Google Panda Farmer Algorithm Update And Your Small Business

On February 24th 2011, Google launched an algorithmic update (Google Panda Farmer Algorithm Update) that claims to have influenced 12% of organic search results and cut the visitors of many websites by half.

That’s incredibly significant.

As per Matt Cutts, the head of spam at Google; the aim of this update is to eliminate poor quality sites from Googles search engine result pages.

That sounds like an admirable goal. I don’t like wading through spam filled nonsense when flipping through search results. I want to find what I’m looking for right away to get on with what I’m doing.

Alright. I’m on board with this Panda Farmer update thing so far. It’s good to know that the last thing Google wants is for someone like me to move on to another search engine because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Sounds good like a plan to me.

Here’s a link to the Google blog post announcing Panda Farmer if you wish to have a little bit more pre-release information.

How this may influence your small business website.

Once released and the real facts started to surface regarding the influence of the Google Panda Farmer update, my opinion began to change from completely supporting the concept to having mixed feelings about the results. We’ll get to that in a little bit.

First of all, let’s look at some of the variables that could cause your small business site to become a victim of the Panda Farmer algorithm update. Here’s a quick summary of what I have been able to piece together through dissecting a Wired interview with Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal in addition to other resources online. Of course they don’t divulge the secret formula so you have to read a bit between the lines.

A website is likely in a world of hurt if…

it has a high percentage of duplicate content on a page or the website as a whole. This is why the update has been nicknamed Farmer. It target sites (like content farms) who have the same content as other websites on the net.
it has little in the way of original content on a page or the site as a whole.
it has a high number of pages with low original content.
a page has a high amount of content that doesn’t match what the page ranks for in the search query that returned it. This includes advertisements.
the page content and title tag don’t match what the page ranks for in the search query that returned it.
there is text on the page that just isn’t normal or sound right. This could be due to over optimizing the content for a specific keyword or phrase.
people don’t stay on the page for long after they visited it.
it receives few visits on a page or the website.
few users return to the site after already visiting it.
it receives a low number of clicks resulting in a visit from the search results.
it has a lot of the same content that spans across individual pages or the site as a whole.
the amount of quality inbound links the page or site has is low.
the number of social media links and mentions to the page or site has is low.

Now, you aren’t going to be blacklisted and kicked down the results for having a single violation. However, the multiples stack up fast and if you cross the line (wherever it is) you’ll find yourself at the bottom looking up in a jiffy. It’s a slippery slope to say the least.

The aftermath.

As far as I’m concerned, what started out as a great idea in theory has hurt a lot of small business. Google was successful with wiping out their intended targets but in doing so destroyed plenty of honest, Google abiding folk. Call it collateral damage I guess. I initially fully supported the idea of the Panda Farmer update but it’s aftermath has certainly shed new light on the topic. I thought Google was smarter than that.

Time for my thoughts.

I tend to support Google as out of all the search engines, I feel they are doing the best job trying to handle a very difficult situation. What gets me riled up is situations like this. From my perspective, the Panda Farmer algorithm changes were completely insensitive and lacked consideration towards those who have done nothing but follow their recommendations over the years. Google didn’t care what happened to them as long as they achieved their goal.

Think about it this way; Google has always recommended the submission of articles to article sites as a means of developing high quality backlinks. Now, and without notice, they are saying that if you do that to much you will be penalized. This is the same thing they did when they supported link exchanges and then out of the blue said not to do them anymore as they could negatively impact your site’s ranking in the search results.

Google tends to set and support the stage only to pull it out from under their supporters when they least expect it. I find it really sad as it tends to hit the little guys a lot more than the big ones.

Google is essentially forcing a lot of Mom and Pop small businesses who are not specialists in the fields of web development or search engine optimization to start again from scratch. All the years of hard work it took to follow the rules and climb up the ladder has been thrown away without the net of having the big budgets the large companies have to restructure and refocus efforts. That’s tough and certainly not fair.

The only thing small business can do to safeguard this from happening in the future is to diversify their marketing efforts and become less dependant on Google. I know, easily said than done. The best bet is to not use any one online marketing method too much.

Was your small business influenced by the Panda Farmer algorithm update? If so, what were the results? What are your plans to spring back from it? How will you diversify your marketing efforts in the future? Share with others through the comments below.