Update: Google has confirmed that this is a Panda refresh. This would make it version 23 and it impacted about 1.3% of English based queries.
I should note, I am shocked they pushed out a refresh before the holiday seasons. Last year they promised they would not do a Panda update before the holidays. What a difference a year makes.
A week ago, we reported on some very strong signs of a Google Update last Thursday. Google told us there was no update, not Panda and not anything. Webmasters feel Google is either lying or are clueless
That being said, there are now new reports in the same WebmasterWorld thread of an update hitting a few hours ago in the Google search results.
In the WebmasterWorld thread, here are some of the posts: Looked like something got rolled back to me. My positions have all reverted to where they were last week.
There has been some shuffling overnight (in which my main key term page has gone from page 2 to page 4).
Now it is really early and the reporting tools have yet to report as of this morning, including MozCast, SERPmetrics and SERPS.com. Although, since this seems to have been updating early this morning, the tools may not show anything until tomorrow.
Google has confirmed a Panda refresh impacting 1.3% of queries!
After months of anticipation, Google’s Matt Cutts, at PubCon in
Las Vegas today, finally announced a new tool in Webmaster Tools to
disavow links.
Cutts made comments at SMX Advanced back in July, indicating that a tool would be on the way, and it is now here.
In text on the tool itself, Google says, “If you believe your site’s
ranking is being harmed by low-quality links you do not control, you can
ask Google not to take them into account when assessing your site.”
Here is Cutts talking about it in a new Webmaster Help video:
“You might have been doing blog spam, comment spam, forum spam,
guestbook spam…maybe you paid somebody to write some low quality
articles and syndicate those all over the place with some very keyword
rich anchor text, and maybe Google sent you a message that says, ‘We’ve
seen unnatural links to your site or we’ve taken targeted action on some
of the unnatural links to your site,’ and so as a result, you want to
clean up those backlinks,” Cutts says in the video.
First and foremost, he says, they recommend getting those links
actually removed from the web. Of course, that’s easier said than done.
Google says in a help center article:
PageRank is Google’s opinion of the importance of a page
based on the incoming links from other sites. (PageRank is an important
signal, but it’s one of more than 200 that we use to determine
relevancy.) In general, a link from a site is regarded as a vote for the
quality of your site.
Google works very hard to make sure that actions on third-party sites
do not negatively affect a website. In some circumstances, incoming
links can affect Google’s opinion of a page or site. For example, you or
a search engine optimizer (SEO) you’ve hired may have built bad links
to your site via paid links or other link schemes that violate our
quality guidelines. First and foremost, we recommend that you remove as
many spammy or low-quality links from the web as possible.
If you’ve done as much work as you can to remove spammy or
low-quality links from the web, and are unable to make further progress
on getting the links taken down, you can disavow the remaining links. In
other words, you can ask Google not to take certain links into account
when assessing your site.
Update: Google has now put out an official blog post about the tool. In that, Webmaster Trends Analyst Jonathan Simon writes:
If you’ve ever been caught up in linkspam, you may have
seen a message in Webmaster Tools about “unnatural links” pointing to
your site. We send you this message when we see evidence of paid links,
link exchanges, or other link schemes that violate our quality
guidelines. If you get this message, we recommend that you remove from
the web as many spammy or low-quality links to your site as possible.
This is the best approach because it addresses the problem at the root.
By removing the bad links directly, you’re helping to prevent Google
(and other search engines) from taking action again in the future.
You’re also helping to protect your site’s image, since people will no
longer find spammy links pointing to your site on the web and jump to
conclusions about your website or business.
If you’ve done as much as you can to remove the problematic links,
and there are still some links you just can’t seem to get down, that’s a
good time to visit our new Disavow links page. When you arrive, you’ll
first select your site.
According to a liveblogged account
of Cutts’ speech, he says not to use the tool unless you’re sure you
need to use it. He mentioned that Google, going forward, will be sending
out more messages about examples of links Google is distrusting. He
also says not to disavow links from your own site.
Regarding those link messages, Cutts says in the video that these are only examples of links, and not a comprehensive list.
The tool consists of a .txt file (disavow.txt), with one URL per line
that tells Google to ignore the site. You can also use it to block a
whole domain by using a format like: domain:www.example.com.
Cutts apparently suggests that most sites not use the tool, and that
it is still in the early stages. Given that link juice is a significant
ranking signal for Google it’s easy to see why Google wouldn’t want the
tool to be over-used.
It can reportedly take weeks for Google to actually disavow links. In
a Q/A session, according to the liveblog from Search Engine Roundtable,
Cutts said you should wait 2-3 days before sending a reconsideration
request after you submit a disavow file. When asked if it hurts your
site when someone disavows links from it, he reportedly said that it
typically does not, as they look at your site as a whole.
Danny Sullivan blogs that “Google reserves the right not to use the submissions if it feels there’s a reason not to trust them.”
Users will be able to download the files they submitted, and submit
it again later with any changes. According to Sullivan’s account, Cutts
said the tool is like using the “nofollow” attribute in that it allows
sites to link to others without passing PageRank.
That’s good to know.
A lot of SEOs have been waiting for Google to launch something like
this for a long time. Perhaps it will cut down on all of the trouble
webmasters have been going through trying to get other sites to remove
links. At the same time, we also have to wonder how much overreaction
there will be from webmasters who end up telling Google to ignore too
many links, and shooting themselves in the foot. This will be a
different era, to say the least.
Just be warned. Google’s official word of caution is: ” If used
incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance
in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only
if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or
low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that
the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess
which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or
typical sites will not need to use this tool.”
The information Google uses from the tool will be incorporated into
its index as it recrawls the web and reprocesses the pages it sees.
Google currently supports one disavow file per site. That file is
shared among site owners in Webmaster Tools. The file size limit is 2MB.
Google is on a roll with these updates. I think webmasters are
starting to understand what Google’s Matt Cutts meant when he said a
while back that updates would start getting “jarring and jolting”. It
seems, that rather than one major update, we’re getting a bunch of
updates in a short amount of time. This past Friday, Google launched its
latest Penguin refresh. A week before that, it was the EMD update and a new Panda update.
Tuesday, Cutts tweeted about a Page Layout update:
The Page Layout update was first announced early this year,
months before we ever saw the first Penguin update. It’s sometimes
referred to as the “above the fold” update. It was designed to target
pages that lack content above the fold. At the time, Cutts wrote in a
blog post:
As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints
from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the
actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than
scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content
right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can
be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of
the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content
above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial
screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such
sites may not rank as highly going forward.
We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for
many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize
online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place
ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much
further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or
that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. This
new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a
small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is
persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.
It looks like Christmas has come early for webmasters this year.
Although, on that note, this could be a sign that Google is getting all
of this stuff out of the way before the holiday season, so they don’t
mess too much with your rankings during this crucial time of year for
ecommerce. They’ve shown in the past that they’ve learned from the
infamous Florida update.
Oh that Google and their late Saturday 6th Oct announcements. Sometimes it’s the
big monthly (at least they used to be) “search quality highlights”
lists, but they were kind enough to release that on Thursday this past
week. Still, Google’s Matt Cutts managed to sneak in a Penguin
announcement on Friday. He tweeted:
Cutts has made comments in the past indicating that this update could be “jarring”. Are you seeing the effects?
It’s been quite a week for Google updates. The Friday before this announcement, Cutts announced the EMD update, and later noted that there was also a Panda update rolling out.
More on all of this here.
I’m sure we’ll be discussing the Penguin update more in the coming week.
Last Friday, Google announced the EMD update.
It was billed as a small and minor update, but the effects seemed to be
fairly large, with many webmasters claiming to have been hit. Google’s
Matt Cutts made it a point to say that the algorithm change was
unrelated to both Panda and Penguin.
He then said it was not the only update
that was rolling out during that timeframe, noting that Google makes
changes every day (over 500 a year). He didn’t happen to mention that
there was a new Panda update, however. Finally, he has dropped the news
that there was indeed a Panda update going on at the same time as the
EMD update (and it’s still rolling out). Were you impacted by one of these updates? Are you able to discern which one it was? Let us know in the comments.
Search Engine Land reports
that Google released a Panda algorithm update (not a data refresh, but
an actual update) on Thursday, and that it impacts 2.4% of English
search queries (and is still rolling out). That’s significantly larger
than the 0.6% of English-US queries Cutts said the EMD update affected.
So, it seems that the majority of those claiming to be hit by the EMD
update were likely hit by Panda (which would explain those claiming to
be hit, that didn’t have exact match domains).
Here’s the exact statement from Cutts that the publication is
sharing: “Google began rolling out a new update of Panda on Thursday,
9/27. This is actually a Panda algorithm update, not just a data update.
A lot of the most-visible differences went live Thursday 9/27, but the
full rollout is baking into our index and that process will continue for
another 3-4 days or so. This update affects about 2.4% of English
queries to a degree that a regular user might notice, with a smaller
impact in other languages (0.5% in French and Spanish, for example).”
Couldn’t he have just said that in the first place? Google had to
know the confusion this would cause. Since the original Panda update,
Google has made more of an effort to be transparent about algorithm
changes, and it certainly has been. It seems, however, like delayed
transparency is becoming the trend recently.
For months, Google was releasing monthly lists of updates that had
been made the prior month. The last time, they left people waiting
before finally posting a giant list for two months’ worth of changes. It
seems that Google is doing this again, as we have yet to see lists for
August or September (assuming Google is about to release these lists).
Either way, it appears the Panda continues to wreak havoc on webmasters. Wait until they get a load of the next Penguin.
For those sites that were hit, obviously if there is not an exact
match domain involved, that makes the problem a little easier to figure
out, at least in terms of which update the site was actually hit by. It
seems unlikely that the EMD update would have done much to impact you if
your site does not use an EMD. Which leaves Panda (and of course, any
other updates that Google hasn’t told us about – they do make changes
every day, and often more than one in a day).
While Cutts said that the EMD update is unrelated to Panda, that is
not necessarily the case, depending on how you view the comment.
Algorithmically speaking, I presume Cutts means the two have nothing to
do with each other. However, in concept, the two are very similar in
that they go after low quality. So, doesn’t it stand to reason that if
you improve the quality of your content, you could actually recover from
either update? That is assuming that the EMD update is one that can be
recovered from. Let’s put it this way: if it’s possible to recover from
the EMD update (which most likely it probably is), improving the quality
of your site and content should be the main objective.
This just happens to be the same objective for recovering from Panda.
Of course quality is subjective, and Google has it’s own view of what
this entails. Luckily for webmasters Google has essentially laid out
exactly what it is looking for from content, specifically with regards
to the Panda update.
Googe has pretty much given webmaster the rules of the road to Panda
recovery, even if they’re not official rules. You’ve probably seen the
list before, but if you were never hit by the Panda update until now,
maybe you haven’t. Either way, here are the questions Google listed last year as “questions that one could use to assess the quality of a page or an article:
Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on
the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site,
or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank
well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
How much quality control is done on content?
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of
creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual
pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
Of course, Google uses over 200 signals in all, but that should get you started on thinking about your site’s content.
And with regards to the EMD update, remember, Google is targeting “low quality” EMDs. Not simply EMDs in general.
We’ve provided tons of coverage of the Panda update since Google first launched it. To learn more about it, feel free to peruse the Panda section of WebProNews. Do you think Google has improved its search results with this
algorithm combo? Is Google being transparent enough about algorithm
updates for your taste? Let us know what you think in the comments.
says it will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results.
It sounds like an extension of the last change he tweeted about, which was aimed at improving domain diversity. Here’s the new tweet:
Probably good of him to clear that up right away.
Google is about due to publish its big list of algorithm changes for
the months of August and September. When that happens, it will be
interesting to see how many entries are related to domains. It seems
like there are typically visible themes in the lists. For example, in
the June list, there were a lot of changes related to improving how Google deals with natural language.
Have you seen any effects from this update? Let us know with your comments.
Google announced the news_keywords metatag for publishers in Google
News to help Google better identify and understand content that is
related to things that are in the news. Do you think this is a good direction for Google News? Let us know what you think.
Here’s what it looks like: <meta name=”news_keywords” content=”World Cup, Brazil 2014, Spain vs Netherlands, soccer, football”>
If you use it, use commas to separate phrases. You can add up to ten phrases per article, and each keyword is given equal value.
The company says it’s a way to empower writers to express stories
freely, while helping Google News propertly understand and classify
content. In a blog post, Google News product manager Rudy Galfi explains the thought process behind the feature: The day after the historic 1929 stock market crash, Variety
bannered their front page with these words: “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG.” It’s
a great headline: pithy, catchy, and expressive of the substance of the
story as well as the scale of its consequences. It’s also worth noting
that Variety’s editors had a full day to write the headline—millions of
readers weren’t trying to search for the story within seconds of hearing
about it.
The Web has transformed both how news organizations report
information and the way users find it. Imagine if “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG”
were used as a headline today by an online news site. Since the
headline is a sequence of text that’s only readily understandable by a
human, most machine algorithms would probably attach some sort of
biological association to it. In turn, this would make it difficult for
millions of curious users who are using Google.com or Google News to
find the best article about the stock market crash they just heard
about.
With the news_keywords metatag, publishers can specify specific
keywords that apply to news articles, basically like the classic
keywords metatag.
The whole thing is pretty interesting, considering that Google has
downplayed the regular keywords metatag. In fact, earlier this year, in a
Webmaster Help video, Matt Cutts said,
“You shouldn’t spend time on the meta keywords tag. We don’t use it.
I’m not aware of any major search engine that uses it these days.”
Of course, this is a different tag, and it’s specifically
news-related, though news results often appear in regular Google
results. Cutts did say in a tweet:
Google is careful to note that the tag will be only “one signal among many” that its algorithms use to determine ranking.
“The news_keywords metatag is intended as a tool — but high-quality
reporting and interesting news content remain the strongest ways to put
your newsroom’s work in front of Google News users,” says Galfi.
Keep in mind, Google still frowns upon keyword stuffing (unless that’s going away in an upcoming version of its Webmaster Guidelines, which is highly doubtful).
In case you need a refresher, here’s Google’s quality guidelines for News: News content. Sites included in Google News
should offer timely reporting on matters that are important or
interesting to our audience. We generally do not include how-to
articles, advice columns, job postings, or strictly informational
content such as weather forecasts and stock data. We mean it — stick to the news! Google News is
not a marketing service. We don’t want to send users to sites created
primarily for promoting a product or organization. Unique articles. Original reporting and honest
attribution are longstanding journalistic values. (If your site
publishes aggregated content, you will need to separate it from your
original work, or restrict our access to those aggregated articles via
your robots.txt file.) Authority. Write what you know! The best news sites exhibit clear authority and expertise. Accountability. Users tell us they value news
sites with author biographies and clearly accessible contact
information, such as physical and email addresses, and phone numbers. User-friendly. Sites should load quickly and use
URL redirects rarely. Clearly written articles with correct spelling
and grammar also make for a much better user experience. Keep in mind
that we can only include sites that follow the Webmaster Guidelines.
