Google Announces Panda 4.0
Google Announces Panda 4.0
Content Marketing – Quality is Even More Important
In a move sure to create shivers of concern for people that have a high place in search Google’s Matt Cutts announced yesterday that it’s rolling out Panda 4.0. This is the latest upgrade to the content quality ranking system that Google uses. The reason for the concern is that anyone with less than adequate content quality will be moved down in search position.
Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to prevent sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results.
Content marketing is like evolution and this means that it is the survival of the fittest. High quality content counts and counts more with Panda 4.0. This evolutionary perspective is good for business in general. The best win out and the content consuming public wins because they have better content.
Better, in this case, means:
- Better written
- More variety (images, video, podcasts . . .)
- Easier to find (thank you Google)
- Related to other materials with links
- Easier to scan and to navigate
- Faster to load
The content creators have to get better with Panda making judgment calls on the quality of their content. This evolutionary process drives the whole system forward. We are, collectively, the better for it but some will win and some will lose. Such it is with Google and their Panda 4.0 update. Google believes that those low-level page and blog post creators are damaging to the Google search service. Thus they are continually changing the algorithms in order to protect their customers (the searching public) against the low quality content creators.
Some may say that I am extending this idea of evolution and survival of the fittest analogy too far. The market and business in general move forward because of directed experimentation and a measure and modify approach. Evolution may be entirely blind and random with no controlling influence directing experiments, monitoring results and making adjustments. However, the underlying similarities between business and evolution remain. We need to evolve as the environment around us changes; we need to evolve as our competitors change. It is not necessarily the changes we make that enable us to survive (perhaps even flourish) but rather the surrounding environment that determines which innovations or modifications will survive.
Google is part of our online business environment and we need to be aware of how to survive and flourish when big changes occur in our environment. The key message of Google with Panda and the evolution of Panda is that content is still King and quality counts!
About Gary Horsman