Yesterday, Matt Cutts from Google announced that Google has updated its search algorithm to include Panda 4.0. At this time, there is no definitive word from Google on how Panda is working differently from previous releases. It appears that the Panda update is effecting sites that have thin content v. sites that have as Google puts it high quality content. This may include some of the following items, but is still subject to speculation and requires further analysis.

What is Panda 4.0 Effecting?

• Word count. If the page has less than 300 words, Google may consider it thin.
• Poor quality HTML. If the page has HTML that is not clean or is broken, Google may consider this to be low quality.
• Age of the post. If the post is dated and not updated this may effect quality as well.
• Authorship. Is the author or publisher identified in Google?
• Does schema information on the site help increase search results?

The bottom line is that a lot of sites are going to gain traffic. On the contrary, a lot will lose traffic in the next few days. Those that lose traffic will need to look at their site and see if there are ways they can improve the site structure so that the traffic can be recovered. This can a simple matter or complicated depending on how active the site has been over the last few years. The recommendations we have been making on things like a modern CMS, using structured data, using Google authorship and keeping the site updated will still hold true and may be more important now in the world of Panda 4.0

In the coming days and weeks, we will see loads of analysis for various SEOs on what Panda is effecting, we may also see some continuing updates to the algorithm as well as Google tries to fine tune the results. Lastly, there is rumors of a larger Penguin update on the horizon as well, but we won’t know for sure until we see Matt tweet us that the release has happened.