Panda 3.3 And 3.4: Data Refreshes With Minimal Impact
Google rolled out Panda 3.3 a year after they launched the first update on February 2011. The 3.4 version came a month after. Both were believed to have been minor refreshes which had minimal impact on the SERPs.
Panda 3.3 was a data refresh in the system to enable the search engine and its results to be more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web. It’s similar to version 3.2 which rolled out a month before which was mainly an update of the index and didn’t add or modify ranking signals. Similarly, 3.4 was also a data refresh only when it rolled out in March.
For the Panda 3.3 update, some webmasters experienced substantial gains with organic referrals shooting up to 300 percent. Others weren’t so fortunate and suffered fluctuations with their site traffic, especially since the data refresh took about two days to complete. Panda 3.4, on the other hand, noticeably affected less than 1.6 percent of queries.
The Panda filter has since been merged into the core algorithm, which means that the developers no longer run it separately during crawling and indexing. This is why the SERPs continue to provide relevant results to users.
It does entail more work for site operators, though, since you need to focus on unique and engaging content in today’s already saturated digital space. Google provided guidelines on how to create high-quality content.
Here are the factors that influence the quality of your content: