Google’s Panda 20 – a Better Way of Targeting Web Spam

Google imply various filters that do not let low-quality sites to rise high in search results while surfing Google. These filters do get updated on regular basis. Recently, Google has updated their Panda filter to fight web spam in much better way. Since it is their 20^th update, they have named it Panda 20. It is one of the most influential updates that has its impact on 2.4% search queries of English.

Google has confirmed this update and announced that the low quality websites will not be able to rank well in Google’s search engine with this exact match domain. They announced that Panda 20 is not just a date update, but a complete algorithm update. In fact, there is a lot more associated with this update.

Matt Cutts from Google said that a new update of Panda is announced on 9/27. He informed that it is an algorithm update and not just a data update. Most of the noticeable differences went live on 9/27 itself, but it is going to be continuous process for the coming 3-4 days. The effect of this update can be seen on 2.4% English queries to an extent that a regular web user will be able to notice it. However, its impact on other languages is much less like 0.5% in Spanish and French.

Usually Panda works by sifting the websites efficiently those are known to Google through a filter. The ones with too poor content are trapped by Panda and do not get ranked in Google. But the ones that are not caught see no decrease in ranking. However, they may get a higher rank due to the vacant spots from where Panda has trapped and dropped the sites. So, Panda is updated almost monthly to sift pages well and catch the sites that were not trapped earlier.

Panda makes all attempts to improve its filters. However, sites do get escaped as each update is a fresh start in itself. Since many sites are going to be affected by this, it is very confusing to know which will be affected.