Either it is Softer Panda Update or Google Panda Refresh?

Based on the very early chat, it seems that a Google Panda refresh started from yesterday. Many people are confuse if it is version two of softer Panda update that Matt Cutts has promised.

The WebmasterWorld discussion has posted yesterday about changes at Google and according to this sites seems impacted by the Panda algorithm. One webmaster write, he see a bad sign of silent update because he noticed lowest traffic in last five years.

Questions that arise in our mind:
1. Is it Google's new update?
2. If it is, it is typical Monthly Panda refresh?
3. Was it softer Panda update that can harder for many?

Matt Cutts: Fluxion in Google's Search Results

In the video released on 1st April Matt Cutts has made it clear that the changing of Google's search results will be in fluxion. Google's changing are in keeping in mind the changing of web, searchers, devices and spammers.

Although the results are perfect are today but according to Matt Cutts we have to work hard making this result perfect in future.

So all the SEOs need to be ready to adapt all the changes

Forum discussion at Google+ and Twitter.

Google's Matt Cutts: New Softer Panda Update Coming Soon

Matt Cutts, the head of Google spam team announced they are actively working on the "next generation" Panda update that will "soften" the algorithm.

Matt Cutts especially said the main aim of this helping small businesses that may be impacted by the Panda algorithm. There is no conform date of its release but he made it clear, it will be a bigger update that will make Panda less of an impact on certain sites.

Google's Matt Cutts: It Was Much Worse because We Tested Dropping Backlinks From Algorithm

Google's Matt Cutts, the head of spam team of Google release latest video has Google admitting they do and did indeed test their search results by turning off linkage data as a part of their algorithm. According to video results would be "much much worse" if they did really do that in real life.

It really make sense because Google's core algorithm was almost based on Page Rank and links and and in these years they worked improving on it. They worked hard and spent so much time in using links to rank sites that were dropping it now would make for a mess.

It was interesting to see, because couple a weeks ago, we asked you what will be your strategy if Google dropped backlinks from their algorithm. We still have over 300 responses and 32% said they'd be curious, 34% said they would be very excited and 17% said they'd be very concerned.

Here is Matt's video on this topic:

Here is the transcription:

Therefore, we don't have a version like which is open to the public rather than we have our personal experiments like that internally and the quality looks much much worse. It turns out backlinks, however there is certainty a lot of spam and some noise, for the most part are still a really really big win in the sense of quality of search results in search engines.

We played about with the idea of turning off backlink relevancy and at least for now backlinks relevancy still really helps in terms of making sure that we change most relevant, the best, most topical set of search results.

Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.

Google: Third Page Layout Algorithm Update

Yesterday, Google's Matt Cutts declared on Twitter that they have pushed out a refresh to the Google Page Layout algorithm and it will be around or on February 6th. He did not clear how much this will impact the search results but based on my analysis of the SEO community, it had a very small impact on most SEOs. This is the third update to the page layout algorithm. Because it is only a refresh, it does not mean Google updated the algorithm, but rather reconstruct the algorithm and updated it's index. But there is uncertainty Google would classify it version 3.0, but rather 1.2 maybe. Previous Updates For Google's Page Layout Algorithm were:

• Google Page Layout Algorithm Launched on January 19, 2012

• Google Page Layout Algorithm Second Updated on October 9, 2012

• Google Page Layout Algorithm third Update on 6, 2014

how does it look like when a site gets hit by this? Here is a screen shot from Webmaster World of someone who was hit by this:

Again, very few seem to have been impacted by it but there are some who are complaining in the forum threads I link to below. Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google Webmaster Help, Black Hat World and Twitter.

khan brothers

Last morning, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam Team Tweeted, "Today we're taking action against a French link network because he violates our quality guidelines (Buzzea)."

Buzzea has posted a message on their site and in that message they are acknowledging the Google penalty and telling everyone they are closing up. The translated version reads:

This is the end of risky venture for our team but also the end of our contribution with thousands of publisher sites, agencies and advertisers who showed interest and given us their trust.

We were allowing bloggers to rewarding their work and influence in all areas because by working for 4 years with them.

French tool took offence for being called a "link network" saying, they "disfavour this avouchment because we never stopped wanting to keep the ethical side of sponsored articles that focused on natural and quality links."

It is being said, the French tool is now being disclosed by Google and rankings for those who used this to build unnatural links may drop, with subsequent link notifications.

Matt Cutts said the next country on their list is Germany.

Google Rejected 3 Million Publishers & Removed 350 Million Ads

Google announced on Friday their efforts to keep their ad network safe, trustworthy and in-line. They shared some pretty crazy stats on what that mean for their ad network.

->Removed 350 million bad ads in 2013

->Disabled 270,000 advertisers in 2013

->Blacklisted more than 200,000 total publisher pages

->Disabled 250,000 publisher accounts

->Disapproved 3,000,000 attempts to join AdSense

Google publish this infographic to show their efforts in a friendly way.

Google: Freezing Image Search With Anime Porn

P Koester posted on Google+ that when you search for the term [freezing] in Google Image Search you are not shown snow or ice or cold people - instead you are shown Asian cartoon, anime porn.
Not just a few images but the huge majority of the images that come up are anime porn.

One person explained this why:
Freezing, and Freezing shaking are somewhat alright anime. The first series has way more nakedness. There is no good reason either because their clothing is manifest by their thoughts like some kind of digital camouflage. So it is kind of awkward. I liked it, but I would not recommend it to most.

Indeed, it is awkward. Not sure how this happened but I hope Google will fix it soon.

Google: Location History Summary Dashboard Kill By Google

Google has dropped endorse for the location history dashboard. Firsly, Alex Chitu covered this explaining that the location history dashboard, that provides summaries of where you've been, has been discontinued.

Google's community manager, Abby, explains that the core location mapping data is still there but the summaries are gone. She wrote, thanks for your feedback on the Location History dashboard and Location History. You can continue to manage and view your Location History information by going to https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/, but we have removed the Location History dashboard (the part of the Location History website that provided a summary of your locations, including total miles traveled and trip information).

We are continuing to explore more relevant and useful ways for you to engage with and view location history. We are not deleting any raw Location History information or removing Location History entirely.

Alex has screen shots of the old dashbaord but now you get is the ability to see specific dates or a record of the past 30 days or so.

You can also access this at maps.google.com/locationhistory.