SEO & Social Media Tips

Google Penguin is a code name^[1] for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines^[2] by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing,^[3] cloaking,^[4] participating in link schemes,^[5] deliberate creation of duplicate content,^[6] and others.

The main target of Google Penguin is spamdexing (including link bombing).

In computing, spamdexing (also known as search spam, search engine spam, web spam or search engine poisoning)^[1] is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system.^[2][3] It could be considered to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that improve the quality and appearance of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users.^[4] Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the body text or URL of a web page. Many search engines check for instances of spamdexing and will remove suspect pages from their indexes. Also, people working for a search-engine organization can quickly block the results-listing from entire websites that use spamdexing, perhaps alerted by user complaints of false matches. The rise of spamdexing in the mid-1990s made the leading search engines of the time less useful. Using sinister methods to have websites rank higher in search engine results is commonly referred to in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) industry as "Black Hat SEO."^[5]
 

Google Panda is a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites",^[1] and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. CNET reported a surge in the rankings of news websites and social networking sites, and a drop in rankings for sites containing large amounts of advertising.^[2] This change reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12 percent of all search results.^[3] Soon after the Panda rollout, many websites, including Google's webmaster forum, became filled with complaints of scrapers/copyright infringers getting better rankings than sites with original content. At one point, Google publicly asked for data points^[4] to help detect scrapers better. Google's Panda has received several updates since the original rollout in February 2011, and the effect went global in April 2011. To help affected publishers, Google published an advisory on its blog,^[5] thus giving some direction for self-evaluation of a website's quality. Google has provided a list of 23 bullet points on its blog answering the question of "What counts as a high-quality site?" that is supposed to help webmasters "step into Google's mindset".<sup>[6]

source: wikipedia</sup>