Google is rolling out Panda 4.0 update starting today

Matt Cutts tweeted that Google has released Panda 4.0 on 21^st May 2014. The panda update is to avoid the low quality content site appearing in top search results of Google. First Google update rolled out on Feb 24 2011 followed by many major and minor update and even data refresh.

After many monthly refresh, Panda 4.0 is considered as one of the major update. Google says that this update has varying influence on various languages. In English the impact is ~7.5%.

As a result of Panda 4.0, some major sites have moved down in SERP and some sites have seen improvement in ranking. As all know, Panda 4.0 mainly target the content. The sites with duplicate or syndicated content been hit and dropped down. On the other hand some sites that were previously punished by panda have seen a positive impact by this update. This means that they have started publishing their own quality content.

Panda 4.0 Update – Big Hit To Ebay

Ebay is the biggest loser, dropped for 33% of searches and no more in top 10 rankings. Not only ebay but also Ask.com, biography.com, retailmenot.com, spoonful.com and few more has been dropped in Google SERP

On the other side, glassdoor.com, emedicinehealth.com, zimbio.com, medterms.com and few more sites are big winners that gained ranking by panda 4.0

Duane Forrester, Sr Product Manager of Bing talks about natural links

Duane Forrester, Sr Product Manager of Bing posted “10 SEO Myths Reviewed” on official Bing blog. The blog post revolves around the SEO tips on what should be done to rank your site. The post is very clear about the title tags, social, video, ads, content, links and so on.

The point he makes about the link is so obvious. Duane says,

“You want links to surprise you. You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path.”

http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2014/05/09/10-seo-myths-reviewed.aspx

This clearly highlights that you should not do anything that would get link from other source. To make it simple, one should not buy links or even request webmasters to link to your site.

Natural links are appreciated by search engines and thereby better rankings in search results.

Matt Cutts – Significance of links will fall in Google over time

Google search engine algorithm was actually based on evaluating the content and backlinks. But currently, after panda and penguin updates, webmasters believe that more importance is given only for content and not for backlinks. Many webmasters just wanted to know if backlinks have lost their importance.

Matt Cutts says, “ Over time, backlinks will become a little less important.”

He says that Google strives to provide best search results for user queries. So links still hold their value in order to find the reputation of the site. Though backlinks are considered as a factor, quality of the content in the page is given more importance while ranking. He emphasizes that the reputation actually maters but not as much as the content of the page.

Currently the Google search engine results are still depending on the links but this will change soon. Cutts admits that links will lose its importance in the upcoming days.

Google still needs to better understand about user needs, what they actually want so that the search results can be delivered better.