Google’s Panda Update and the Future of Web Search
Google.com is the world’s most popular search engine and the world’s most visited website. For many people, Google is their primary means of getting information online. As of March 2011, Google was processing about a billion searches each day and that number keeps increasing. Because of this, web search, particularly Google’s web search, is crucial for millions of businesses around the world both online and offline. Offline businesses need a high search position to get noticed by consumers investigating their options online, and online businesses need a high search ranking to even be discovered by potential consumers. Keeping this in mind, it’s clear that many businesses have an enormous incentive to try to manipulate search results so they come out ahead. An entire search engine optimization (SEO) industry has formed to help businesses manipulate their search ranking and come out ahead under the assumption that a higher search rank will equate to higher profits.
However, that’s not what a search engine like Google wants. Google wants to deliver accurate content to their users, so they fight against people trying to game the system on a regular basis through two main routes. Their first defense is keeping their search algorithms secret; if people knew how Google’s search algorithms worked, they could figure out ways to beat it and compromise the integrity of Google’s results. (Also, if everyone else knew Google’s search algorithms, Google would lose their competitive advantage that comes from giving the best search results.)
Google’s second strategy is changing its search algorithm in response to the SEO industry and other people trying to game the system. Google started out with PageRank, a patented search method for ranking search results by importance based on hub and authority scores that we discussed in class. Google actually used a much more complex version of PageRank than what we talked about in class, and a lot of it is still a mystery, but the hubs and authorities model is still a pretty good way of thinking about what happens behind the scenes. (Fun fact: PageRank is actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page, not webpage rankings.) Throughout its existence, Google has had to keep changing how it determines search results to combat spam, advertisers and irrelevant content in a never-ending cycle. First, Google changes how search rankings are determined to improve the accuracy of its results. Then businesses respond by taking an SEO approach and changing their site content to match what they think Google’s search algorithms are looking for, so they’ll come out ahead of other search results. In response to that, Google then has to re-update how searches are conducted to give users better results, and the process repeats itself. This cycle has been going on for years. However, in March 2011, Google decided to completely overhaul its search algorithm in what is now known as Google’s Panda Update
(named after Google engineer Navneet Panda, not the bear).
The Panda update is also known as the Farmer update because it’s designed to get rid of content farms that link to pages that contain relevant text but don’t actually give a very useful search result. Content farms are designed to exploit PageRank by creating extra hubs and authorities that can cross-link to each other and enhance a page’s standing (even though it might not be what people want to find). For example, let’s say you searched for “motorcycle repair” because your Harley broke down and you want to get it fixed. A content farm might have links going out from a bunch of pages talking about motorcycles, motorcycle maintenance and other related terms to Steve’s Motorcycle Emporium, a business using SEO, so it would in theory come out ahead in the search algorithm when you look for “motorcycle repair.” However, that result isn’t the local repair place you were actually looking for, and it’s an example of a bad search that arises from when businesses try to game the search algorithm.
As we saw in the last problem set, adding new webpages that link to your own can have a big impact on your PageRank score. While PageRank is likely still part of how Google formulates searches, now they’ve added in a machine learning algorithm that’s incorporates input from site quality raters to refine search results. Many types of data are used in the new search algorithm, not just hubs and authorities, and it’s designed to find results that a real person would want to see. User metrics such as time spent on the site and browse rate (how many pages within the site a user looks at on average), along with content quality, site aesthetics, readability and likelihood of being shared now all matter in search results. Aaron Wheeler, the author of the article I selected, explains this change below:
If I get to a page about a motorcycle part and I am like, “God, not only is this well written, it’s kind of funny. It’s humorous. It includes some anecdotes. It’s got some history of this part. It has great photos. Man, I don’t care at all about motorcycle parts, and yet, this is just a darn good page. What a great page. If I were interested, I’d be tweeting about this, I’d share it. I’d send it to my uncle who buys motorcycles. I would love this page.” That’s what you have to optimize for. It is a totally different thing than optimizing for did I use the keyword at least three times? Did I put it in the title tag? Is it included in there? Is the rest of the content relevant to the keywords? Panda changes this. Changes it quite a bit.
Panda is designed to take human input into account. If Google’s quality raters said that they don’t like cluttered pages filled with boxy ads, Panda will keep that in mind and affect the page’s search rank accordingly. If a site has a bunch of annoying pages where you keep having to click next to get to new content, Panda will consider that in its ranking because it knows that people hate when that happens. Panda is all about giving users the experience they want from a search engine.
So, does this mean that web search as we know it is over? Probably not, but it’s certainly going to be different. Panda still needed some work at the time this article was written, and there were several complaints about unfair rankings since it came out, but it’s learning over time and getting better with each update. As Wheeler noted, one of Panda’s biggest changes is the transition from a search quality perspective to a user happiness perspective. Users are getting better results with less junk, and they’re happier about it. It’s likely that the future of web search, spearheaded by Panda, will involve much more user input in the forms of metrics and preferences to create an overall better user experience. And that’s what web search should really be about.
Sources: Google is the most visited site in the world
Google processes one billion search queries per day
PageRank is actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page, not webpage rankings.
How Google’s Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever
Google Panda 2.5 iS alive and running again many are disappointed, The Ranking is quiet unfair.
Todays google results are far away from perfect I see even parked domains ranking and a lot of really low quality pages filled withs ads and very little information. Right now it’s just a one big mess. I hope google will take care of it with another panda tweak.