Google Panda (2011)
Demoted thin, duplicate and content-farm pages. Became part of the core algorithm in 2016.
DateFeb 23, 2011
PlatformGoogle SEO
TypeContent quality
Who it affectsContent farms, thin affiliate sites
What happened
Panda targeted low-quality content: thin pages, duplicated text and ‘content farms’ publishing huge volumes of shallow articles. It worked as a site-level quality assessment, so a large amount of poor content could drag down a whole site. Google ran Panda periodically until it became part of the core ranking algorithm in 2016.
Who it affected
Content farms, thin affiliate sites.
What it means for marketers today
Panda’s thinking lives on in today’s core updates and helpful content signals. Run a content audit to improve, merge or remove thin pages, and focus on depth and originality.