Not if you're one of MY clients! ;)
Great article! And if she worked with Stephan Spencer, then she knows what she's talking about...
MAYDAY (for us) was all about brand terms that were formerly long tail for us getting reclaimed by the brand.
Pre-MAYDAY, we owned the SERPS for BRAND + {modifier in our CAPTION text} because of great unique content.
After MAYDAY, Google gave the top 3 listings for BRAND + {almost any modifier} to the brand, (even text not on page) which is fair.
It's their brand even if they don't have the info folks want. :P
Saw the same drop on another big car site for MAYDAY as well...
The PANDA update looks like it's TRULY nuking sites that are MFG TEXT CLONES with some sort of penalty for high-bounce rates / slow load times.
And the pundits say that it's a domain-wide penalty, NOT a page by page mole-whacking, but I have yet to see proof of that...
And I think it's a certain % of your pages not having UNIQUE CONTENT, which again is speculation. Add in crappy bounce rates and slow load times and you have the makings of a perfect storm?
I'm seeing sites with FAT TEMPLATES / (aka ain't no meat on that sandwich) getting whacked as well. Can't tell if it's % unique text to boilerplate OR the datafeed on product pages.
But does it matter? IMHO folks getting whacked are NOT doing what they should be doing in MULTIPLE arenas... DO THE NEEDFUL!
In an effort to increase the quality of its search results, Google launched an update in late February dubbed the “Farmer/Panda Update” by the search-engine-optimization industry. The update affected 12 percent of Google’s results, decreasing organic traffic for sites like the one owned by Luis Hernandez, Jr. He is CEO of The Motor Bookstore, a DeBary, Fla.-based retailer of automotive repair, restoration and service manuals.
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