The Google Panda ranking update has benefited some sites while punishing others. As described in our eBook, Breaking Down Google’s Panda Release, sites with low quality content or copied content went down in search rankings, while sites with unique, high quality content went up. Well, exactly which sites went up and went down?
We looked at two sources, one internal, and one from an external marketing firm. According to seoClarity (by way of SearchEngineLand.com), here is how the initial Panda release in February affected top websites:
Lost Rank:
- TheFind.com
- BizRate.com
- ShopWiki.com
- EzineArticles.com
- HubPages.com
- Buzzillions.com
- Shopping.com
- Suite101.com
- Kaboodle.com
- AssociatedContent.com
Gained Rank:
- Amazon.com
- eHow.com
- NexTag.com
- Wikipedia.com
- Walmart.com
- Target.com
- Etsy.com
- Answers.Yahoo.com
- Sears.com
- bestonlinecoupons.com
We also looked at comparison shopping sites amongst our retailers, and saw similar trends:
So, there is some overlap between what other analysts saw change and what we saw in our client data. Regardless of which sites were actually penalized, it’s clear that having a diversified strategy of advertising on different sites is imperative.
