We have all been expecting it and it finally occurred. Yesterday Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed the release of Panda 4.0 on his Twitter account. This is a new Panda algorithm and not your typical monthly refresh.
Matt Cutts told Search Engine Land that this Panda 4.0 update impacts approx 7.5% of English queries to a level that a regular user might notice. The team at Google often use optimistic numbers and try to downplay the negative impact of these updates, however just 24 hours after the release the chatter within the SEO community is indicating that Panda 4.0 is already hitting some some major sites. The feeling is that this Panda 4.0 update will contain many changes.
As we all know Google don’t release anything tangible about the actual changes to the algorithms but only provide high level cryptographic hints about the type of changes made. The task for Webmasters, is then to try and solve this giant jigsaw puzzle, testing this and that, carefully dissecting, analysing and reverse engineering data in an effort to make sense of how their algorithm ranks pages. To begin with you settle on a theory based on speculation, some tried and tested methods while filtering out rumors and assertions from the SEO wannabe’s and cowboys. Along the path, it’s not unusual to drift off to the dark side and have to revert back to square one. In the end you’ve spent hundreds of hours churning theory to results and processes, and fine tuning it over time. It is not for the faint hearted.
I am sure that those at Google who are in the know, get a great deal of enjoyment tracking how SEO companies react to these updates. I bet to them its like watching a scavenger hunt, who is on track, who is totally on the wrong path. While some sites will see and immediate drop in rankings, its not unusual to see some sites yielding a benefit.
While I write this blog we’re working hard to analyze what has changed in this update, and if past history is anything to go by, I believe this Panda 4.0 update will have as many “misses” as it does “hits”. Since this is a major update we expect Google to quietly spawn off minor updates over the next few weeks to “fix” what is broken, something that Google will never quite own up to but we all know happens.
And if that’s not enough, the SEO chatter is also suggesting that this release is just the start of further impending updates to come. Naturally, our SEO team is on high alert. There are still many SEO companies out there who guarantee to rank you number 1.The only real thing SEO companies can guarantee is change.
If you see your site’s traffic suddenly take a dive, this latest Panda 4.0 update may very well be the reason…
