Google Panda update shook up the entire SEO industry like never before. Perhaps it was long overdue. But what prompted Google to do so? Were there ulterior motives or was Google simply responding to the scathing criticism it faced because of its search results which were run over by spam?

Since last few years, all that was required to make a website top the ranks in Google search results was to have a lot of content on web pages and a bunch of inbound links from sites with good Google PR. SEO consultants soon found a loophole. They figured out that though content was a key factor, quality was not. Taking advantage of this loophole, many websites sprang up with dubious content which were mostly scrapped, rewritten, or spun from other sites. These websites served thousands and thousands of web pages with very low quality content replete with profitable keywords.

These mega-sites were soon termed as “content farms”. On the strength of the sheer volume of pages, they soon bulldozed their way to the top of Google’s search results. They also found out that users searched with long tail keywords like “Things to remember while traveling to XYZ”. They created articles around long tail keywords to dominate Google results. The problem was not that they created or allowed articles geared around such particular keywords but that most of these articles were of dubious quality.

As a result, Google search results for such keywords showed pages from such content farms. This raised a serious question regarding quality of Google’s search results. Industry analysts rightly questioned the effectiveness of Google’s algorithm. They asked if it was so easy to game Google?

Google’s reputation took a beating. With other search engines such as Bing, providing arguably “better results”, it was time for Google to pull up its sock.

And it did! Google’s latest algorithm update coined “Panda” update severely downgraded sites with low quality content aka “Content Farms”. Many article directories also suffered as a consequence not too mention many small and big sites that had serious issues regarding their content.

Many innocent sites were also caught in the crossfire as result but industry is hoping that as Google fixes its algorithm such incidents will reduce substantially.

One important message to take home after this update is that website owners should renew their efforts on developing quality content. The more authoritative the content is the more chance it stands of ranking well. Yes, Google won’t ever be able to fully and correctly judge the quality of the content if it depends exclusively on algorithms. But still it will take help of many indicators to evaluate content’s authority.

Google’s update is not the perfect solution to the increasing problem of spam but it has sent a clear signal to all websites.

Are you listening?