Google’s Panda and Penguin has got everyone so riled up, especially those who belong to the SEO business. There was panic, excitement, as well as disappointment all over the place. The algorithm update was the topic in chat rooms and forums.
Google has admitted that there will be effects felt in the SEO community; however it is not easy to measure the true impact of the updates just by pure talk. We certainly need more than conjectures and lucky guesses. Fortunately for everyone involved, with the help of Clay Cazier, a methodology was developed to help make it a lot easier to get data but let everyone be warned though that it is not perfect.
How does it work?
Cazier says that the assessment works by comparing year over year (YoY) and month over month (MoM) drops in click volumes on Google which are organic. He also designed a custom quantifier named Google Organic Click Turbulence which will measure the negative changes on the organic clicks on Google.
Why develop all these? Because he would like to know if Panda and Penguin truly have that negative impact which various SEOs have reported. Is there any truth to their story? During a 2012 research about Google’s changes in search, over half of digital marketers interviewed said that Panda had an impact. More than 60% voted for Penguin.
However, surveys based on opinion is not really reliable if you want to get accurate information. In order to see the difference between perceived effect and the actual effect, there must be an accurate measurement used.
In the United States alone, more than 10% of the searches were affected by the change but website owners are reporting an impact of up to 40%. So, who is telling the truth here? There is widespread fear that Google’s algorithm change will affect organic clicks and this has led to the increase of pad activities.
It seems that the real enemies are not the updates but the SEOs themselves. There is a pervading lack of confidence in organic which has made people resort to reallocating their budget to paid searches and away from SEO. This only goes to show that it really pays to investigate and find out for yourself before you follow the crowd and do what they are doing.
How was the quantifier created?
Now that we have talked about Cazier and his methods, I am quite certain that people would like to know how he developed his quantifier. In order to ensure accuracy, they used a global cross-section of a million users in the United States who allowed the tracking of their transaction and browsing behavior. To get a bigger picture, Cazier focused on click volume.
Non-US LTDs were removed so that year on year and month on month losses can be easily quantified. According to the results, both Panda and Penguin updates both had an impact on more than 50% of the study group, however, due to undiscovered data issues he cannot guarantee that the results are 100% accurate.