Panda Effects Being Quantified
Apr 30th, 2011 | By admin | Category: Search and DisplayTraffic to Demand Media sites has taken a huge hit since Google introduced its ‘Panda’ search algorithm change.
Google began rolling out the international update in Feburary apparently with the intention of reducing rankings for sites of poor quality or with unoriginal content. Also called the “farmer” algorithm change, Panda may have been set loose in order to target content farms.
Demand Media recently denied that its traffic had been affected at all, but Experian Hitwise reports supplied to Forbes suggest that it’s declined by 40 percent since the beginning of the year. This seems to back up earlier data produced by Sistrix.
PC Mag report that in January, 0.57 percent of people navigated to a Demand Media site after visiting Google. But as of this month, that figure has shrunk to 0.34 percent.
Some got hit really badly – traffic to Answerbag down 80 percent. Traffic to eHow, Demand Media’s largest site, has dwindled by 29 percent, comprising just 0.29 percent of Google’s downstream traffic.
The slump has hurt Demand Media in other ways, too. The company’s stock has slipped by 40 percent, down to an all-time low of $14.05 per share on Tuesday. Business Insider turned the data into one of their ever-helpful charts:
PC Mag confiorm that other sites have been burned by Panda, too. “For example, Mahalo’s traffic from Google has dropped by 78 percent. Associated Content has seen a 61 percent decline, and Examiner.com traffic has decreased by 51 percent. Interestingly enough, tech news site Mashable has also seen a 40 percent slip in traffic”.
Demand Media have kept quiet but have a quarterly earnings report on May 5, and will be required to elaborate.
New thinking from econsultancy – http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7462-the-effects-of-the-google-panda-update-new-data – based on StickyEyes data. Broad conclusions:
- mainly low quality sites that have been hit
- not much has changed for most sites
- lower volatility than eitther caffeine or Vince
- Panda has affected the top ranked sites in most verticals, but not by much
- article marketing on poor sites is now pretty much valueless
- value of social media links and comment have increased.