Panda algorithm not actually algorithm?

Does anyone else believe that the "Panda algorithm updates" are bullshit and that they are just the results from the massive manual rating teams Google pays to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate search results? I think there is a small amount of input from some new algorithmic change, but that most of the downward movement you see after a "Panda update" comes from manual ratings. It's widely known that a huge percentage all searches are for a relatively small number of terms. It's more than logistically possible to manually review the first several results for all these terms. I'm sure a lot of you have seen the actual training document that Google's contractor for these ratings uses

coolbubba .com/ GoogleRatingGuidelines .pdf

If you really read the document, it's made clear to the reviewers that their input will directly affect a website's SERP.

We do not want to penalize a blog because someone else has put spam on it. If you believe that the blog is a good, legitimate blog that has been spammed by someone else, please do not assign a Spam flag.

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There are entire sections of the document dedicated to teaching the reviewers how to evaluate a website in the exact same way Google claims Panda works.

Good pages usually have these characteristics:
-The page is well-organized. There may be ads on the page, but they are well identified and not distracting.
-The page will have value to the user. A good search engine would want the page in a set of search results.
- In addition, they often have some or all of the following characteristics: highly satisfying, authoritative, entertaining, and/or recent (such as breaking news on a topic).

Remember to look at the page as a whole. Spam pages usually have some of these characteristics:
-PPC ads are usually very prominent on the page, and it is obvious that the page was created for them.
-Look for suspicious, computer-generated grammar: Look at the text on the page. When it is computergenerated, it often looks like ?gibberish?, which means that it does not make sense. You may also see hyperlinked keywords inside the text.
-If you do a text search, you will find that the content has been copied.

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Yeah, that's right, they're even instructing the raters to manually seek out duplicate content

"Search for an exact sentence from the text on the page: Copy and paste a distinctive sentence in the search box of a search engine. When you paste the sentence in the search box, put quotation marks around it so that the search engine will search for the exact string of words. From the search results displayed, you may find where the content originated. If the content is original and has not been copied from another source, it probably was written to be helpful to users"

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That sort of flies in the face of the idea that Google's algorithm is a master at automatically finding copied content. Obviously they don't have an algorithmic solution, otherwise they wouldn't be paying humans to perform quotation searches to check for duplicate content. What a joke!

And it's obvious why Google pays a third party contractor to perform these reviews, rather than simply have an in-house team do it - they have to shield themselves from anti-trust violations! If they performed these ratings themselves, they could be sued by the government for manipulating the market!

While other search engines do use these outside contractors too, I think Google is simply better at weighting and applying the results to their SERPS. Their big breakthrough was probably finding an algorithm that could confirm, weight, and incorporate manual ratings, and this is what they call "Panda".

Panda is a filter.

I make websites and still making them the same way using the old methodology and guess what Google still indexing them the old way as it was, so yes I agree with you that Panda might be the propaganda against all the SEO thingies

@Damagex

Sure it is filter, but if you do the interesting stuff and good linking, when why it should filter the interesting website? You see some of the websites are full of crap (well probably 90% of them), so to make things easier they have developed Panda, which does its job to filter that 90% crap.

Look at what Panda did to one of my sites:

casius said:

@Damagex

Sure it is filter, but if you do the interesting stuff and good linking, when why it should filter the interesting website? You see some of the websites are full of crap (well probably 90% of them), so to make things easier they have developed Panda, which does its job to filter that 90% crap.

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Panda isn't related to backlinks, its main concern is on-page metrics and content.

Thanks OP for this link. Does anybody have more regarding these so-called human contractors and how they are hired? This sounds like the old Yahoo model and I wonder how many keywords they actually impact and what they are.

Your suspicions aside, I think these would be great guidelines for any of us to follow in an effort to create quality websites. Give the people(the users & big G) what they want.

For the billions of websites out there? I don't think so, not humanly possible.

I actually did this job for Google about 12 months ago and I was recruited through a company called Lionbridge recruitment.

ChrisAstley said:

I actually did this job for Google about 12 months ago and I was recruited through a company called Lionbridge recruitment.

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I've actually heard of LionBridge working with Google on manual reviews.

But do they have anything to do with the Panda?

oneder said:

For the billions of websites out there? I don't think so, not humanly possible.

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There's no need to check every website, they only need to check the top results for the top search terms. Almost half of all searches are made for a relatively small number of terms. With a large team, this wouldn't take long at all.

At the very least, Google uses the manual ratings to feed the "machine learning" aspects of Panda they're so proud of, then applies the rules universally.

ChrisAstley said:

I actually did this job for Google about 12 months ago and I was recruited through a company called Lionbridge recruitment.

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http://en-us.lionbridge.com/MultilingualSearch.aspx?pageid=1293&LangType=1033

I guess one can apply for a job here and get the latest in Google algos and thinking. So you spam google as you work for them....Can't be sweeter!

You are partly right. Google had a bunch of human raters, showed them a bunch of sites, asked them if they liked them, trusted them, etc., then using the data they got they tried to find the characteristics of the good and the bad website, so that the evaluation can be done by machines. That's why it may look like it's human raters. Search for Navneet Panda..

I think the third party manual reviews and PANDA are in place to compliment each other. Think about it, it makes sense.

bigmex said:

I think the third party manual reviews and PANDA are in place to compliment each other. Think about it, it makes sense.

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Agreed.

navimeister said:

You are partly right. Google had a bunch of human raters, showed them a bunch of sites, asked them if they liked them, trusted them, etc., then using the data they got they tried to find the characteristics of the good and the bad website, so that the evaluation can be done by machines. That's why it may look like it's human raters. Search for Navneet Panda..

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I am aware of the machine learning that Google likes to tout. But that doesn't mean they can't directly apply the manual ratings to high volume search terms, while applying the machine-learned filters universally.

i have a good friend who is really good at seo who thinks the same as the op. I dont believe it though. I think its algo...

Humans are the best Artificial Intelligence machines out there, properly trained human will do better than any algorithm. Therefore any new algorithm relies on human feedback, Panda is no different.

Panda has some new quality metrics and devaluated inbound links.
Also the bigest change is that site is rated by its weakest page.