Since the Google Panda algorithm was launched earlier this year webmasters have needed to pay special attention to the relevance of their content online. The first time Silverback Marketing posted about the Panda update was on June 17, with the latest update on this blog coming on October 21. There have been several updates to Panda since the original launch of the algorithm. Some of the updates have been relatively small while others caused a dramatic shift in how pages were being ranked by Google.

These changes have caused some sites that have existed for years and ranked well the entire time to lose valuable ranking. That is unfortunate because the original idea for Panda is a good one, an algorithm designed to rid the online world of content farms that did not possess a lot of relevant content but were designed in sly ways to trick older algorithms and gain high search engine ranking. Panda has been effective in catching those websites but some outstanding and relevant sites were unfairly targeted along the way. Many of those sites have been edited enough to regain some if not all of the ranking that was initially lost.

It appears the latest update to the Panda algorithm was just a few days ago. Google Tweeted on November 18 that it had pushed out a minor update that day. The update is characterized as a minor one since it affects less than 1% of online searches. There have been at least seven Panda updates during 2011 and probably even more. Google has been making an effort to be more cognizant about publishing what the web world calls “weather updates”. These are notifications to webmasters about an update to Panda or other important facet of Google that could make a dramatic difference in what a webmaster is doing with his or her website.

As always, Silverback Marketing stresses to you to maintain a site that does not fall into the content farm trap. Be consistent about posting new and relevant content to your site that does not copy content from another website. Also, update or eliminate old content that could negate the hard work you have put into your site.