When Google announced that they are planning to implement the Panda-update for all English-speaking countries this week, they also used the blogpost to note that they have changed the current US-algorithm. This new change is only supposed to affect about 2% of all search-queries, but seeing how this could potentially have large implications for a small number of domains, I would like to share some facts and data.
As with the former Panda/Farmer-analyses, these numbers are once again based on data from the SISTRIX Toolbox, both before and after the change. We chose keywords that give a good approximation of the average local search-volume and I am certain that this will enable us to ensure the reliability of our data-set. So here we go.
First off, Ehow.com was hit hard this time. This was one of those domains where the sentiment was that they should have been affected by the Panda-update the first time around but managed to survive unscathed. It begun early this week in the UK and now Ehow has also lost a huge chunk of visibility in Google’s US SERPs:
All in all, the algorithm-change did not entail as large an effect as it did the first time around. This does not mean that the results can not be devastating for the affected domains. Here we have a list with those domains that were affected the most:
Since Google is not known for keeping their results-pages empty, there also were domains that gained positions thanks to the change. Here the list with those domains that gained the most this week in the USA:
Just as the first time around, it seems that Google managed to reach their goal: quality-content is ranking better than before. I think it will be interesting to see how similar business models will fare, both in the US as well as in Europe. While Yelp managed to gain ground in the US, there was a noticeable decline in Qype’s fortune in the UK SERPs.
Update 04.18.2011:
In a statement, Demand Media emphasized that the ehow.com traffic has not declined by 66%. I would like to add that while our data usually shows a very high correlation to actual traffic, we can only give an outside view on a domain and Demand Media itself will surely have much more accurate numbers.
