What happens when your site is hit by an algorithm update
We keep reading about the impact of Google algorithm changes, especially Panda and Penguin, but what does this mean to your site and what does it look like?
An algorithm update in the search engines generally means a realignment of results, it is the search engines reclassifying performance. So with Panda for example, Google particularly looked at the quality of content on certain pages. Where it would historically return a certain page, under the new rules of the algorithm that page may totally disappear.
This happened with many sites in spring 2014, most notably to Ebay. It wasn’t just a hit on the site as a whole but to certain content-light landing pages.
Chart: Position explorer chart, Panda Algorithm Impact, Site: Ebay, Google UK
As is shown in the chart above, Ebay lost page one positions across 1000s of terms and therefore millions of visitors.
Benefits of Pi for mitigating against algorithm changes
Because we offer daily tracking, with Pi Datametrics SEO platform, businesses can set up alerts to mitigate the risk. And because we track the exact URL (not just the domain) using the content Content Diagnostics feature, brands can compare their returning pages with those in the best positions and thus reversing the affect of the algorithm update.