Two weeks ago, Google rolled out changes to its algorithm in an attempt to decrease visibility and rankings of low quality sites on 11.8% of search queries, called the Panda Update. “Low quality” is defined on search engine blogs as content that is shallow or limited, poorly written, copied, and generally not useful to users.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but whenever a big Google update rolls out, I’m back in elementary school gingerly turning in a pop quiz – I think that I’ve paid attention in class, but in that moment, all I can do is lace my fingers behind my back and wait patiently for the teacher to grade my work.
In addition to the SEO benefits of fresh user-generated content (UGC) on product pages, we have seen time and time again that UGC aggregated into branded archive-like pages can attract a substantial amount of ridiculous long tail keyword traffic. As the Panda Update was announced, we knew that UGC Archive sites would be affected in some way. With a bit of cautious uncertainty in mind, we randomly selected a group of archive sites and started monitoring.
The UGC Archive sites we used in this study include a very basic navigational link structure that follows the company’s category hierarchy. At the deepest level, product UGC pages have minimal product details and are dominated with user language – typically 20 Reviews or Q&A per page. Because these archive sites are typically isolated from other marketing initiatives, and have very few backlinks, they created a very pure sample with which we could evaluate how the Panda Update reacted to UGC.
The sample included 10 U.S. Archive sites in various industries (general retail, specialty retail, electronics manufacturing, beauty manufacturing, and entertainment) for two types of UGC – reviews and Q&A. The sites have a wide range of UGC volume – some literally have millions of pieces of content, and some have tens of thousands. To isolate the impact of the Panda Update on Google organic visits, we compared the two weeks since the update against the two weeks immediately prior, and then compared those to the same weeks last year.
After a day or so of nail biting, the Panda Update pop quiz came back remarkably well:
Based on this graph, we can see that:
- In 2010, this span of weeks was fairly flat – for 8 of these 10 sites, traffic fluctuated by less than 10% up or down (two sites were on a pretty steep upward trajectory).
- However, in 2011, 6 of the 10 sites increased by over 10% after the Panda Update and all of them increased at least somewhat (none dropped).
We wondered if all of this traffic was coming from more keywords or simply higher SERP rankings, so we analyzed how the number of keywords had fluctuated during the same periods outlined above:
From this data, the results are still pretty clear – in 2011, for 8 out of 10 sites, there was a higher increase number of keywords in the weeks after the Panda Update than there were the previous year. We already knew Google values UGC; with this data, we now know Google values aggregated UGC.
As for Google Webmaster Tools data, impressions increased recently for all of the sites between 39-84%; clicks dropped slightly for a couple of sites but increased by 10-15% for most sites; CTRs increased modestly for all sites. The most interesting data point I found in Webmaster Tools was average position – four of the sites actually dropped in average position, but those same sites had the highest increased impressions. It makes sense that when Google introduces new sites to replace old ones, it could drag down the overall average position in SERPs for the new sites.
User-generated content, while sometimes only one sentence individually, aggregated together can be very powerful for an SEO campaign. Customers convert higher when they see authentic content from like-minded users, driving Google to gravitate towards pages with legitimate UGC. To get the greatest value out of UGC for SEO, inject a small amount of the most recent UGC into product pages to increase richness and freshness; however, also make sure to have a branded interactive archive that allows Google to fully index all UGC for each of your products. With the Panda Update, Google impacted 11.8% of search queries. Once again, UGC proved to be a vital asset as these sites are reaping the benefits of the algorithm change.
A human user can tell the difference between authentic user-generated content (such as reviews on a product site) and the kind of bland articles that got hit by Panda right away. The articles on those content farms follow consistent patterns. When every article on your site is about the same length, has paragraphs of the same length, has similar writing styles and links to other articles on the site, it looks manufactured. Real authentic user-generated content has variety. (And that includes Wikipedia, despite the efforts there to standardize their articles)
A human reader can tell the difference in a few seconds, and it looks like with this update Google has improved so that it can tell the difference, too.
Thanks for the data.
Its similar overview about Panda affected website Bruce Clay says on SMX WEST...published on..https://searchengineland.com/lessons-learned-at-smx-west-googles-farmerpanda-update-white-hat-cloaking-and-link-building-67838..though countable point...but its not true for all cases..waiting for more research results!
Great data Nadia!
Thanks for sharing the link! There is still so much to learn about these changes.
Great post, maybe more e-commerce sites will open up their products for user reviews. I really enjoy shopping those sites much better, even if I highly doubt a real user left the review or comment in the first place. Just makes it seem more genuine I guess, so good to see Google is rewarding behavior that users appreciate.
Excellent post Nadia!
Thank you for sharing all this information and glad to see you posting your knowledge on here!
O Pico
I hate the suspense invloved in waiting to see if your sites are gonna take a hit. Although i love the fact that i have to constantly keep on my feet and keep educating myself to keep up.
The waiting is brutal, but I agree- continuing to update the strategy and researching what others have done keeps me interested in coming to work every day!
What do most of you use for UCG? Been using power reviews but its really expensive. Are there any decent open source modules out there for some of the better shopping carts?
Might wanna check out osCommerce 3.1. Releases on the 31st of march with full support and new modular plugins from what ive read so it can be expanded on as quicly and easily as wordpress.
Great post. I totally agree with this study. We have insights on an user generated moving reviews website https://www.mymovingreviews.com and we saw more than 12% increase in traffic overnight after the panda update. Not sure if it is because of favouring the UGC or having these websites taking the positions of the content farms that went down.
Great data point- thanks for sharing!
Good job with the research and your well written article.
Cheerio :)
I just posted something on youmoz (waiting for it to be published). Basically I said besides Panda, USGs also help with the latest Google freshness algorithm and help keep a page fresh.
Now that I have read your article, I'm not suprised. It is a very good barometer to judge the content of a page or site. Lots of comments or reviews = something worth while reading on the page.
UGC will only continue to grow. As the internet goes into this new phase where its becoming less of a "tool" and more of a "toy" using both those words lightly. The world is growing more and more connected. with more live UGC out there google had to change focus to the present status of the internet freshen it up :-)
UGC is something we are heavily focusing on within numerous sectors. i think testimonials are a great use of UGC not only for search but also for the top line benefits of encouraging a conversion.
Just a thought... but does anybody know whether blogs that do not have many/any comments are viewed as poor quality by Google? It would make sense logically but can they apply that rule to all blogs without much UGC?
Nice post by the way - its good to hear other people's experience of new Algo updates!
Good post, I find UGC has been working well on some web properties I own yet others such as article based websites Ezine article style in which I own have been hit hard they are still (UGC) to the same extent yet the problem is it is soo hard to quarantie articles for duplicant content when you have like 100+ comming in each day.
Definetely UGC is one of the must must thing to have for any products' based web sites. On the other hand, isn't UGC also an social sign somehow, as blogs and forums (if we do not think social strictly as social media)
More over, if you incentivate the users to leave their own reviews, you can also break out in many other online marketing tactics: for instance badges for the most active reviewer, or the most valued one... awards for the best product in its genre... and so on, and all of this can produce a nice amount off buzz in the social media and traditional backlinks.
Thank for sharing :)
Definitely agree! Badges for the most active reviewer(s), especially once they reach a certain threshold, have been really positive for us. I have been so excited to watch how these social mentions are brought into the engines' algos!
Great post! I thought I was all 'panda'd' out because it's been everywhere recently, but your fresh insight held my interest. User-generated content is something we've not focused on much outside of social networks, but it's got me thinking about white hat ways we could use it. Thanks! - Jenni
I've been a bit panda'd out too- we should keep that phrase going! Thanks for the positive feedback!
There is a problem in your post: It assumes that Google has changed for onsite-on-page-serious-sites. In my view it has not. The changes 2 weeks ago were SPAM and LINK FARM related pages and some serps for edu sites that were doing black hat linking.
In my opinion the changes you are seeing and reporting are related to normal content expanding and the impact that this has on serps. Once you become an authority and add content you win. (Ie: you rank far far better).
If you want to see with far more clarity how your site is being used I would suggest that you invest in something more sophisticated than the service you are using. It seem, at best to be unclear; paid analytic services (those that cost 30 to 70 dollars a month) are far more useful when determining changes. :)
PS: sorry, nothing personal, but sometimes not agreeing with someone is a way to help someone :)
No problem- totally agree that alternate opinions can spark a good debate!
I think I see what you are saying, and agree that more content over time (as long as it is quality content!), should result in more search engine traffic.
For this study, I compared the exact same date range across two years to determine if the rate of increase in search engine visits was higher this year (after the Panda update) than last year. For most (6 of 10) of these sites, visits increased by more than 10% after the Panda update. Most of the sites were flat during this time last year, which indicates that this year something was different - if they all had increased visits (due to increased amounts of content over time) last year, your point would be more likely. The fact that these normal weeks for so many sites had a spike is what convinced me that Panda was at work!
Hi Nadia,
Both sides in this argument are completely valid. I don't agree with the diea that you need a more expensive analytics tool to see which is correct, though,I just think that you need to use abit more data.
The issue is that there are (at least) two factors that could have caused these changes - as is often the case with statistics both sides have been able to use the data presented to bolster their arguments.
Perhaps the best way to resolve the debate would be to look at the data for the month or so *before* Panda and for the same period in 2010. If you create a histogram for this like the ones in the main article, look at it and see that it's very flat, you will know almost for certain that Panda has had an effect: the uplift has *only* been after Panda, it's not a year-on-year buildup. If, on the other hand, the graph looks rather similar then you will know that it was due to improved authority, link growth etc.
Yes I completely agree. Looking at the data, one week before the Panda update, and then the week of the Panda update (and maybe one week AFTER the update) is a more reliable set of data - its a more like-with-like comparison.
Loved what Bazaar Voice shared at GR2L last year during SXSW. More of the same wisdom here. The UGC surviving the panda update is fantastic. I especially liked what you shared regarding that "pop quiz" feeling. I feel that all the time myself. We are all just glorified best guessers, and sometimes we get it wrong. That little holding your breath moment of... eeeehh... yea we're fine heh.
Great post, thank you for sharing this with us Nadia.
Awesome insight! I would not have realized Google's impact on UGC otherwise.
No question Google favors fresh UGC, product reviews, in search. Great analysis proving the point! Does Google crawl and index your product reviews directly on your product page? 65% of the top 25 ecommerce sites do not. In this post is a great self help tool to assess if Google 'sees' your reviews on your product page and 3 tips to improve your Social SEO. https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2029536/seo-65-percent-commerce-sites-missing-boat
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Nadia.
I think your argument, that Google is giving an A+ to UGC, is very valid.
Truly user generated content (not counting Demand Media in this one, although one might argue that it's almost peer production) is such a good short cut for telling good websites from bad, as noone spend time writing up reviews and answers on poor, spammy websites.
Add to this a number of 2nd order benefits as more links, more social mentions etc.