I didn’t cover the release of the “Panda” algorithm by Google as it generated phenomenal amounts of discussion in many other blogs and more mainstream news sites. I did ask publishers about the impact of Panda at the time, but few wanted to talk in any detail about the impact on their traffic. With little hard information from the sites, I couldn’t add much to the discussion.
Recently, however, I heard from Ian Poole, the publisher of Radio-Electronics.com, who said that he’d seen a huge change that could be interpreted as reversing the hit the site took from Panda. He was one of the few publisher who was prepared to be open about the negative impact of Panda on his traffic, and therefore he is a very reputable source in my opinion. Ian told me:
At Radio-Electronics.com we have pushed ahead, but focussed on trying to provide good content that people want. We have tried not to worry too much about SEO to just please Google, but focussed on trying to please our visitors. Now it seems that the Google algorithms have been updated again. Last Friday, 14th October we saw a dramatic change with traffic increasing by +50%, and this has been matched since then. Before the change we were seeing a traffic level of around 350k page views a month, and if the current level continues we should serve over 500 k page views a month – this is close to what EDN in the US was serving before the update.
Is this the result of a major change in the algorithm? I think that’s unlikely as other sites aren’t talking about it. Perhaps it’s just the result of a concerted effort by Ian to fix the SEO challenges presented by Panda. Whatever the cause, it’s great to see a publisher growing their traffic so successfully.