Difference b/w Google Panda & Google Penguin

Difference between Google Panda and Google Penguin

The update of the Google Penguin algorithm in the last week of May has brought this algorithm into limelight. Yet many site owners are still unaware of this latest algorithm of Google. The other algorithm namely the Google Panda is much more popular than the Google Penguin. The most common query that is doing the rounds with the Penguin update is the difference between the two. While Google Panda has been in the scene earlier than Penguin, yet both these algorithms are responsible in bringing down faulty websites from their search engine rankings. The main difference lies in the characteristics that they work upon. Below is a brief description of the two algorithms which will help in getting a clear picture of them.

Google Panda

Google Panda algorithm mainly targets websites with low quality content. Content farms were hit the hardest by this algorithm. Even sites with duplicate content from other sites were penalized by Google. The overall ranking of the websites depends on all the pages of the website. If all the pages have poor quality content then the whole site will get penalized for it. The Google Panda algorithm has also promoted quality websites which had been lower in the search engine rankings. The last update was in 19^th April 2012.

Google Penguin

Launched on 24^th April, 2012, this algorithm mainly concentrates on the webspam. The websites which do not follow the quality guidelines of Google are penalized and demoted in the search engine rankings. Black hat techniques like keyword stuffing are looked down upon by this algorithm. Some of the points which should be kept in mind by the webmasters to avoid being penalized are listed below:

1. Comment spamming in blogs using exactly matching anchor text for targeted keywords.
2. Unnatural inbound links
3. Exact match anchor text in outbound links coming from poor quality sites.
4. Low quality directory listing and article marketing

So those who have suffered traffic losses and a decrease in their search engine ranking in the recent times should find out the main reason and work on that to restore their original position.