How will Google Panda affect you?

To answer that let’s first of all discuss in very simple terms what Google Panda is and to do that we have to go back in history. Way , way back to a time when the Internet first began.

• The Internet was first began when a bunch of academics, who wanted to share information, got together and decided there was a way it could be done.
• To find the very best information these academics decided that if they searched all the academic publications of the day and found the research that was referenced or referred to most often it would be the best.
• In theory best research should always be referenced more often by published by authorities and large well respected journal and publications.
• Then the ‘big bang’ happened, the Internet exploded and commercial companies started trying to gain an advantage. 
• For the past couple of years Google found that simply using ‘back’ links to a judge the importance of a web site was no longer good enough so they started ‘Panda’.
• Google built themselves a very, very sophisticated algorithm (computer program) the likes of which the world has not seen before.
• What Panda does is looks at the links, see how those links were created and from where they came. If they are from poorer sites they are graded accordingly. If they are generated in an artificial way (i.e. to many, to fast using commercial software or ‘professional’ link builders) then not only are the links worth less they may actually get you a reduced Google rank or booted off the search engine altogether (be afraid, be very afraid).
• Since February 2011 many web sites have had their page ranks smashed. Unfortunately some of the good sites have been ‘causalities of war’.
• Once your site is demoted then the way back is difficult.

That said if you remain focused on what Google does want then the playing field is now much more level for all sites that contain good content and information that people want to read (how dare Google be so ‘unfair’). If real people then read your information and book mark it or tell their friends and business partners about it then you will get genuine back links.

It will be interesting to see how the commercial operators react to the changes but one thing for sure it has changed the playing field for everyone.

So what is Google Panda? It is Google fighting back to gain the upper hand in the constant war between sites that want to supply content verses operators that want to simply sell stuff quickly.