The Panda update is about giving the user what they want.   A Google search is always a question in the users mind, even if not expressed in words.  The search might be for a product name or perhaps a business such as the name of a hotel "Hilton New York".   If you have that Hilton page, you need to know all the questions implied with that search! 

'New York Hilton' is what the user typed.  However, there may be a slew of questions in the users mind:

• Is the neighborhood safe? 
• How are the reviews? 
• How much does it cost?
• Are there any rooms available for my dates?

While there has certainly been a haze about the factors  behind the Google Panda update, one thing has been pretty clear,  Panda has not aimed its fangs at Big Brands!  In fact, the brand domains have benefited, as their pages bubbled up above the Panderized pages that have been demoted.   So what is going on?   I am quite confident that there is no line of code in the bowels of  Google source code  that reads:

  "If domain  = "Amazon or Ebay or .... then don't  Pandarize".   

Why did the brands deserve inoculation while so many other sites, specifically non-brands, were  so devastated?  Why does Google love brands? 

So what is it about Brands?  Do they make all the great quality pages and  do they all provide a quality search user experience (or more specifically better than the non-brands that got hit by Panda).  IMHO, that is not the case, many branded sites provide no better than average (and in some cases poor) user experiences.  

I know of at least 2 companies that own very similar sites in the same niche and I have done detailed comparisons between the brand and the non-brand.  In each case the brand was spared and non-brand got Panderized, yet the sites were substantially the same. 

I have seen some opinons on the forums that reputation provide protection (links and social mentions)? I think not.    The concept of reputation from Goog has been around since the onset with PageRank  and besides,  many sites with high PageRank got panda-handled quite harshly.    Plus, if sites were penalized for not having a reputation, how would the build the search traffic required to create a reputation?

That really just leaves behavior and to me the Panda inoculation provided to brands is strong evidence that the Panda is behavioral.   When you think about how user behavior is different with a brand,  it provides strong clues to what is going on with Panda. 

A brand brings a certain level of trust and prior knowledge.   It means users will give it a chance.   If I click on a TripAdvisor result, I won't abandon if the page is slow to respond.  I'll wait because I specifically chose the site from result based on it's brand reputation. However If I randomly landed on FancyDancyVacations.com which I had never heard of beforehand the page was slow to load, I'd be gone in second.  

If I was looking for hotel reviews, and FancyDancy did not make it easy for me to  find it - I'd be gone.  Not so with TripAdvisor.  They are known for their reviews and I would  find them even if it was a messy page loaded with links and text.   So this means with the brand, users are less likely to do a G-Bounce to find another site.   

Another behavior that is likely different from SERP is click-through rate from search.  Google certainly know average click-through rate.  Users are more likely to click through to the brand.  If I am searching for a good price and information on Call of Duty and I see Amazon in the result,  I am going to click through at a higher than average rate.   What does that tell Google?   You like the result!   Google also knows your search history (in many cases).  Have you been to that site before and then decided to click through again?  That is another signal that that tells Google you like that site.   

Ok - so Google loves brands.  Your site is not a brand.  So become a brand.  Yeah - right - easy for me to say .. and not so easy to achieve.

 So what is non-branded site to do?    You need to inspire brand-like behavior from search.   Your site has to be better than your competitors and the brands, faster, cleaner pages with very focused content and very well optimized pages.  I start getting into more specific recommendations in my next post.  And guess what, by inspiring brand-like behavior, you are more likely to become a brand! 

On February 24th Google issued their Pandate: "Thou shall produce quality content or thou shall pay the price with lost traffic and revenue!"  What followed was vague statements from Google regarding what quality is.  In my mind, this update by Google is an admission that they cannot determine the quality of an individual page.  Why do I think that?   

As I analyzed the impact of the Panda update on various sites, I noticed (although not every page).

• All page types were hit
• Pages with great content were hit
• Pages with thin content were hit
• Pages with mediocre content were hit.

Google did not take a scalpel and slice up poor content.  They took a bazooka to the entire site.

That immediately raised the question in my mind: 

Why would Google release an update that indiscriminately hits all pages on your site?? 

The answer is simple, they cannot evaluate the quality of single piece of content.   If they could evaluate a piece of content, they would. If I had a blog with 100 great posts with in-depth analysis and 100 thin posts which regurgitate other chit-chat around the web, wouldn't it be in Google's best interest in boost my great posts and demote my poor ones?  Of course it would! 

Sure, they are good at detecting duplicate content.  That problem can be solved with raw computing cycles.  They have learned how to detect machine generated fake prose.   I am positive they have invested millions of Google dollars on the problem of content quality and the Panda update tells me they can't tell by the piece of content itself (at least not with out an unacceptable level of errors). 

How come?  Well the aspects that make up quality for a page differ from one page to the next.   Sometimes complex prose is required (for example in a medical site).  Sometimes short and sweet is best (a FAQ).   Sometimes an image or a map does the job.   

What is a quality page? 

If you look at statements coming from Google, and if you think about it logically from Google's perspective, they want to deliver pages that result's in a quality search experience.   

The quality of a page must be considered in the context of the search result that drives a user to a page.

The page must answer the question the user had in mind when they entered their query into Google.  It is very difficult to look at a page and determine whether it will result in a quality search experience simply from the content on the page. 

Consider the question:  What was the 2011 deadline to file my taxes without an extension??

The Answer, 'April 18,2011'  is a completely satisfactory answer from a content perspective.  How can Google possibly judge that small piece of text and determine it answered the searcher's  question?

 If that is the entire page, it is a quality page search result page  because it meets the need of the user who typed the question into Google.   In fact, additional superfluous content on the page, not directly related to the question (for instance related tax questions) may hurt the quality of the page because they will draw in traffic not specific to the main point of the page.  So length and depth of content does not give a clear indication of the quality of the page. 

In other cases, a wonderful page may fail because it still does not satisfy a basic need of the user.   

Consider another page about a hotel.  The users searches for the "Hilton, New York" because he wants to book a room.  That is all he wants, been there, done that, just wants to book.  He lands on a fantastically written page, great pictures, user reviews, great content.  But the "book button" is obscured behind a tab.  The user can't find it and can't book.  Great content, but a poor page; the user will go back to the search engine to find another site.  

So Google says, "I give up, I can't figure out the quality of a page by the algorithmic analysis of a page content."   

User Behavior is the Likely Answer  

There is one true indication on the quality of a site, and that how the user responds to the page based on his actions.  In the past I was doubtful that Google would use behavioral data to rank pages.  Very few individual pages have enough pageviews to reach statistical significance.  But Google has gotten around that by looking at the whole site. By aggregating sites performance data as a whole, Google is able to reach conclusions about the site, even if they can't reach a conclusion about an individual page.  It is the only thing that makes sense to me based on the analysis of the various sites I have done.   Plus listen to the recommendations coming from Google in response to Panda, it is all about the user experience.

If it is behavioral, then what metrics are they using? 

While I am quite sure they are not using Google Analytics for data (for many reasons - not the least of which is it is an incomplete data set), they still have plenty of information to go on: 

• Did the user return and select another result from the SERP for the same search?
• How quickly did the user return? If it was very quick, then likely the page did not meet the need?
• Does the user return to the site? 
• Did the user request a site be banned from the results?
• Did the user click on the more results from this site button? 

If this is indeed behavioral as I believe, then the face and nature of the professional SEO has changed.   If your SEO isn't focusing on user experience, he is not doing his job.  

There is a lot to think about as a result of the Panda update.  Even if you haven't been affected, you could be in one of subsequent updates.  Feel free to join in with comments.   I am particularly interested in ideas related to what user data Google could be collecting to reach their conclusions. 

Coming up in my next 2 posts:

• Is Google looking at bounce rates?
• Beware of the back button