Google Panda is a change to the Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011 .[1] The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.[1][2] CNET reported a surge in the rankings of news websites and social Networking sites, and a drop in rankings for sites containing large amounts of advertising.[3] This change reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12 percent of all search results.[4] Soon after the Panda rollout, many websites,[5] including Google's webmaster forum, became filled with complaints of scrapers/copyright infringers getting better rankings than sites with original content. At one point, Google publicly asked for data points[6] to help detect scrapers better. Google's Panda has received several updates since the original rollout in February 2011, and the effect went global in April 2011. To help affected publishers, Google published an advisory on its blog, thus giving some direction for self-evaluation of a website's quality.In short it affected organic search and Affiliate Marketing a lot[7] and SEOs have changed their working style a lot.
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Google Panda was built through an algorithm update that used artificial intelligence in a more sophisticated and scalable way than previously possible. Human quality testers rated thousands of websites based on measures of quality, including design, trustworthiness, speed and whether or not they would return to the website.[8] Google's new Panda machine-learning algorithm, made possible by and named after engineer Navneet Panda,[4] was then used to look for similarities between websites people found to be high quality and low quality.
Many new ranking factors have been introduced to the Google algorithm as a result, while older ranking factors like PageRank have been downgraded in importance. Google Panda is updated from time to time and the algorithm is run by Google on regular basis.[9]
In addition to other changes, Panda seems to be very focused on the date of a web page. Some experts think this has adversely impacted sites with lots of evergreen content. Because this evergreen content usually has a publication date that is not recent, Panda seems to reduce its visibility in search results. For searchers looking for in-depth information, many of these evergreen posts are great sources of knowledge on a topic. If these evergreen web pages happen to be on a blog, they also often contain a long comment thread with lots of additional, valuable information. One thing Google may have to address in future Panda updates is that when evergreen pages are buried in search results in favor of pages that are much more superficial in nature, but much more recently published, the value of the search results may be reduced.