Google Panda 3.3 Update confirmed today, This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
As per Google’s announcement, the Panda data update took place on February 27th and it included the discontinuation of a link evaluation signal. Here are the full details:
Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
Google declined to share any additional information about the “link evaluation” method but it says it’s getting rid of a link evaluation signal that it’s been using for years.
Google says this latest Panda update will also see traditional algorithmic ranking factors now playing a bigger part in triggering local search results.
Improvements to ranking for local search results. This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Panda 3.3 has bought a mixed bag of results for many webmasters, however the general consensus is that a loss of traffic of between 15% and 30% is the norm.
Have you noticed an impact to your website traffic volume since 27th February? If so, we would love to hear your feedback below.
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