Panda 4.0: Helping Small Businesses Kick Butt

Google, the godfather of Search, has leveled the playing field of search engine optimization. Google’s release of Panda 4.0 helps small businesses while hurting bigger more well-known web brands known for publishing low-quality content.

Google’s Matt Cutts announced that Panda 4.0, a new algorithm designed to rank the best sites for search engine results, has just been released. The new algorithm changes the way Google identifies sites to appear in its results and has been the cause of debate over which sites were affected the most in the web design community.

The update is said to affect ~7.5% of all search queries in the English language. The sites that were hurt the most by the update are major web brands known for publishing spammy, useless content to benefit their search rankings. Ebay.com, ask.com and biography.com have all been confirmed as losing a significant portion of their search traffic.

Other sites, however, were able to benefit from the changes made to Google’s algorithm. Google strives to point users to the highest quality content on the web and Panda 4.0 has helped sites that create original and interesting content. The biggest winner of Google’s update was glassdoor.com, a site intended to provide helpful information to job seekers. Emedicinehealth.com and medterms.com have also seen a significant rise in traffic.

Google’s update is intended to be helpful to small businesses and “lays the groundwork” for future iterations of the algorithm. Are you interested in Boston SEO? Contact us today.