
This past weekend we started rolling out a ranking update for very spammy queries: http://t.co/NpUZRqpnBI
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 21, 2014
Of course, as with all major algorithm updates, there’s been a wealth of speculation over the weekend, as SEOs and marketers from across the globe started reporting movement on the SERP’s for their and their clients’ sites. There was first rumors of an update early last week, however Google initially denied any update last Tuesday, May 13th.
Panda 4.0
Panda 4.0 looks to be the ‘softer update‘ which was first discussed back in March and it has been stated that this update affects different languages to different extents, however in English, the affect is ~7.5% of queries.
Utilizing Google’s usual algorithm numbering system, it’s almost certainly the case that this is a new update to the algorithm, as opposed to a data refresh, especially given that Google now refresh Panda monthly as part of the main algorithm. There’s already been accounts of site’s previously hit by Panda seeing significant recoveries and, as such, it looks that the update has indeed been a little softer and more generous to site’s, especially those previously affected.
Payday Loan 2.0
Google first launched their Payday Loan Algorithm last June and it’s been expected that a second update would follow for some time. This update is intended to specifically target ‘very spammy queries’ which typically get associated with excessive web spam, primarily payday loans, insurance, accident claims and the like. You’ll almost certainly be familiar with low quality sites appearing for these type of queries and it’s Google’s intention to prevent this from happening.
A Google Spokesperson stated on the update:
“Over the weekend we began rolling out a new algorithmic update. The update was neither Panda nor Penguin — it was the next generation of an algorithm that originally rolled out last summer for very spammy queries.”
Again, this looks to be an international rollout, which affects different languages to different extents, with English queries being affected by 0.2% to a noticeable degree.
Were You Affected?
Was your site or any of your client’s sites affected by either of these updates? Either positively or negatively? As with all updates, there’s winners and losers, however sharing your experience with the industry allows everyone to pull together and analyse the true extent of how they’re affecting site’s.
About mikehoek
Despite being a low key release, the Panda 20 update (a relatively minor refinement compared to some previous updates) affected around 2.4 per cent of English queries, according to Google's head of webspam, Matt Cutts. It's thought that many of the affected queries were also part of the original 12 per cent; it was just that they had found a way to beat Panda, and Panda 20 found a way to fight back.
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