Panda 4.1 Winners and Losers Revealed

Panda 4.1 Arrives: Who Are The Winners And Losers?

Just under a week of its “slow rollout,” Google’s latest Panda update has already had a big impact on some websites and some forms of online content. The algorithm is designed to filter out “thin” content from higher search rankings. The current update is basically an improved version of the 4.0 algorithm, with Google affirming that 4.1 is more precise in identifying low-quality content.

According to the announcement, the search engine giant discovered some signals based on user and webmaster feedback that can help Panda promote more high-quality content and drive out poor, low-quality ones. Thus, the latest Panda update is said to result in a “greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher.”

While the rollout is expected to continue into next week, Searchmetrics has already published data on the winners and losers of Panda 4.1 on its blog. By plotting data based on the organic SEO visibility for each domain for all researched keywords and comparing them with data before 4.1 began rolling out, Searchmetrics was able to put the update to the test.

What domains have experienced decreased or increased visibility on Google after the latest Panda update?

As per the report, the winners were mostly sites in the news industry and download portals with high quality, original content. In fact, some of the big winners were former Panda casualties who have redeemed themselves with the arrival of this new update. These include: rd.com, Spoonful.com, ivillage.com, and Hotelguides.com. [See Figure 1 for the top 15 list of Panda 4.1 winners in the U.S.]

Figure 1

On the other hand, Searchmetrics reported that games and lyrics portals, as well as some sites dealing with medical content, were considered the initial Panda 4.1 losers. The list included big names like hallmark.com, ehow.com, and medterms.com, with medterms.com seeing 40% of their web visibility disappear, crashing from 286,956 to 172.836. [See Figure 2 for the top 15 list of Panda 4.1 losers in the U.S.]

Figure 2

According to Searchmetrics founder Marcus Tober, sites with medical content, along with games and lyrics portals, took the biggest hits because they’re interpreted by the Panda algorithm as aggregators of “thin” content. “In general, it hit pages with thin content. Aggregators do not provide unique and relevant content,” Tober said in the report.

To learn more about the latest Panda update, see our Panda 4.1 article.

Do you agree with the data findings of Searchmetrics? How was your site affected by the latest Google Panda update? Let us know what you think by leaving your comments below!

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