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21042104

Google’s Panda Update Rolls-out To UK

 

google_panda

By Marcus Tober

As you’ve probably read somewhere recently (or maybe you were impacted by directly),  Google released the “Panda Update” – labelled the “Farmer Update” Thursday February 24.
Thanks to our leading SEO analytics software, the Searchmetrics Suite, we were able to show which websites were both negatively and positively impacted by this update. Check-out the full post here.

Google’s Panda Update now hit the UK

However, as we quickly realized, the update was only released for Google.com. Thus it has not affected any other countries until yesterday when Google announced that it has rolled out Panda globally to all English-language Google users. Interestingly, Google confirms that for this update it’s also using user data from its “block these pages from your results” function.

We’ve performed an analysis with millions of different keywords in the short -and longtail of the impact of this update. We analyzed the top 100 domains with the greatest gains and losses in our Organic Performance Index (OPI) from the previous week. The OPI is calculated according to a keyword’s search volume, position and the statistical value of traffic distribution.

The update is made every week and we can definitely confirm that the update has hit the UK – in a big way.

eHow.com and co.uk lost more than 50%

Surprisingly, ehow.co.uk and ehow.com has lost more than 50% in terms of visibility and the alarm bells are probably going off at Qype.co.uk which has lost a whopping 96%! A lot of price comparison sites like ciao.co.uk (in a lawsuit with Google) and dooyoo.co.uk also lost nearly 90% of visibility.

Some interesting graphs (click to enlarge):

Ciao.co.uk lost ~94% of SEO visibility

Ciao.co.uk

eHow.com and eHow.co.uk lost over 50%

Ehow.co.uk

Hubpages lost also in the UK index

Hubpages.com

Reviewcentre.com is in absolute numbers the biggest loser

Reviewcentre.com

Cheap flights comparison site airfaresflights.co.uk lost ~95% SEO visibility. Some competitors like skyscanner only 4%.

Airfaresflights.co.uk

Dooyoo.co.uk has the same fate like Ciao.co.uk with a ~94% loss

Dooyoo.co.uk

Point-of-interest community Qype.co.uk is now in the middle of nowhere

Qype.co.uk

The full list of 100 losers in percentage:

domain Visbility (OPI) new Visibility (OPI) old difference loss in %
reviewcentre.com 68096 648704 -580608 -89,50%
myvouchercodes.co.uk 289948 661560 -371612 -56,17%
ciao.co.uk 20723 335697 -314974 -93,83%
dooyoo.co.uk 14654 282837 -268183 -94,82%
promotionalcodes.org.uk 31992 262717 -230725 -87,82%
about.com 543243 760583 -217340 -28,58%
brothersoft.com 90625 295898 -205273 -69,37%
everydaysale.co.uk 3822 175800 -171978 -97,83%
answers.com 142129 310111 -167982 -54,17%
pocket-lint.com 2128 165956 -163828 -98,72%
robtex.com 61832 218644 -156812 -71,72%
hubpages.com 26099 182704 -156605 -85,72%
netvouchercodes.co.uk 1935 152376 -150441 -98,73%
mahalo.com 31609 166781 -135172 -81,05%
markosweb.com 12844 136590 -123746 -90,60%
qype.co.uk 5307 126801 -121494 -95,81%
biznut.co.uk 3865 118715 -114850 -96,74%
discountvouchers.co.uk 65751 178428 -112677 -63,15%
ehow.com 93902 201781 -107879 -53,46%
wikio.co.uk 10627 114833 -104206 -90,75%
ehow.co.uk 33402 120596 -87194 -72,30%
airfaresflights.co.uk 4100 89924 -85824 -95,44%
ip-adress.com 26274 111986 -85712 -76,54%
voucherhub.com 9756 84783 -75027 -88,49%
wakoopa.com 1334 71525 -70191 -98,13%
vouchercodes.com 21481 91535 -70054 -76,53%
techradar.com 49761 116832 -67071 -57,41%
reghardware.com 6133 72206 -66073 -91,51%
discountshoppinguk.co.uk 491 66270 -65779 -99,26%
twenga.co.uk 5690 71095 -65405 -92,00%
wisegeek.com 21680 83584 -61904 -74,06%
electricpig.co.uk 1678 60882 -59204 -97,24%
whosdatedwho.com 2314 60476 -58162 -96,17%
pricedash.com 127 55141 -55014 -99,77%
cylex-uk.co.uk 2010 56744 -54734 -96,46%
webdevelopersnotes.com 583 54948 -54365 -98,94%
voucherseeker.co.uk 9086 62342 -53256 -85,43%
ezinearticles.com 3577 56704 -53127 -93,69%
savoo.co.uk 4047 56118 -52071 -92,79%
killerstartups.com 869 52717 -51848 -98,35%
fairinvestment.co.uk 43728 92214 -48486 -52,58%
justtheflight.co.uk 2500 50806 -48306 -95,08%
radioandtelly.co.uk 2539 49276 -46737 -94,85%
shopzilla.co.uk 40470 86937 -46467 -53,45%
pcadvisor.co.uk 39730 85628 -45898 -53,60%
aceshowbiz.com 907 46188 -45281 -98,04%
techwatch.co.uk 12341 56793 -44452 -78,27%
shopping.com 15402 59608 -44206 -74,16%
hotfrog.co.uk 1124 44863 -43739 -97,49%
buyyourcar.co.uk 41542 85021 -43479 -51,14%
comparestoreprices.co.uk 5658 48219 -42561 -88,27%
associatedcontent.com 2239 44158 -41919 -94,93%
worldtravelguide.net 6245 47922 -41677 -86,97%
wikio.com 1819 43194 -41375 -95,79%
softonic.com 184838 225647 -40809 -18,09%
yourdictionary.com 20625 60991 -40366 -66,18%
buzzle.com 7113 47319 -40206 -84,97%
fanpix.net 3340 43163 -39823 -92,26%
couponsnapshot.co.uk 1845 41463 -39618 -95,55%
zath.co.uk 161 39768 -39607 -99,60%
moneypage.com 25 39231 -39206 -99,94%
computing.net 11689 50721 -39032 -76,95%
just-food.com 293 39282 -38989 -99,25%
freedownloadscenter.com 6349 45040 -38691 -85,90%
voucherstar.co.uk 126 38748 -38622 -99,67%
idealo.co.uk 5846 44100 -38254 -86,74%
techeye.net 1879 38828 -36949 -95,16%
flightmapping.com 13086 47787 -34701 -72,62%
suite101.com 1658 35957 -34299 -95,39%
visit4info.com 2092 36365 -34273 -94,25%
mobileshop.com 35495 69436 -33941 -48,88%
computerweekly.com 1733 35299 -33566 -95,09%
techworld.com 1400 34923 -33523 -95,99%
themecraft.net 1163 34070 -32907 -96,59%
phonesreview.co.uk 864 33418 -32554 -97,41%
articlesbase.com 4139 36568 -32429 -88,68%
yourcounty.co.uk 5094 37145 -32051 -86,29%
broadbandgenie.co.uk 11156 43181 -32025 -74,16%
trustpilot.co.uk 3868 35230 -31362 -89,02%
shopsafe.co.uk 1064 32359 -31295 -96,71%
itproportal.com 1245 32533 -31288 -96,17%
londontown.com 10315 41456 -31141 -75,12%
njobs.org.uk 92 30693 -30601 -99,70%
aboutbritain.com 2877 33327 -30450 -91,37%
kgbanswers.co.uk 1009 31427 -30418 -96,79%
play.com 305883 336067 -30184 -8,98%
shoppingvouchers.co.uk 134 30056 -29922 -99,55%
xomba.com 4050 33916 -29866 -88,06%
squidoo.com 52450 81811 -29361 -35,89%
autopartstrader.co.uk 1162 30282 -29120 -96,16%
mydeco.com 34252 63063 -28811 -45,69%
pcwb.co.uk 3447 31890 -28443 -89,19%
hunkymalestars.com 1638 29970 -28332 -94,53%
soft82.com 8747 37062 -28315 -76,40%
passport.net 94318 122568 -28250 -23,05%
money.co.uk 25726 53588 -27862 -51,99%
reevoo.com 38253 65519 -27266 -41,62%
soccerlens.com 2216 29481 -27265 -92,48%
screenrush.co.uk 1093 27930 -26837 -96,09%
osoyou.com 96 26668 -26572 -99,64%

You can download the loser list here.

And now for the top 20 winners. Nothing drastic here, but some confirmation that sites where users spend a lot of time looking at pages have gained more visibility following the update.

domain Visibility (OPI) new Visibility (OPI) old difference %
ebay.co.uk 1469346 1034302 435044 42.06%
techcrunch.com 174797 124220 50577 40.72%
national-lottery.co.uk 292053 209357 82696 39.50%
econsultancy.com 186175 135804 50371 37.09%
thisismoney.co.uk 234717 180377 54340 30.13%
siteslike.com 175869 140279 35590 25.37%
mirror.co.uk 275876 220937 54939 24.87%
blogspot.com 1006719 819832 186887 22.80%
mashable.com 295137 240714 54423 22.61%
itv.com 345470 282300 63170 22.38%
metro.co.uk 181507 149271 32236 21.60%
independent.co.uk 471896 388280 83616 21.53%
mozilla.org 146282 122471 23811 19.44%
youtube.com 8856696 7446902 1409794 18.93%
vimeo.com 168979 142182 26797 18.85%
wordpress.com 331836 279738 52098 18.62%
laterooms.com 150533 127297 23236 18.25%
dailymotion.com 577590 490328 87262 17.80%
soundcloud.com 150998 128569 22429 17.45%

Download the Top100 winners here. That’s all for now and we’ll be monitoring the post-release impact very closely as this will be coming very soon to the rest of the World.

Marcus Tober

Marcus Tober

My name is Marcus Tober and I’m the founder of Searchmetrics. Because we really love to analyze all kinds of online data, we can give you more insights than any other company in SEO, SEM and Social Media. It’s not a job, it’s passion.

41 thoughts on “Google’s Panda Update Rolls-out To UK


  • This update has hit my site a little too 🙁 but still its really nice to see Google getting soo tough.

    So now a site with excellent content will win the race and the site which just wins coz of too many links will loose the race. CONTENT IS KING… I just love this now 🙂

    I will have to work on it a bit and have to do some good SEO by doing manual link building.

  • Jacobus @ Videomarketing NL 2013/03/09 at 10:00 pm

    Interesting to see that a site like ezinearticles is losing so much. Further there seem to be quite some voucher and download sites on the losers list… It was about time I would say. Not a lot of valuable content on those usually.

  • Every time when google updates its algorithms it becomes a day of celebration for me because it gets increase my blogs SERP to a different extent and google search engine traffic keep on increasing by tons

  • Hi

    In our experience Google is now using more and more hard data to rank websites. Task completion and bounce rates are driving the Panda algorithm. If your website/pages do not deliver what the (Google searcher) is looking for, and the searcher bounces back to Google in double quick time – expect your SERPS ranking to drop according to Panda!

    Paul Brewster

  • Then work on your meta description so that it appeals to searchers.
    Secure sensible ideas and employ good methods to deal with this procedure.
    Your SEO professional will be up to create an online
    presence and back links which will help improve your ranking position. For
    companies who are new to and are looking for SEO services, finding a provider who can give professional SEO services can be a great challenge.
    Also look for less than 100 backlinks pointing to that keyword.

  • It’s interesting how google managed to gave pagerank less value. It’s seems now everything is about content quality plus backlink quality with more focus on DA with PA.

    However still some of the webmasters seems to get away from there black hat seo method. Found out that some sites still ranked for about 6 months with lots cheap and crappy backlinks.

  • It was really surprising to know that websites like ezine, amzon are losing. I loved the fact that now it’s time for quality and not quantity of links you have in various websites. Thanks for giving such an amazing article.
    Cheers!

  • thanks you for sharing

  • Thanks for covering the topic well.

    We often find it challenging with a vast number of Panda myths reported as fact. This can result in unnecessary steps taken and then later need re-doing as webmasters attempting to “fix” Panda related errors. A false, but long-held belief that webmasters must remove every low-quality content page from a site to recover is a key example of this.

    Throw into the confusion the current state of other SEO optimization strategies. If employing several at one time, it makes it harder to identify possible reasons behind whether Panda impacts a site at all. It takes real data and know-how to determine if it is rather from one of the hundreds of ranking signals that Google changes or updates every year.

  • Thank you


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