Difference between Google Panda Algorithm & Penguin

Google makes frequent changes to it algorithm to always display the most relevant, latest, and accurate search results.

Google panda

The Google Panda update was launched in 2011 to get rid of low-quality content.

This update is meant to be more precise by targeting thin content which mainly affected shopping sites; games and lyrics portals which tended to have thin content y their very nature.

A shopping site like eBay was severely hit by the Panda update because the thin content generated by users was deemed useless for most Google users.

The panda update was called a “farmer” because it severely affected content aggregators also called content farms which steal content to populate their pages. They target a wide range of keywords to rank well in Google. After the panda update and the downfall of content farms, it became more important to create original content to rank high in SERPS.

The important thing is that with continuous panda updates, more and more duplicate content will be marked by Google, negatively impacting the websites that don’t update their content based on panda guidelines.

Google penguin

Unlike Google panda which targets unoriginal content, Google penguin targets the over-optimization of a website. This includes keyword stuffing and obtaining low-quality backlinks. Keyword stuffing is a term used to describe stuffing a site with keywords that do not relate to a site’s content. This is used to increase search engine ranking, but after the penguin update can actually lead to decreased ranking.

This includes an irrelevant list of phone numbers, places, and any unnatural blocks of texts that will be considered keyword abuse.

Also, a low-quality backlink profile that includes backlinks from spam websites can lower your search rank. Links are considered to be references for your website. A backlink from an authority website can improve your site authority. Your anchor text needs to be diverse and without keyword stuffing. Google penguin update catches spam backlinks and keyword stuffing in anchor texts. Also, random links from websites that do not relate to yours will also be penalized.

If you are a victim of bad link building, contacting websites to remove irrelevant back links and disavowing bad links using Google webmaster tools must help. Though the results are not immediate, you might slowly regain SERPs.