Google Panda: How many recover?
On January 22, 2013, Google announced the rollout of Google Panda update #24, affecting 1.2% of English queries.
Google started rolling out Panda updates on February 24, 2011, in a bid to remove low quality sites from its top search results.
With any update, sites large and small are affected, even ones that may not be the target of the Panda update.
Was your site affected? Has it recovered?
The Screaming Frog blog looked at how many of the major sites affected by the Panda updates actually recover.
They found that:
- on average sites are down by 69% of their original pre-panda visibility.
- 83.67% have less than 50% of their original visibility (or less).
- 12.14% recovered 70% of their original visibility (or more).
- just 7.15% of sites experienced 100% recovery (or more).
No site is immune to Google’s algorithm changes. I’ve read about companies having to slash jobs and even shut down due to the traffic lost as a result of Panda updates. Don’t allow this to happen to you.
So how do you insure yourself against this impending disaster?
“Diversification” is the answer.
You wouldn’t invest all of your money into 1 stock. So why rely on Google for all (or most) of your traffic? Both are dangerous tactics.
In my new upcoming online book, I’ll show you how to diversify your traffic sources so that you don’t rely on Google alone for all or most of your traffic.