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Google Will Now Include Panda in its Real-Time Algorithm

March 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Up until now, Google’s “Panda” was just a periodic update by the search giant to ferret out sites engaging in spam and other nefarious activities. Over the last couple of years, many websites have lost rankings due to the update.

In a Q&A session at the SMX conference earlier this week, Google spam chief Matt Cutts was asked when the next Panda update would occur.

He answered that it would occur either today (March 15), or Monday March 18th at the latest.

A brief recap of Panda

Following an update in late 2009 aimed at improving its indexing process, Google obtained lots of content to display in their search results. Some of this content was really good, some not so good. In commenting about the events of 2010 and 2011 leading up to Panda, Cutts explained that many sites were taking a minimalist approach to content, meaning they were making only token efforts to avoid being labeled “spam.”

To address this issue and provide better search results for their users, Google unveiled the Panda update in February 2011. One thing became clear during all of this – Google was using more human reviewers to determine if a site is “trustworthy.”

Sites who simply rehashed content found elsewhere, or who otherwise had “low-quality” content, were suddenly being knocked lower in the rankings. Google would run this update every month or so – with the last one occurring on January 22nd that affected 1.2% of English-based searches.

Going forward, Google will be including the Panda “parameters” in its real-time algorithm.

“Rather than having some huge change that happens on a given day, you’re more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we’re rebuilding the index, so you’re less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes,” explained Cutts last week at SMX West.

Google also working to revise its “Penguin” update

Besides the content based Panda update, Cutts also indicated Google would be going after spammers more aggressively through a revised “Penguin” update. You might remember Penguin from last year – it targeted sites considered to be “over-optimized.” Examples include:

  • Questionable linking practices
  • Overuse of exact-match domains
  • Aggressive use of exact-match anchor text
  • Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links
  • And more…

Explaining the new Penguin update at SMX West, Cutts says the update will be the most significant one for 2013. He says the anti-spam team at Google also plans to target more link networks this year. While Cutts was fairly forthright about their plans, he didn’t provide a timeline of when the new Penguin update would hit.

With that said, it’s clear that we’ll likely see some pretty significant activity on the Google front in the next few months. Many sites and merchants on Google will undoubtedly be negatively affected.

How do I avoid being caught in the Google penalty box?

From what we can tell, Google’s primary goal is to provide useful results to their users. These search results must provide valuable information to readers.

Therefore, you should ensure that content you’re developing is unique, and provides value to your site visitors. You should also follow good linking practices to ensure you’re not snared by the new Penguin update when it comes out.

Following tips on linking and content found here at SEO-e is perhaps the best thing you can do to avoid being penalized. Check out some of the links below of prior posts exploring these best practices.

And please browse around our blog for more insights into what Google looks for, and how they penalize sites that do not meet their strict standards.

Related Posts

Penguin Update Targets Link Schemes and Low-Quality Content

Link Building in the Post-Penguin World – Guest Posting

Answer these 23 Questions to Understand What Google Looks For

3 Steps You Should Take Before Linking to another Site

 

Filed Under: Forum Watch, SEO Technology Tagged With: , , , ,

10 ‘On-Page’ SEO Tactics You Should Avoid At All Costs – Part II

October 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Not following Google’s guidelines can lead to devastating consequences.

Last Monday, we discussed how certain SEO tactics (a.k.a. “black-hat” SEO) can get your site into a whole heap of trouble, and how these penalties can have devastating consequences for your business’ bottom line.

We outlined the first 5 of these ‘on-page’ SEO tactics you should absolutely avoid. In the interest of your time, we decided to break this into two separate posts.

Continue reading to learn the other 5 tactics you should avoid. This list is also helpful in identifying if any of these elements are on your site, or if any competitors are using any of these tactics. Being able to identify them will help you avoid a penalty, or worse, being totally banned from the search engines.

6.            Using the “Phantom Pixel”

The phantom pixel is essentially an image that’s so small – only one pixel – that it can’t be seen by your site’s visitors. However, these microscopic images can used to link to other pages, or the “alt-img” tag can be used to stuff keywords you’re trying to target.

Like hidden text (…or anything viewable by the search engines but hidden from human visitors), search engines absolutely hate the phantom pixel. Having just one on any web page on your site can result in a penalty, or even a complete ban.

To see if your site or any competitor’s site has hidden images, all you have to do is use “Ctrl+a,” which highlights everything on the page.

7.            Doorway pages

These are essentially low-quality pages that are automatically generated by software and are designed to rank well for as many keywords as possible. Many aggressive SEOs use these types of pages to funnel visitors into other pages designed to convert the visitor into a customer.

Creation of doorway pages often involves the use of two specific tools – one is a software program that ‘scrapes’ or copies content from other web pages or RSS feeds. This content is republished on the doorway page, which then links to the main sales page being targeted. The other tool, known as “Markov chain content generation” uses a special algorithm to combine words in a unique way. While hard for search engines to spot, this copy will look absolutely terrible to an actual person.

Therefore, do not use software to generate your site’s content. While it’s okay to use a system to “manage” your site’s content, it should be written by an actual person.

8.            Meta & JavaScript Redirects

Redirects are commonly used to steer site visitors away from obsolete pages or dead links. When used in this context, they’re okay.

However, spammers often times use redirects in a way search engines hate. The typical strategy is to build a page stuffed with keywords but then redirect the visitor to a sales page that would not rank well otherwise.

One way this is often done is to add a “meta refresh” to the <head> section of the HTML code. Here’s an example:

Example of Meta Refresh

 

 

Using this code will redirect, or refresh the page by sending the visitor to a different URL. The number “1” in the code we use above refers to the number of seconds to display the old page before redirecting.

JavaScript redirects are another way to accomplish the same thing. While search engines may scan JavaScript for URLs to index, they will not process the code. JavaScript redirects users to a different page, but the search engines will ignore that redirect and index the code on the initial, keyword-stuffed page.

Here’s an example of a JavaScript redirect:

Javascript Redirect Example

 

 

 

It’s important to note that redirects have many important uses from moving pages and rewriting URLs to changing domains. But since JavaScript and meta redirects have been so abused by spammers, it’s strongly recommended you use a 301 redirect if you need to send visitors to a new page.

9.            Little to no unique content

The importance of unique content has been something we can’t stress enough. The last two big algorithm updates from Google, which affected thousands of websites, were largely driven by this issue. This content issue often affects e-commerce type sites that simply use product descriptions provided by the manufacturer. While not considered spam, the search engines will remove these pages since they do not want to display hundreds, or even thousands of nearly identical pages.

This concept is true for both organic and PPC pages. If your site is promoting an offer from an affiliate, the Quality Score can drop so low that you will need to pay extremely high costs to keep your ad pages active.

If your site is in an affiliate program or reselling products, develop product descriptions that are unique from what the manufacturer provides. In all likelihood, there are hundreds of other affiliate type pages using the same content. Separate yourself from the pack and reap the benefits over your competitors.

10.          IP delivery (…or cloaking)

Considered one of the most complex and controversial of SEO strategies, IP delivery or cloaking involves serving one page to your human visitors while serving a different one to the search engines. Doing so essentially hides the real page, which is the one visitors will see, from the search engines.

However, cloaking also has some legitimate uses. Since search engines cannot index Flash content (…which human visitors love), webmasters may serve different content to the search engines so the page can be indexed. It’s easy to claim that providing content that the search engines can index benefits users. On the same token though, it’s easy to claim a setup like this is a loophole that’s ripe for exploitation.

Real briefly, when a visitor comes to your site, they’re identified through an Internet Protocol (IP) address. If you get online through cable Internet or DSL, you in all likelihood have a permanent IP address assigned to you. Search engine spiders have their own unique IP addresses as well. Some SEOs go to great lengths to identify the IP addresses used by search engine spiders, which allows them to identify if a visitor is the search engine spider or an actual human visitor.

If the IP address/number doesn’t match with their list of search engine IP addresses, the SEO/webmaster assumes the visitor is an actual human and serves up the page designed for human eyes, which often times includes graphics, JavaScript, Flash, etc. Conversely, if the IP address matches one they’ve identified as a search engine spider, then a text-only, keyword-rich page is served up.

Like hidden text and images, any time you serve different content to your human visitors, you’re asking for trouble. While search engines do make a few exceptions for cloaking, it’s best to pay it safe.

When discussing acceptable and unacceptable SEO practices, the debate often devolves in the white hat vs. black hat camps. In reality, there are a lot of grey areas.

The big question you need to ask is if your website is providing value to visitors. Remember, search engines are in the business of delivering the most valuable, relevant pages to their users. If they’re constantly delivering junk, people will quit using them. Therefore, if someone uses tactics that attempt to rank low-quality pages high in the search results, they shouldn’t be surprised when the search engine takes action to remove the offending site.

Remember, any strategy that sacrifices long-term, sustainable rankings for short-term gain is asking for trouble. Make sure your web pages offer value to your visitors while, at the same time, letting the search engines know what your pages are about.

Have you used any of these SEO strategies, whether intentionally or not, in the past?

If so, were you penalized? If you were, how long did it take you to recover?

Let us know in the comments section below or drop us a line on Facebook today!

Related Posts

10 ‘On Page’ SEO Tactics You Should Avoid At All Costs – Part I

Answer These 23 Questions to Understand What Google Looks For

Penguin Update Targets Link Schemes and Low-Quality Content

3 Steps You Should Take Before Linking to Another Site

Google Panda Update Causes Some Sites to Lose Traffic, Revenues

 

Filed Under: SEO Technology, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

10 ‘On-Page’ SEO Tactics You Should Avoid At All Costs – Part I

October 22, 2012 by
Don't let Google put you in the penalty box for trying to outsmart them

Don’t let Google put you in the penalty box for trying to outsmart them. You can’t, at least not for long.

Being penalized by the search engines for any tactics they deem against their guidelines can have dramatic consequences for not only your website’s position in Google, but your business’ bottom line as well. Each time Google releases a big update, it’s not hard to find stories about sites/businesses losing revenues and laying off staff.

The so called “black hat” SEO tactics detailed below clearly violate search engines’ published guidelines. We hope that discussing tricks search engines find objectionable will help you recognize, and thus, avoid them.

Knowing these tactics will also help you recognize when a competitor is using them. While it may be tempting to copy them, you should definitely refrain from doing so. Eventually, they will be penalized and you will be rewarded by taking their spot.

In order to have a sustainable SEO strategy, you should avoid the following tactics at all costs. Continue reading for the first 5…check back with us later in the week for the remaining 5 tricks you should avoid.

1.       Keyword stuffing

Literally repeating the same keyword over and over again is one of the oldest, easily recognizable black hat tactics. Search engines absolutely hate keyword stuffing and can recognize it pretty easily.

One common keyword stuffing tactic is the <h6> tag, which makes text so tiny that humans can’t see it but search engines can. Many a webmaster has simply placed this code near the bottom of a page. Another tag, <font size = “0”> is another way to stuff keywords without people noticing. Other places where webmasters have been known to stuff keywords include meta description, title tags and image ALT tags.

While these methods can sometimes yield short-term benefits, they rarely work for the long-term. Search engines can be tricked, but they eventually catch on.

2.       Text that’s invisible or semi-visible

As a search engine optimization company, one of the paradox’s we deal with is making a webpage that appeals to both search engines AND humans. While search engines award high rankings to pages with lots of copy, people typically respond to pages with special effects and other design elements that search engines can’t easily crawl.

Invisible text is one method that’s been used in the past to deal with this dilemma.

For example, many webmasters and SEO pros would set the text color the same as the background color, which effectively blends the copy with the background color of the page, which makes it invisible to people but visible to search engines. Semi-visible copy (i.e. gray copy on a white background) was being used once search engines became able to detect invisible text.

The easiest way to see if a competitor is using one of these tricks is to use Ctrl+a to select all, which will highlight all of the text on a web page.

While this may sound like a good trick, think again. Hidden or semi-visible text is one of the easiest ways to get your entire site kicked out of the search engines altogether. You in fact run a high risk of being penalized or banned anytime you show different content to search engines than what’s visible to your human visitors.

3.       Using CSS to Hide Text

CSS, or cascading style sheets, is another way to hide text from human visitors while making it visible and indexable to search engines. Here’s an example:

Some people try to stuff their page with keywords hidden in css

Akin to keyword stuffing, this method will render this text invisible to a human visitor while making it completely visible to search engines. Using the “Ctrl+a” method we detailed in #2 will not make the text visible. To see if a competitor is using this method, you will need to view the page’s source code.

Even though this method isn’t quite as risky as the invisible/semi-visible method, you still run the risk of being picked up by a manual review, which is why we urge webmasters to avoid it.

One method that is acceptable is when you give the visitor the ability to unhide the text. A good example of this in practice is CSS tabs that let you tab hidden and unhidden text. For example, you may come across product descriptions that have separate tabs for [Description], [Specifications], [Comments] and others.

4.       Selling Links

Many site owners sell links on their sites in order to increase the target URL’s PageRank. Your first warning for scrubbing PageRank or not using a rel=”nofollow” attribute will be your PageRank being dropped to zero. Considered a “shot across the bow” from Google, this won’t immediately result in lost rankings. But if you fail to address the issue in a timely manner, you could be dropped from the search engines altogether.

Paid links often look unnatural. For example, if we included links on SEO-e for a cheap travel site or a travel agency, they would look totally out of place to both the search engines and our visitors.

Being infected by Malware or being hacked is another way selling links puts your website at risk. If you have your site setup in Google’s Webmaster toolbox, they will warn you if they detect your site is being hacked or hosting Malware.

5.       Hiding Links

The purpose of hiding links is to give link juice, or PageRank, to favored web pages. These strategically placed links will direct the spider to an off-topic site the webmaster is wanting to index or rank well in the search results. Like hidden text, these links are only visible to the search engines, not your site’s visitors. Since they have no value to the site visitor, search engines absolutely hate them.

You can also make links “semi-visible” – like having the link embedded in a period at the end of a sentence.

While technically “visible,” you run the risk of being penalized since you’re showing something different to search engines than you are to real human visitors.

These are some of the most common tricks we come across on websites. If we spot them on a site we’re working on, we immediately fix them so the site doesn’t get penalized any further, or worse, delisted from the search engines altogether.

As we said above, check back later in the week for the other 5 SEO tricks you should avoid at all costs.

Have you been penalized because you used one or more of these tactics?

If so, how did you address the issue? How long did it take for you to regain the lost ground?

 

Filed Under: SEO Technology, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

New Google Update Seeks to Remove Copyright Violators from Search Results

August 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

While slightly different in nature in how it’s being implemented, Google’s latest algorithmic update is following the same theme of its Penguin and Panda updates, which basically rewards sites that create the best, most informative content.

Websites with poor content (i.e. stuffed with keywords) on the other hand are penalized and removed from the search results. Over the last year, numerous websites have seen rankings, and by extension revenues, dramatically drop due to poor content. These updates have led many firms to lay off employees or otherwise dramatically scale back their operations.

This latest update goes after websites engaging in outright plagiarism – the methodology though is slightly different in that Google is removing sites where legitimate copyright violation notices have been served.

Essentially, Google receives a copyright violation notice from copyright owners or reporting organization that represent the original owner of the content.

What’s different is that Google doesn’t decide what constitutes a copyright infringement, a court does. Google’s only role is to remove pages that have a valid copyright removal notice that’s approved by the appropriate legal authorities.

According to this report from Hubspot, Google now receives more copyright infringement notices each day than it did in all of 2009…the search giant has received and processed over 4.3 million such requests just in the last 30 days.

The search algorithm evaluates the number of such requests for a particular site. Those with a lot of infringements are pushed lower in the search results, generally off page 1. In a statement on the update, Google says its goal, as always, is to “help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.”

Unless you’re outright stealing content from other sites, you shouldn’t have to worry about being affected by this update. However, you may have competitors who don’t really understand how the Internet works and submit copyright infringement notices claiming you’ve stolen their original work.

The reality is they can file as many notices as they want to…Google is only acting on notices that have proven in a court of law. But even if a court has deemed your content violates copyright laws, Google still provides tools for those who feel they’ve been wrongly accused and convicted.

Even if you’ve been diligent in giving credit where credit is due, this is a good opportunity to review your methods of citing sources and make adjustments.

Google is certainly paying closer attention to a site’s content, and has been for quite awhile now. Make sure you’re developing unique content that provides information and value to your readers.

At the same time, make sure you provide proper credit to any outside sources you use. To learn more about proper citation, check out this article from Hubspot for more or check back with us again soon.

Related Posts

Understanding and Overcoming Google’s Penguin Update

Penguin Update Targets Link Schemes and Low-Quality Content

Answer These 23 Questions to Understand What Google Looks For

Upcoming Google Update to Penalize “Over-Optimized” Sites

Google Panda Update Causes Some Sites to Lose Traffic, Revenues

Filed Under: Forum Watch, SEO Technology Tagged With: , , , ,

Penguin Update Targets Link Schemes and Low-Quality Content

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Google’s much anticipated “over-optimization” algorithm update has been released. It was originally thought this new update would be called “Venice.” But in keeping the tradition of other updates that were named for animals (…think Panda), the search giant named this update “Penguin.”

We did have some forewarning this update was coming. As we discussed a little over a month ago, Google’s spam chief Matt Cutts was asked at the SXSW Conference what Google was doing about “overly-optimized” sites. Although it isn’t customary for Cutts and Google to announce an update ahead of time, he went on to explain how the search giant was planning an algorithmic update to deal with this issue.

So what is overly-optimized content?

In the context of the Penguin update, this can include content stuffed with keywords, shady link building and other practices. According to a report in Search Engine News and SEO Moz, sites negatively affected by the update likely have one or more of the following:

  • Low-quality or “spun” content
  • Questionable linking practices
  • Overuse of exact-match domains
  • Aggressive use of exact-match anchor text
  • Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links

Below is an example from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog of a site with unusual linking patterns and excessive use of keywords. Notice how the links have no relation to the content.

Courtesy of Google Webmaster Central blog

Best we and others can tell the update was rolled out to all languages simultaneously on April 24th. For searches in English, it’s estimated around 3.1% of queries were affected. To compare, the initial phase of Google’s Panda update affected 12% of searches done in English but in the beginning, Google said it would only affect 3% of searches.

But someone else’s loss could be someone else’s gain. Many sites who are not affected indeed improve their position following updates like Penguin.

From updates like Penguin and Panda, we can discern that Google prefers branded sites – early reports too indicate that sites with a good link profile survived the latest algorithmic update. We all know how Google has been targeting spam, unnatural links and low-quality sites for a long time. This latest “update” is simply a continuation down that road.

Penguin is a lot like Panda in that it is an “algorithmic” update – meaning that if you were affected, submitting a reconsideration request with Google won’t get you very far. Basically what you have to do is remove the spam, clean up your site and wait for a data refresh and re-crawl.

That of course can take weeks.

If you feel your site was caught in the filter by mistake, there is a form you can complete to petition Google. You can also visit your Webmaster Tools account or use Google’s Webmaster Forum to inquire about your site.

It’s suggested however that you be real careful in pursuing these options. Be absolutely sure your site doesn’t have an issue with it to cause it to be legitimately filtered during an update.

Check back with us again in the next couple of weeks as we explore things that can trigger a loss in rankings through algorithmic updates.

Was your site affected by the Penguin update?

If so, what was the issue and what are you doing to address it?

Other Posts You May Be Interested In

Answer these 23 Questions to Understand What Google Looks For

Upcoming Google Update to Penalize “Over-Optimized” Sites

3 Steps You Should Take Before Linking to another Site

8 Ways you can safely sell Links on your Website

Google Panda Update Causes Some Sites to Lose Traffic, Revenues

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , ,
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