Google rolled out two successive updates for its Panda filter on June 2012 and followed it up with Panda 3.9 in July. The team then made minor tweaks to version 3.9 with 3.9.1 which was released on August and 3.9.2, which came on September. Panda has gone through a lot of adjustments since its initial launch in February 2011.
The Panda algorithm penalized low-quality sites; ones that don’t provide valuable insights to searchers because of practicing plagiarism through content farms. The 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9 updates were more of data refreshes which meant that they ran the filter during these times since it’s separate from the primary index. The 3.9.1 and 3.9.2 versions were also refreshes and did not introduce new signals to the algorithm.
The first Panda’s implementation affected 11.8 percent of queries while impacting a majority of the entire index, precisely 84 percent. Subsequent versions like 3.7 to 3.9 only made slight ripples in the rankings.
Panda 3.7 and 3.8 influenced less than one percent of queries in the United States and one percent globally. 3.9 also impacted lower than one percent of searches while 3.9.1 and 3.9.2 have an effect on an even smaller portion with fewer than 0.7 queries.
To bounce back from the losses that your website may have suffered from the Panda filter, you just need to have content that Google deems as high-quality. It sounds straightforward enough, but SEO specialists know that it takes time and effort to rebuild your reputation and rank in the SERPs.
These are three descriptions of content that appears to be alike, but the search engine defines differently:
Meanwhile, here are some clarifications for Google Panda that you should know about:
Understand Word Count As mentioned earlier, word count is only crucial for tracking how many terms you use to explain a topic or subject matter to human readers fully. It can be an influencing factor on how Google deems the quality of your website, but it only plays a minor role for your ranking. While there is a recommended minimum for publishing posts, you should focus on the value that you provide to users by ensuring that your articles answer users’ queries sensibly.