Google Panda Update: The Sudden Disappearance of Thriving Online Businesses on Search Engine Results
By Aline Heller
Location is a primary consideration among brick-and-mortar stores. Businesses willingly pay higher rates for prime retail locations. These locations are usually the ones that are visible and accessible from main roads and highways. The same is true for online businesses. The survival of a particular business will depend a lot on its visibility on the Internet, particularly, on whether they show up on the first page of search results provided by search engines.
Google’’s search system is the leader among Internet search engines. 82 percent of North American searches, as well as 95 percent of searches made by European Internet users, are done on Google’’s system. You can just imagine how powerful this search system is on online businesses in the Western world.
Some time in February 2011, Google made massive updates on its search system. And the expected result happened. Hundreds and thousands of online businesses saw their visitor statistics and income drop by 50 to 90 percent. Previously thriving businesses could hardly keep themselves adrift. Online business owners saw their livelihood disappear overnight.
What actually happened was Google decided to change its parameters for ranking Websites. This development was later given the moniker, Panda Update. Google’’s engineers downgraded the search ranking of Websites that are full of what they deem as useless content. Such Websites are those that rely on content copied from other Websites.
Google, however, was not intentionally targeting specific online businesses. In fact, their reason for going through the Panda update was to maintain their dominance over their competitors in the search engine industry, particularly Microsoft-operated Bing, Yahoo and Yelp, the search engine used by Apple for some of its voice-assisted systems.
Online businesses are demanding for fair treatment from Google. The US Federal Trade Commission has initiated anti-trust investigations on the latter’’s revenue from search advertisements. Furthermore, Google’’s move to demote other vertical search services to promote itself is being considered as an anti-competitive action. The European Commission, likewise, is investigating Google’’s alleged abuse of its powers.
According to Google, their primary motivation was to maintain the quality of the search results generated by its system. The upgrades were meant to course traffic to publishers of high-quality content. Google’’s engineers state that they tested thousands of context changes, and among these, they implemented around 500. Each of those changes had a huge impact on different Websites. Some experienced an increase in traffic, while others witnessed severe decline in traffic.
Other businesses criticize Google for being biased concerning the issue of copied content. They point out that Google-operated Websites, such as Google News, do not publish original content either. However, these Websites never get downgraded. In fact, Google makes sure that they are always visible and on top of their rival sites.
As these developments continue, affected online entrepreneurs try to find ways to go around search engine rankings. Some of them are looking into the marketing potentials of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They have really been handicapped by their dependence on Google. Right now, their very source of livelihood would just have to depend on some other alternative marketing methods.
About The Author
Aline Heller writes about Internet marketing. To learn more about Internet marketing methods, go to Alternate SEO. Another resource is Bending the Web.
