Pandas are represented as one of the most gentle mammals in the animal kingdom. Unless provoked, the bears won’t do much damage.
Google seems to have caught on to this: its Panda algorithm is being softened for small businesses.
Google’s head of the Webspam team, Matt Cutts, announced at Search Market Expo that the team is working on the “next generation” Panda update that should be softer and should have a direct impact on helping small businesses succeed in search.
In fact, there is a person on the search team who is working exclusively on ways to help small websites and businesses do better in Google’s search results. This is good news for smaller law firms that are trying to climb up the search results ladder.
Panda is a filter, introduced in February 2011, that was intended to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results.
The updated algorithm will have a positive impact on small businesses’ websites by allowing them to recover rank positions and increasing the number of unique search terms driving to the smaller sites.
Cutts did not announce exactly when this new update is coming out, only that the team is currently working on it.
Although this update may make it easier for small websites to make it to the top in search results, it doesn’t mean that those websites can offer low-quality content.
If a business isn’t providing quality content on its website (if the content screams spam, for example), the algorithm will prevent the site from ranking well—no matter the size. The upcoming Panda may be more gentle, but provoking it will still do damage to your search rankings.