Google is the most widely used search engine today. How Google searches for and presents its search results is therefore very relevant, not only to individuals and companies that have an online presence, but also to users. Recently Google updated its ranking algorithm from the previously used PageRank to Google Panda. This has completely changed the way in which Google analyses the quality of web content.
Google previously used a process which calculated the rank of individual web pages based on the number of external hyperlinks that point to that page. While the actual algorithm may be highly complex, there is a simple way to understand PageRank. Take any webpage on the internet, the probability that a person clicking on random links on the internet will land on that particular page is its ranking.
This system led to content achieving higher results, irrespective of the actual quality of the website, but simply because more links pointed to it. It also led to cases where websites containing copied and unreliable content received a higher ranking than better more authentic websites. This could be primarily why Google updated its search system to one that was able to analyse quality more accurately.
Google employed human testers to interact with millions of websites on the internet. Data was gathered about the quality of the content, usability as well as reliability. This information was then analysed to find similarities between what were thought by the testers to be high quality websites, and those that were considered poor. It is this that forms the basis of Google Panda, making it much more accurate and intelligent in its analysis. It has been updated a few times and new versions have been released; the latest version, Google Panda v3.3, was rolled out in February 2012.
On the internet, ranking is very important, as the higher the ranking the more likelihood that users will take a look at your site. Studies show that most people do not go beyond the second page of Google search results while conducting a search, so a high ranking is much like an accessible showroom in a good location on the high street. As such, Panda has strongly impacted content generation and advertising on the internet.
The World Wide Web is a vast and ever expanding space. The number of web pages on the internet is increasing every minute. Determining the quality of web content is therefore a task of monumental proportions. It is practically impossible for any system that is designed to do this to be completely flawless, and there are issues with Google Panda as well.
On the whole however, Google Panda is much more effective at spotting high quality content and weeding out spam content that only serves as link building fodder. Also, pages with huge amounts of advertising now typically get lower rankings. Panda makes it more important than ever to put out quality and valuable content on websites if a high ranking is to be achieved.
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The article author contributes regular content relating to copywriting and commercial writing. For more information on content marketing, please visit http://www.thecopybox.co.uk
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