Google Launches Panda 4.0

Panda 4.0 has officially hit the Google search results.

The Panda algorithm, which was designed to help boost great-quality content sites while pushing down thin or low-quality content sites in the search results, has always targeted scraper sites and low-quality content sites in order to provide searchers with the best search results possible.

Panda 4.0, which Google and Matt Cutts confirmed began rolling out yesterday, has definitely caused some waves in the search results. However, the fact that Panda 4.0 is also hitting at the same time as a refresh of an algorithm targeting spammy queries like payday loans makes it a little bit more difficult for webmasters to sort through the damage.

With the payday loans refresh impacting extremely spammy queries and Panda targeting low-quality content, some webmasters could potentially get hit with both of these or by just one or the other.

While usually people complain about losing rankings, Alan Bleiweiss from AlanBleiweiss.comshowed via Twitter that Panda can also bring about some serious improvement to a site's traffic as well.

Prior to Cutts confirming via Twitter that Panda 4.0 hit, there had been plenty of speculation about a change with either Panda or Penguin, although many found it hard to pin down exactly what the change was.

"It was interesting to see the chatter amongst SEOs over the last few days," says Marie Haynesof HIS Web Marketing. "We all knew that something was going on, but there was significant disagreement on exactly what Google was doing. Most of the black hats were saying that it was related to Penguin because they were noticing huge drops in their sites with the spammiest link profiles."

This would have been the changes to the payday loans update, where the goal is to target the spammiest search queries Google sees. There was also plenty of debate on forums and Twitter about whether the shake-up we saw was Panda-related or Penguin-related. And with the payday loans update thrown in there for good measure, it was definitely confusing.

"I was really hoping that this wasn't a Penguin refresh because the majority of the sites that I had done link cleanup on were not seeing any improvement and if Penguin refreshed and none of my clients were seeing ranking increases, then that would not be good," Haynes says. "I was also puzzled because one site that I monitor that has been adversely affected by several Panda updates saw a vast improvement today. It does not have a bad link profile and would not have been affected by a Penguin update. "

"When I heard the announcements that Google had released two algorithms over the last couple of days – payday loans and also a big Panda update, everything made sense. And still, so many of us are waiting for that big Penguin refresh. It wouldn't surprise me if that happens in the next couple of days," she says.

Google has said previously that they try not to throw multiple updates at once or within a very short period of time, so it is interesting that they pushed out two completely unrelated updates – although updates that could both impact some the same sites – within a couple of days.

Releasing two back-to-back updates makes it a lot harder for webmasters to analyze the changes and what specifically was targeted in these updates, and could affect Google's ability to evaluate how well (or not) the two updates worked. It also means webmasters might have a challenge knowing what changes need to be made in order to recover search rankings.

However, Haynes speculated that some of the Panda change might have been to reverse some of the damage done to sites that had great content yet were impacted for other on-page reasons.

"I think it's too early to say what this new iteration of Panda is affecting, but I can tell you that in the case of the site that I saw big improvements on, no cleanup work had been done at all," Haynes says. "It was always in 'Panda flux.'"

She says some Panda refreshes would hit it hard and then occasionally the site would show a slight increase with a refresh.

"This is by far the biggest increase, though," Haynes says. "It really is a good-quality site and I believe that what caused it to be affected by Panda in the first place was a site layout that caused crawlers to get confused. Underneath that confusing layout is a site full of really good content. It may be that Google found ways to see past structural issues and recognize the good content as the structural problems would not affect users, just crawlers. But really, that's a guess."

Panda first blazed onto the scene in February 2011, and was believed to be Google's response to criticism of how well content farms were ranking. Google later announced that they internally called it the big Panda update, after Navneet Panda, the Google engineer who created it.

While there have been many smaller Panda updates and a couple larger ones, each rolled out monthly over a period of 10 days, Google had announced several months ago that Panda would be integrated into the algorithm updates and that the "softer" Panda would be less noticeable. However, that clearly isn't the case with Panda 4.0, which has had a widespread impact, both positively and negatively.

Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz also studied the changes they saw from the latest Panda update, and noticed that eBay got hit particularly hard.

Digging into the May 19th data (and before Google confirmed anything), I noticed that a few keywords seemed to show losses for eBay, and the main eBay sub-domain fell completely out of the "Big 10" (our metric of the ten domains with the most "real estate" in the top 10).

In fact, Meyers notes that eBay's drop was so significant that it dropped from 1 percent of their queries to 0.28 percent. It won't be surprising to hear of more sites who have seen a drop due to Panda 4.0 – especially sites that have been notorious for having low quality content.

We will definitely see more come out in the next few days as webmasters and SEO professionals have a chance to evaluate the changes and what might have caused sites (either their own or competitors) to either rise or fall in Google's search results. And since we're still awaiting a Google Penguin update (Penguin 2.0 launched a year ago this week), I wouldn't be surprised if we see one of those updates coming soon, especially in light of Google releasing both the payday loans and Panda 4.0 so close together.

May 21'2014 #SEW

SEO vs. SEM Timelines: A Medical Analogy

Marketing directors and search engine optimization (SEO) consultants are often questioned by their bosses and clients about the progress of their SEO campaigns. Most business owners don't understand how SEO works and, quite frankly, could care less.

Nonetheless, they know it's important and just want to see results. Unless you're ingrained into an industry or market, it's tough to comprehend how effective certain strategies are and when those results can realistically be expected.

As an SEO consultant, you might have been posed with questions similar to one of these:

“Now that we turned on the SEO, we should be on the first page, right?”

Or:

“If I pay you overtime, can you work on my SEO over the weekend so we can rank by Monday?”

So how do you explain to your boss or client how SEO works and when to expect results? My office uses doctors and medication as an analogy and it seems to get the message across.

SEO = Antibiotics

SEO is a long-term tactic that requires a solid foundation and consistency over time. When you get sick or have an infection, antibiotics aren't going to provide instant relief. As you begin to take the antibiotics, it may seem as if nothing is happening, but you must believe in what the doctor suggests and take the medication as prescribed.

The doctor might ask you to follow up in a week or so to see if anything has changed (reviewing ranking reports). It is common to find out that nothing has changed and a new medication needs to be prescribed. Doctors and SEO experts don't have exact answers and must test different strategies to see what works and make adjustments when necessary.

The frustrating part is when the doctor (or SEO expert) finds out that the medication wasn't taken as prescribed. The inconsistency throws everything off and makes it difficult to determine if the prescription (or strategy) was really working.

Consistency is very important for the success of your SEO campaign. It's not something you should "turn on and off."

It should also be noted that you can't simply prescribe more antibiotics (or spend more money) to speed things up. SEO simply doesn't work that way.

Imagine taking three times the antibiotics the doctor prescribed. You will make yourself even more sick.

SEM = Pain Meds

Search engine marketing (SEM), or paid search advertising, can satisfy the demand for instant gratification.

Let's say you are in the doctor's office for an ear infection. The pain is unbearable and you need relief.

The doctor will most likely prescribe you some sort of pain meds or even give you a shot. You will get temporary relief, however, you will find yourself returning to those meds every time you start to ache again.

Imagine paid advertising as those meds providing relief when you're taking them, but when you stop, you're back where you started – or in even more pain. You can get the phone to ring when you're actively paying for ads, but as soon as you stop paying, your phone stops ringing.

What Will the Doctor Order?

A good doctor will understand that you have immediate needs and care about your long-term health. He or she will likely prescribe the pain meds for instant relief and put you on a regimen of antibiotics to address the root of the problem. You might notice that your pain medication prescription will run out long before your antibiotic prescription.

The following graph shows how your pain meds (SEM) can be weaned down as your antibiotics (SEO) begin to take affect.

Using this analogy, or a similar one, should help your boss or client realize the time and effort it takes to run a successful organic SEO campaign and help you avoid being inundated with questions every few days.

About landing page test

When a consumer searches for televisions, where should the ad click go? A promotional page? A product details page? Premium vs. budget product pages?

The DoubleClick Search (DS) landing page testing feature helps you answer this question by testing different landing pages to create the optimal post-click experience for the consumer. Post-click data gives you the information needed to identify pages that produce the best return on investment. You can then make changes to keyword-level landing pages based on these insights. After that, use DS reports to calculate the exact impact your landing page optimizations have made, even months after the tests have been run.

With landing page testing, you can:

· Split search ad traffic among multiple landing pages and run randomized A/B tests. You can send equal amounts of traffic to all landing pages, or specify the percentage of traffic that each page in the test should receive.
· Scope the test to specific keywords, or all keywords in an ad group, campaign, or engine account.
· Report and analyze post-click data on each tested landing page, and see what was the last action.
· See a history of all tests that have been completed.

URLs in landing page tests:

Each keyword that you add to a landing page test is associated with the following URLs:

· The original landing page URL that you specified when you created the keyword. The test does not modify this URL.

· The control landing page URL that you specify when you create the test. Usually, you’ll specify a URL for a landing page that you’ve been using for awhile. DS will redirect to this URL instead of the keyword’s original URL for a percentage of the clicks that a keyword generates.

· One or more experiment landing page URLs that you specify when you create the test. DS will redirect to these URLs instead of the keyword’s original URL for a percentage of the clicks that a keyword generates.

Recover From Google Sandbox

Recover From Google Sandbox


There is always a lot of buzz in SEO community whenever there is any term or technique comes. Google Sandbox is also one such term that has a symbolic expression to describe why the most of the new websites face poor ranking issues in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). There are not a large number of people knowing much about ‘sandbox’, but it was around March 2014, when it was added to as a filter to the Google algorithms. It helps to prevent escalating incidence of spam in the Google index. In a technical term, it allows Google to filter ‘Flash-in-the-Pan’ websites with those that have fresh, relevant and quality content. The main purpose behind this is to ensure that Google always show the relevant searches within the framework of Google Search Engine Results Pages. In other way, Google Sandbox also helps to provide more precise results within the actual SERPS through its filtration process.



What is impact of Google Sandbox?


The most amazing thing is that when you register your domain and uploads your first blog post then, for your surprise it appears on the top list of Google ranking for sometimes. But after a time being, it may disappear from the Google top rankings just because of Google sand box impact. In simple words, it is just there to prevent junk websites coming on top Google ranking.


It is not that your post does not list in Google search results. Due to the impact of Google sandbox, your post appears quite down in Google Search Engine Results Pages. The impact of sandbox will remain there for at least 6 weeks so the ranking of your web page will eventually boost after the impact of it.
Identifying the Sandbox?


The first and foremost question that clicks in every website owner is that how they come to know that their website is in the sandbox. Any new website that comes in the notice of Google with the help of Inbound Link (IBL) relegated to the sandbox. Till the time sandbox impact remain there,Google SERPS is not listed your website or keyword in the search result, nor it shows any result of linking websites. Till the time, Google only show your home index page in the search results.


At any point, if you are looking to track the record of visitors come to your website and at the same time in the Google Sandbox, one will see that Googlebot crawls the website on the regular basis. Nothing is going to be hid from Google no matter whether it is any of you web page or content. Each and everything is listed in the main SERPS. So, whenever you find website in sandbox, it simply means your website is under probation.
How long website recover from Google Sandbox?


Due to some specifics keywords and searching results, it is sometime hard to tell how long it will take to recover your website from Google sandbox. But according to the experts, every new website remains at least 6 to 8 months in sandbox. There is nothing to worry for a website owner if he or she finds its website in sandbox. If their websites contain good quality content and relevant things then it is easy to come out the sandbox. On the other hand, your website also appears in the higher search engines rankings due to all this.


However, there are other means also exit through which you can prevent your website from sandbox by using other search engines like – MSN, Yahoo and Alta Vista that don’t contain a ‘sandbox’ filter therefore your websites on these search engines appear in higher rankings as compared to the Google search engine.


There are some points that help to recover your website quickly from the web of sandbox like:
Whenever you post any new blog or content, make sure that Google crawl reads that ad listed each of your pages
Try to create healthy and quality backlinks as it helps Google to recognize your page quickly and instantly. One should not just keep uploading quality content and other materials as it will not help them to achieve their goals, backlinks make your website more effective and Google search friendly.
Ensure not use any such thing that puts your web page or site in spam as it will damage and thrash all your efforts of building the website ranking in frequent of second.
Try to make your post clean by not giving too many tags, categories and ads because it helps to Google to crawl to your website with ease. It will also prevent your website from any HTML errors and keyword and key phrase stuffing.
Put more emphasis in building your website perfect and relevant with the help of quality content, rich graphics and user-friendly structure. Ensure the speed of your website as heavy websites take a lot of time to response which keeps visitors away from it.


So, one should not be worried too much if they find their websites in Google sandbox. Just be patience and provide quality materials to it. After a sometime, it will recover from the sandbox and also boost the ranking of your website on all search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and MSN. Once your website comes out the sandbox impact, it eventually pulls down potential traffic to the website that helps to enhance the business to great extend.