Well Google has done it again, and surprise, surprise they make no apologies for it. When the Panda algorithm came out its design was to send out a web crawler that would locate thin, poor, or repeat content and penalize companies that were guilty of these infractions on their site. The Penguin filter was put in place to red flag sites that had excess spam particularly caused by poor quality links. The updates to these algorithms made sure that they were operating in real-time, so each site would be checked on a consistent basis and if any alterations were made in an attempt to maintain ranking it would be noticed almost immediately.
Originally Plumbing and HVAC companies that had any content on their website deemed unfit by Google or those with bad links would suffer great SEO loses and a subsequent drop in traffic, call volume, and potential sales. These updates, however, gave businesses the ability to make the necessary changes in order to meet Google’s standards.
In the beginning the Panda and Penguin algorithms were only run periodically and could take months before any website changes were noticed; causing massive trouble for companies that did not make the cut. It really affected people’s livelihood, as they counted on their placement on Google to bring in more revenue for their businesses.
A significant drop in sales caused by the delayed response within Google’s infrastructure lead to a loss of income, family problems based on serious financial strain, and even resulted in people losing their jobs or in some cases their entire company. The updates were put in place so that businesses could quickly correct their SEO mistakes before detrimental consequences were faced. The only problem is they never worked like they were supposed to.
Recently, Google fumbled over their words in an attempt to explain what was going on with their algorithms. However, the gist of the conversation was that Panda and Penguin were not running continually and still being pushed out manually with major gaps in between. In other words the announcement of the updates was a straight up lie.
It’s true that poor content and low-quality links should not be present on a website, but if people are willing to learn from their mistakes and improve then they should be rewarded accordingly.
Additionally, Google does not send out any notifications to the creator of the website when it has been run through a Panda or Penguin filter, which is borderline malicious as well as counter-productive. Updates could be sent out without any knowledge from the publisher and many will be left in a state of confusion as to what went wrong with their site.
In correspondence with the release of a new web crawler on April 21st, 2015 that will test every site to make sure they are mobile-friendly, the revelation of Google’s faux pas could not have come at a worse time, as even more website rankings will be affected. But perhaps this is the best time for us to learn that we have to really watch our backs and make absolutely sure that we are producing the best website possible.
Google says they will have this cleared up in the next few months, but how and why should we believe them? For a company that prides itself on being number one they have certainly proven that you can’t always trust what you hear, even if it comes from a multi-billion dollar corporation that masks personal gain with feigned public concern. Once again, thanks a lot Google.
