A few months back Google confirmed a new Panda update at the same time that it announced 40 search updates planned for February. It’s worth noting this is Panda 3.3, Panda was launched by google a year ago 

Whilst it is not possible to supply a complete and thorough list of changes and updates in this blog, we wanted to share a selection of the updates that seem especially worthy.

Here’s a look at the ones that are worth a look at:
  
Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
 
This sounds very similar to Panda 3.2, which happened in mid-January and was described only as a “data refresh” and not related to new or changed ranking signals.
 
Postscript, Feb. 28th: Google tells us that the Panda data update took place February 27th. The company declined to share any additional information about the “link evaluation” item below.
 
Evaluating Links
 
Google says it’s getting rid of a link evaluation signal that it’s been using for years. This one’s sure to prompt discussion:
 
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.

A link evaluation signal that’s been used for years is now turned off? The SEO mind boggles…
 
Local Search Rankings

Google says traditional algorithmic ranking factors are now playing a bigger part in triggering local search results:
 
Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Traditional SEO has played a bigger part in Google’s local search since the launch of Places Search in late 2010. And now it sounds like that dial is being turned up a little higher, too.

Google’s post also says local results are being improved because of a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”
 
Other Google Updates

- More accurate detection of official pages
- Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search
- “Site:” query update
- International launch of shopping rich snippets

There are also several updates related to freshness, sitelinks and related searches.

Happy Hunting.

- Sunil Jain is the Online Marketing Manager at Newpath WEB

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2012 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.