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Corrine Guest, who specializes in Barrington real estate, asked when everyone will see the changes Panda is making.  Note:  People who ask questions get a nice link!

The first Panda release was done in February of 2011.  Almost immediately, there were changes in the result pages.

For example, article sites saw their rankings go down, such as AssociatedContent.com, FindArticles.com and EZineArticles.com.  Interestingly, EZine was hit less, which some are attributing to the higher standards they set for articles on their website.

According to statistics published by SearchMetrics.com, some websites just got better.  For example, YouTube increased its visibility.  So, if you are doing videos and hosting them on YouTube, this should help you, also.  Other winners include Zappos.com and WashingtonPost.com.

Zappos surprised me until I went and really looked at their website.  For their type of site, they do a pretty good job of including interesting information on the product pages.  From what I saw, there is a section devoted to product information, then much lower down on the page, you’ll find an “About” section.

That section includes more background and information about the product and/or the manufacturer, along with lots of links to other pages on the site.  Their internal linking structure is pretty great.  I also saw duplication on product pages.  If the manufacturer was described, for example, that description is the same for all the products sold by that company.  But, that must not be a big issue for Google.

Some of the more recent losers were PRNewsWire.com and Technorati.com.

Unfortunately, the answer to Corinne’s question is: nobody knows.  There have been a number of updates since February.  Will there be more?  Possibly.

If you’ve put a lot of work into your website, and you’re fighting for position with a website that has no content or anything else to offer a visitor, and that website is winning, I don’t know what to tell you.

According to the objectives of Panda, that dull site should have dropped out of the rankings.  Has Google adjusted every search term ever used?  Just an opinion, but it seems like that might be happening over time since it’s such a huge task.

Are there factors about a website that could totally outweigh Panda rules?  It doesn’t seem like there should be, but I’m not sure about that, either.

My advice to anyone in that situation is to just keep on building your website.  Maybe you’ll never rank above that dull site, but the odds are you’ll rank higher than a lot of other folks.

P.S.  Got questions about Panda or another real estate marketing issue?  Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post.  You, too, could get a nice link to your website like Dave’s on this post!

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That’s an excellent question asked by Dave Kinkade who specializes in  Tampa Leasing and Property Management.   Hope you like the link here, Dave.

There were several mentions of the Panda rules leading us toward better looking sites in the other Panda posts on this blog.  So, I thought I’d explain a bit more about what I was saying.

As you may recall, the Panda update was based on the feedback from quality raters – people who cruised the web and let Google folks know what they liked and didn’t like.  The engineers at Google then created a set of metrics to describe that feedback.

So, Metrics Recognize Pretty Websites?

No, not really.  A metric is a standard measure used to assess something.  The question, then, is how can a metric measure beauty?

I think the key is that the metric isn’t assessing and probably couldn’t assess beauty.  I know that very well because a design that one client loves, another client looks at and hates. So, that is a great illustration of the fact that it would be impossible for Google to judge beauty.  Even people can’t agree on what’s beautiful!

What Kind of Ugly Can Google Assess?

When I said that ugly had to go, I wasn’t referring to the layout of the header or the color scheme.  To me, an ugly site is one that has bad design, including these types of things:

1. The fonts used are huge so it looks like the site is yelling at me.
2. The color scheme makes the site hard to read.  I mean not just a blue and green that I think look horrible together.  I mean red lettering on a blue background that makes your eyes vibrate – and I’ve seen a site with that color scheme.
3. There are 42 colors used on the site, so I can’t tell what is a link, what is important, etc.
4. There are 4 areas of navigation.  I need a roadmap to get back to a page I saw earlier.
5. There are so many ads I can’t figure out what is content and which links will take me to a shady website I didn’t plan to visit.
6. The website is so wide that I have to scroll sideways to see the whole thing.
7. There is just writing on the page – no graphics to break it up so it becomes a chore to read.
8. The line lengths are longer than they should be on a website and it is a chore to read.

Now, I don’t know if Goggle’s quality raters came up with any of those 8 things as they reviewed a bunch of websites.  But, what if they had?  Could Google interpret the code as it crawled a site and find those problems?  Sure could.

All of those things are clearly set out in the code that Google is reading anyway.  Ever heard that Google will penalize a site that has lettering (usually keywords) that can’t be seen by the human eye?  Something like white letters on a white background?  If Google can figure that out, it can surely look for the 8 things listed above.

And, I do believe that while you are fixing all of those problems, you need a professional look to your site.  I have proof that it matters.  More than one client has had an increase in the number of leads a site produced after a facelift.  No additional SEO, it was just that the people who were already landing on the site were more likely to fill out a form.

So, don’t worry about coming up with the most ornate, expensive and beautiful design known to man.  Just make sure that your site looks professional and provides a quality user experience!

 P.S.  Got questions about Panda or another real estate marketing issue?  Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post.  You, too, could get a nice link to your website like Dave’s on this post!

See all the posts related to the Panda Update,
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As you know if you’ve been following this series of posts, Google is trying to reduce rankings for low-quality sites with the Panda update, using machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence.

Some of the selection criteria Google may use with the Panda update were discussed previously, including design and content. The last part of the puzzle relates to the other criteria that we may not have been too concerned with in the past, but that deserve more attention now.

Pay Attention to the Visitors!

If your site visitors are happy, Google will be happy, too.  So, how does Google figure out if your visitors are happy?  There are a number of ways:

• Do visitors stay on your site?  Look at your statistics for length of a visit.   Google is doing the same thing.  If your visitors are staying on your site for 5 seconds, Google may assume that your site isn’t attractive to your visitors so they don’t engage with the site.
• Do visitors engage with the site by visiting various pages?  Look at your statistics for depth of visit, showing how many pages an average visitor views.  If your visitors are looking at one page, then leaving, Google may assume that your site isn’t attractive to your visitors so they don’t engage with the site.
• Do visitors go back to search results to find another site?  If a visitor hits your site, then returns to their previous search to find a better site, Google may assume your site has problems.
• Do visitors return to your site?  Look at your loyalty statistics or reports that show new vs. returning visitors.  If 99% of your visitors are on your site for the first time, Google may assume the site has a problem.

If Google thinks your site has a problem, the site may not fit into the new algorithm Panda uses to identify “good” websites.   How can Google come up with all these statistics?   In an example of perfect timing, Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz recently published a great graphic to explain how this works.  The graphic is shown below and used with his permission.

A Panda Summary

• Google is using a type of new artificial intelligence to rank websites according to somewhat different criteria than before.
• Your real estate website now has to do more things right.  Panda doesn’t mean that existing SEO efforts such as good content and incoming links are no longer important.
• Google has added criteria for ranking success such as:
• A professional, modern looking website
• No tolerance for low quality pages
• Content must not only be plentiful and original, it also must be interesting
• A visitor’s experience, as measured by statistics such as those discussed above, must be managed

All of the Panda changes lead to one conclusion:  Webmasters and those of us who assist webmasters must think strategically, not tactically.

Plan Your Strategy

Luckily, we’ve always worked with clients from a strategic planning perspective.   We don’t insist that a website needs a $5000 design to be successful, but we encourage clients to have a professional-looking site.  Actually, in the past, it has been my experience that some very ugly websites have been very successful.  I don’t think that will hold true in the future.

We have helped clients by writing interesting original content, not just paragraphs with strategically positioned keyword phrases.  We’ve worked with them to add calls to action and to find compelling propositions that will keep visitors on the site and raising their hands for help.

The great thing now is that those things are no longer “nice to haves”.  Google will demand that we all get on board.  I think it will be a challenge, but I think it will move all of us in the right direction.  We’ll be forced to create websites that aren’t set up just to get Google rankings – we’ll actually have to satisfy the visitor to be successful!

See all the posts related to the Panda Update,
or click on the Panda tag at the bottom of each post.

Google is trying to reduce rankings for low-quality sites with the Panda update, using machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence.

If Google’s search engine was going to learn to recognize a quality website, it was necessary to come up with criteria that could be used to make that determination.

Google’s Quality Raters

Google started by getting a group of “quality raters” and asking them to rank a variety of websites.  The raters were asked questions like “Would you trust this site with your credit card?” and “Do you think the design of this site is good?”  In other words, Google wanted to know how people rated a website’s trustworthiness, credibility, quality and where the raters thought the site should rank.

After gathering all of this data, Google researched the characteristics of the “good” sites and those of the “bad sites”.  Then, they came up with the machine learning approach that would allow the search engine to apply what had been learned to the sites that were crawled on the Internet.

The end result is that the job of getting a website ranked has changed.  Now, every aspect of a website has to be well-done in order to get good ranking.

A Pretty Face is More Important

Up until now, my experience has been that ugly sites can rank as well as professional looking websites.  It looks like that will be changing.  Google is starting to incorporate how users feel about their experience on a website into the ranking algorithm.  If the site is too busy, or full of ads, or difficult to navigate, or looks like it was designed in 1980, there will be a negative impact on the site’s ranking.

All for One and One for All

A very important point has to do with the consistency of quality pages on a website.  According to Google, low quality pages on an otherwise fantastic website will negatively impact the ability of the entire website to rank well.

This is especially applicable in the real estate industry.  Website providers stock websites with standard content to get the site off to a “good” start.  Information providers offer pre-written or pre-recorded articles and videos about general real estate issues.

Starting now, if you do use those type of pages, make sure the only reason you’re doing it is because you think your visitors will find that information compelling.  And, make sure that you “hide” the pages from the search engines using a “noindex” tag.  In that way, you can have the pages on the site without any impact on the site’s overall ability to rank well.

Content is More than King

I don’t know what catch phrase we will use now to describe website content.  We’ve all been saying that content is King for quite a while.  What do you suppose is better or more important than King?  Queen?  No?  Chief Executive King?  CEK?

Anyway, you get the idea that content is going to be even more important.  So, what does that mean?  If you think you’ve been adding content up until now, take another look at it.  At times, you may think you have quality content, but all you really have is words on a page.

Let’s say you have a page about a local community called Smalltown.  I’ve seen many “SEO writers” put together a page that has keyword phrases in all the right places – the title of the page and sprinkled throughout the content.  But, the information itself is boring enough to put the visitor into a coma after the first few sentences.

When that happens, it’s obvious that the writer hasn’t put themselves in the shoes of the site visitor.  There is no life on the page.  The page doesn’t answer any questions that someone might have if they were evaluating Smalltown as a new home.  It might have demographics (would you be more or less attracted to a town if you knew it had a daytime population 50% greater than the resident population?  didn’t think so)

Or, maybe the writer came up with paragraph after paragraph of content that could apply to any community, with lots of keyword phrases thrown in.  Something like:

• “Smalltown is perfect for families, singles or retirees.  The quality of the amenities in the area is outstanding.  If you are an outdoor enthusiast, you’ll find a lot to like about Smalltown.”

Did that excerpt say anything?  Ah, no.  So, as we have always done for our clients, you need to have:

• content that is well-written
• keyword phrases on the page
• specific and interesting information about a community or topic

A potential client coming away from the page needs to have learned something they didn’t know, and something that answers questions they might have about the area.

Look for the 4th and last post in this series.  It will discuss other types of user experience criteria we all need to be more aware of.  Got questions about what’s going on?  Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post.

See all the posts related to the Panda Update,
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Google is trying to reduce rankings for low-quality sites with the Panda update.  What makes Panda such a game-changing update?

New Technology Supports the Panda Update

Panda got its name from Navneet Panda, a Google engineer.  It’s also been called the Farmer Update, but I have no idea where that name came from.  The result of Panda’s work gave Google the ability to use machine learning on a large scale.

Machine Learning isn’t that new.  It  is defined by BusinessDictionary.com as:  Ability of a machine to improve its own performance through the use of a software that employs artificial intelligence techniques to mimic the ways by which humans seem to learn, such as repetition and experience.

You may have been exposed to machine learning.  The first example that comes to my mind is your Spam Filter.  The email client that I use puts emails it thinks are OK into my inbox and those it thinks are spam into a spam folder.

Let’s say I get multiple emails from SpamIdiot.com, but they’re ending up in my Inbox.  I can click on the email and categorize it as Spam.  After doing that some number of times, the system starts to “understand” that any email from SpamIdiot.com should go in the Spam folder.  In that way, it is a machine that is learning!

The key part of the new technology for Google is the ability to use machine learning on a large scale.  Up until now, it took too much computer power to run machine learning software on the scale required by Google’s search engine.  The Panda update has eliminated that roadblock.

Now, Google’s Search Engine Really IS Thinking

I do tend to think of some inanimate objects as being alive.  My computer, for example.  I can be found scolding it for some infraction on a regular basis.  I also think of the search engines as being alive.  I tell people to think like a search engine.  The scary thing is that now, the engine really is thinking!

Before Panda, Google ranked websites using fairly concrete factors.  The engine could see how many links were coming in to a particular website, it could tell if the site contained duplicate content, it could tell how many pages of original content were on the website, and so forth.

After Panda, Google has expanded the criteria it uses to rank websites, and we all need to understand how to meet that criteria.  It’s true that the engines don’t tell us exactly how the algorithm works, but there are some things that are in the public domain.

From my perspective, the criteria has expanded, not replaced the old criteria.  People have asked me if building links is obsolete, for example.  But, it isn’t.  The difference is that there are just more things you need to attend to on a website in order to rank well in the post-Panda environment.

Look for more posts in this series about the Panda update.  Got questions about what’s going on?  Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post.

 See all the posts related to the Panda Update,
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Google’s new Panda World??  If you’re not familiar with Google’s Panda update, you need to get up to speed.  Why?  Because the Panda update has changed the strategy Google uses to rank websites.  If you don’t understand what is happening, you’ll be left behind in the effort to generate leads from a real estate website.

This series of posts is intended to help you :

• Understand why Google developed new strategies
• Understand how Panda works
• Understand what you can do to help your website flourish

Why now?  Well, a lot of the initial hysteria over the updates has calmed down.  Starting in February, 2011, the initial Panda update seemed to penalize sites that didn’t deserve it.  Five or six refinements later, the furor has died down, but the fact of the new direction Google is taking is still here.

If you’re a real techy, these posts may seem very elementary.   However, for the rest of us, I’m going to try to interpret what’s happening in a way that won’t cause most people’s eyes to glaze over.

About Google

Google makes changes to the algorithm they use to rank websites on a fairly regular basis.  Usually, we don’t even notice.  But, from time to time, they introduce a fairly major change in the way they rank websites.  The Panda update is one of those major changes.

This update has been going on for a while.  This year, there have been a series of updates in the Panda lifecycle, starting in February, 2011 and going through October.  No one will be surprised if there is more tweaking done with future releases.

To understand Google, you need to think from a search engine’s point of view.  To a search engine, people doing a search are its customers.  So, a search engine is always looking for ways to provide the best search results possible.

According to the Official Google Blog:

• “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

From a real estate industry perspective, what strikes you about that objective?  What immediately stands out to me is “copy content from other websites”.  If you’re using a website that has pages populated by the web designer, you need to take notice.

If you use the “standard” pages without preventing the search engines from reading them, you’re going to look like you’re copying content.  You’re not actually copying, but the search engine will see the same information on multiple websites and assume that a lot of copying is going on!

Look for more posts about the Panda update.  Got questions about what’s going on?  Leave a comment and I’ll try to answer them in an upcoming post.