WebProNews

Tag: Panda

  • Google Panda Update Rolls Out With New Signals

    It’s a day, so Google is updating its algorithm. Apparently there’s a Panda update currently under way.

    Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable noticed people at WebmasterWorld talking about “another shuffle taking place in Google” as pretty much occurs all the time. Panda was suspected, and according to Scwhartz, Google has confirmed that Panda is indeed the culprit. He shares this statement at Search Engine Land:

    In the last few days we’ve been pushing out a new Panda update that incorporates new signals so it can be more finely targeted.

    Google has indicated in the past that it would no longer be confirming Panda updates, but apparently they changed their minds. Schwartz quotes the company as saying this one is “more finely targeted”.

    Some in the forums are suggesting Panda recoveries.

    Back in May, Google’s Matt Cutts released a video discussing coming changes SEOs and webmasters could expect from Google. In that, he indicated that Panda would ease up a little bit.

    He said, “We’ve also been looking at Panda, and seeing if we can find some additional signals (and we think we’ve got some) to help refine things for the sites that are kind of in the border zone – in the gray area a little bit. And so if we can soften the effect a little bit for those sites that we believe have some additional signals of quality, then that will help sites that have previously been affected (to some degree) by Panda.”

    Either way, Panda has managed to get Hitler riled up again.

    Image: fortherock (Flickr)

  • Hitler Is Talking About The Google Panda Update Again

    There’s a new Hitler Panda update video out. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Hitler address the subject of Google’s controversial algorithm update, but it’s been a while. In fact, Hitler seems to have completely reversed his position from this one where he was clearly not a fan of the update.

    This time, Hitler is running Google, and is a huge proponent of the update. The video from FreewareGenius was uploaded on July 4th.

    Samer from FreewareGenius.com tells WebProNews, “Panda killed my site but at least I got to make a Hitler video about it entitled ‘Hitler as Google CEO’”.

    Yeah, I guess there’s always a silver lining.

  • Google: We Haven’t Updated Panda For A Month And A Half

    Back in March, Google launched a Panda refresh. This is something they’ve done numerous times since first launching the update back in early 2011. There was something special about this particular refresh, however, because it marked the beginning of a new era of Panda in which Google will keep the update going regularly, without announcing all the refreshes.

    “Rather than having some huge change that happens on a given day. You are more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we rebuild the index. So you are less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes,” Google’s Matt Cutts was quoted as saying.

    Matt Cutts appeared in a discussion at SMX Advanced Tuesday evening in which he spoke a bit about Panda, among many other things.

    Interviewer Danny Sullivan asked Cutts how many Panda updates there have been since Google stopped confirming them. His response was that they had one about a month and a half ago, but hadn’t updated it since then because they’re looking at pulling in a new signal that might help some people out of the gray zone.

    This brings to mind recent words from Cutts in an industry-famous video in which he discussed numerous upcoming changes.

    In that, Cutts talked about Google changing its update strategy for Panda. “We’ve also been looking at Panda, and seeing if we can find some additional signals (and we think we’ve got some) to help refine things for the sites that are kind of in the border zone – in the gray area a little bit. And so if we can soften the effect a little bit for those sites that we believe have some additional signals of quality, then that will help sites that have previously been affected (to some degree) by Panda.”

    Panda will apparently be updated about once a month, and roll out slowly throughout the month.

    “What happens is Google will run the update on a particular day, let’s say on the 4th of the month,” explains Barry Schwartz from SMX sister site, Search Engine Land. “Then Google will slowly push out that impact over 10 days or so through the month. Google will typically repeat this cycle over monthly.”

    Hat tip to Matt McGee for liveblogging the discussion.

  • Google Tests Highlighting In-Depth Articles In Search Results

    Google conducts tens of thousands of search experiments every year, and you never know which ones will actually become features of the greater Google experience, but the search engine is running a new one that’s pretty interesting and shares some traits with actual features in other Google products, which could actually improve search results, and lend visibility to deserving content.

    The test puts an “In-depth articles” section within the organic Google web results in a Universal Search-like fashion. It highlights (presumably) long form content relevant to your query. Tipped by Dr. Peter Meyers from Moz, Search Engine Land points out the test with a screen cap. Here’s what the relevant portion of the page looks like:

    In-depth articles on Google

    As I mentioned, this shares some similarities with other existing Google features. For one, Google already highlights content as “in-depth” in Google News.

    In Depth News

    The icons Google shows for each publication match the icons they’re showing in the latest version of the Gmail Android app. When there is a Google profile pic that Google can use to associate with the publication (or in Gmail’s case, sender), it uses it. When there is not a Google profile pic, Google displays the first letter of the publication (or sender) in a box. It’s kind of an odd way to to do it, but it shows some consistency between Google products, and I would not be surprised to start seeing this format pop up in other places throughout the Google universe.

    As for the new “In-depth” articles test, the feature seems to keep in line with Google’s mission to surface high quality content, and would complement the Panda algorithm update in that regard. The feature could reward orignal reporting and analysis – at least the kind that takes a great deal of time and effort on the part of the author. Granted, there is certainly plenty of original reporting that is not long-form or in-depth.

    Either way, if this becomes an actual feature, this will give content providers more of an SEO reason to produce long articles.

    In Google News, Google also has a “highly cited” label. It would be interesting if Google added a feature for that similar to the “in-depth articles” one.

    It’s interesting that Google would display this test on results for a query like “mexican restaurants,” where users most likely wouldn’t be looking to read in-depth articles in most cases.

  • Google Insists Panda, Penguin Not Designed To Increase Its Revenue

    Google put out a new Webmaster Help video, featuring Matt Cutts once again talking about “misconceptions” in the SEO industry. You may recall a while back when he tackled the “misconception” that Google is doing everything you read about in its patents.

    There are two main takeaways from the new video. The first is that Google does not make changes to its algorithm (like Panda and Penguin) in order to generate more revenue for itself. The second is that you should focus more on design and user experience than link building and trying to please search engines.

    Do you agree with Matt’s statements? Are you convinced that Google is putting user experience ahead of short-term revenue gains? Let us know in the comments.

    First, Cutts points out that a lot of people don’t get the difference between an algorithm update and a data refresh, both of which are common terms associated with Panda and Penguin. He’s talked about this before, but here’s his latest refresher.

    “The difference between an algorithm update versus just a data refresh – when you’re changing your algorithm, the signals that you’re using and how you weight those signals are fundamentally changing,” he says. “When you’re doing just a data refresh, then the way that you run your computer program stays the same, but you might have different incoming data. You might refresh the data that the algorithm is using. That’s something that a lot of people just don’t seem to necessarily get.”

    Cutts put out a blog post back in 2006 on the difference between algorithm updates and data refreshes. He then gave these straight-forward definitions before pointing to a video in which he compares an algorithm update to changing a car part, and a data refresh to filling up the gas tank:

    Algorithm update: Typically yields changes in the search results on the larger end of the spectrum. Algorithms can change at any time, but noticeable changes tend to be less frequent.

    Data refresh: When data is refreshed within an existing algorithm. Changes are typically toward the less-impactful end of the spectrum, and are often so small that people don’t even notice.

    So that’s the first misconception Cutts aims to clear up (again) in this new video. Then he moves on to “a bigger one they don’t seem to get”.

    “I’ve seen a lot of accusations after Panda and Penguin that Google is just trying to increase its revenue, and let me just confront that head on,” says Cutts. “Panda, if you go back and look at Google’s quarterly statements, they actually mention that Panda decreased our revenue. So a lot of people have this conspiracy theory that Google is making these changes to make more money. And not only do we not think that way in the search quality team, we’re more than happy to make changes which are better for the long term loyalty of our users, the user experience, and all that sort of stuff, and if that’s a short-term revenue hit, then that might be okay, right? Because people are going to be coming back to Google long term. So a lot of people…it’s a regular conspiracy theory: ‘Google did this ranking change because they want people to buy more ads,’ and that’s certainly not the case with Panda. It’s certainly not the case with Penguin. It’s kind of funny to see that as a meme within the industry, and it’s just something that I wanted to debunk that misconception.”

    “Panda and Penguin,” he continues. “We just want ahead and made those changes, and we’re not going to worry about whether we lose money, we make money, whatever. We just want to return the best users’ results we can. And the mental model you should have is, we want to have the long-term loyalty of our users. We don’t want to lock users in, so we have Data Liberation. People can always get their own data back out of Google, and if we just choose short-term revenue, that might make some money in the short term, but historically we’ve had the long-term view. If you make users happy, they’ll come back. They’ll do more searches. They’ll like Google. They’ll trust Google more. That, in our opinion, is worth more than just some short-term sort of revenue.”

    “If you look at the history of the decisions that Google has made, I think you see that over and over again, he adds. “And Panda and Penguin are no exception to that.”

    We did look back at some of Google’s earnings reports. The Panda update was first launched in February, 2011. Google’s revenue grew 27% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2011.

    “We had a great quarter with 27% year-over-year revenue growth,” said Google CFO Patrick Pichette. “These results demonstrate the value of search and search ads to our users and customers, as well as the extraordinary potential of areas like display and mobile. It’s clear that our past investments have been crucial to our success today—which is why we continue to invest for the long term.”

    Some other snippets from that report:

    Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $5.88 billion, or 69% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2011. This represents a 32% increase over first quarter 2010 revenues of $4.44 billion.

    Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.43 billion, or 28% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2011. This represents a 19% increase from first quarter 2010 network revenues of $2.04 billion.

    …

    Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 18% over the first quarter of 2010 and increased approximately 4% over the fourth quarter of 2010.

    Looking ahead to the next quarter’s report, the first full quarter of post-Panda results, Google’s revenue was up 32% year-over-year. Here’s CEO Larry Page’s statement from that one:

    “We had a great quarter, with revenue up 32% year on year for a record breaking over $9 billion of revenue,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “I’m super excited about the amazing response to Google+ which lets you share just like in real life.”

    A few more snippets from that report:

    Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $6.23 billion, or 69% of total revenues, in the second quarter of 2011. This represents a 39% increase over second quarter 2010 revenues of $4.50 billion.

    Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.48 billion, or 28% of total revenues, in the second quarter of 2011. This represents a 20% increase from second quarter 2010 network revenues of $2.06 billion.

    …

    Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 18% over the second quarter of 2010 and decreased approximately 2% over the first quarter of 2011.

    The word “panda” is not mentioned in either report as far I as can tell, but there you do have a slight decrease in paid clicks from quarter to quarter, which given that this takes AdSense into account, and many sites affected by Panda were AdSense sites, could be representative of a direct blow from Panda itself.

    The next quarter, however, saw paid clicks increase 13% quarter-over-quarter. In Q4 of that year, they increased 17% quarter-over-quarter.

    Interestingly, back in July of 2011, analyst Tom Foremski suggested that Google wasn’t being clear about Panda having an impact on ad revenues, pointing out a “huge disparity between the growth rates of Google sites and partner sites,” which he said was “without precedent for most of its history.”

    Cutts actually took issue with some words from Foremski, and reacted in a comment on a Hacker News thread, where he points to transcripts from actual earnings calls, highlighting relevant sentences. Here’s Cutts’ full comment from the thread:

    DanielBMarkham, let me try again using quotes from Google’s last two earning transcripts from the last two quarters and see whether that helps to clarify.
    I’m loath to go anywhere near a subject like corporate earnings for various reasons, but Foremski says “There is no explanation from Google or Wall Street analysts that I could find,” but anyone can go read Google’s Q2 2011 earnings call transcript, which you can find at http://seekingalpha.com/article/279555-google-s-ceo-discusse… . The relevant sentence is “Network revenue was again negatively impacted by the Search quality improvements made during the latter part of Q1, as you will remember, and know that Q2 reflects a full quarter of this impact.”

    Now go read Google’s Q1 earning’s transcript at http://seekingalpha.com/article/263665-google-s-ceo-discusse… . The relevant section is “The Google Network revenue was up 19% year-over-year to $2.4 billion. That Network revenue was negatively impacted by two things, the loss of a Search distribution partnership deal and also, what has been broadly communicated, by Search quality improvement made during the quarter. Regarding the Search quality improvement, remember that we regularly make such trade-offs. We really believe that the quality improvements that benefit the user always serves us well both in the short term and in the mid term in terms of revenue.”

    So Foremski claims that “For some strange reason no one has picked up on this or noticed this huge change in its business model. There is no explanation from Google or Wall Street analysts that I could find.” I would contend that Google has actually been quite clear about the reasons for the change in network revenue in its earnings calls.

    In particular, Google has been clear in that it’s willing to accept an impact in our revenue in order to improve the quality of our search results.

    In Q1 2012, paid clicks were up 7% quarter-over-quarter. In Q2 2012, they were up 1%. In Q3 2012, they were up 6%. In Q4, they were up 9%. In Q1 2013, they were up 3%. So, while there was a short term hit, the long term does seem to see increase after increase in this area.

    Now, back to the video. Finally he gets to the topic of what he thinks SEOs are spending too much time doing.

    “I think a good proxy for that is link building,” Cutts says. “A lot of people think about, ‘How do I build more links?’ and they dont’ think about the grander, global picture of, ‘How do I make something compelling, and then how do I make sure that I market it well?’ You know, you get too focused on search engines, and then you, for example, would entirely miss social media and social media marketing. And that’s a great way to get out in front of people. So, specifically, I would think, just like Google does, about the user experience of your site. What makes it compelling? What makes it interesting? What makes it fun? Because if you look at the history of sites that have done relatively well or businesses that are doing well now…you can take anywhere from Instagram to Path – even Twitter…there’s a cool app called YardSale, and what those guys try to do is they make design a fundamental piece of why their site is advantageous to go to. It’s a great experience. People enjoy that.”

    I think we’ve all pretty much heard this before.

    Do you think Panda and Penguin have really helped the quality of Google’s search results and created a better user experience? Is link building still of major importance? Let us know what you think.

    Image: SerSon Art (Etsy)

  • For Better Or Worse, A Lot Of Change Is Coming To Google SEO

    Google has a lot of stuff in the works that will have a direct impact on webmasters and the search engine optimization community. In a seven-minute “Webmaster Help” video, Google’s Matt Cutts (sporting a Mozilla Firefox shirt), ran down much of what Google’s webspam team has planned for the coming months, and what it all means for webmasters. It involves the Penguin update, the Panda update, advertorials, hacked sites, link spam, and a lot more.

    Are you paying close attention to Google’s algorithm updates these days? Are you looking forward to the updates, or are you afraid of what they will bring? Let us know in the comments.

    Cutts is careful to note that any of this information is subject to change, and should be taken with a grain of salt, but this pretty much the kind of stuff they have planned at the moment.

    Penguin

    We already knew the Penguin update was on the way, and he touches on that.

    “We’re relatively close to deploying the next generation of Penguin,” says Cutts. “Internally we call it ‘Penguin 2.0,’ and again, Penguin is a webspam change that’s dedicated to try to find black hat webspam, and try to target and address that. So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper in have a little bit more of an impact than the original version of Penguin.”

    Before the video came out, Cutts was already talking about this update on Twitter, saying that it would be “larger” and roll out in the “next few weeks”.

    Updates To Panda

    Google recently changed its updating strategy for Panda. Webmasters use to anxiously await coming Panda updates, but Google has turned it into a rolling update, meaning that it will continue to update often and regularly, to the point where anticipating any one big update is not really possible any longer. On top of that, Google stopped announcing them, as it just doesn’t make sense for them to do so anymore.

    That doesn’t mean there isn’t Panda news, as Cutts has proven. It turns out that the Panda that has haunted so many webmasters over the last couple years may start easing up a little bit, and become (dare I say?) a bit friendlier.

    Cutts says, “We’ve also been looking at Panda, and seeing if we can find some additional signals (and we think we’ve got some) to help refine things for the sites that are kind of in the border zone – in the gray area a little bit. And so if we can soften the effect a little bit for those sites that we believe have some additional signals of quality, then that will help sites that have previously been affected (to some degree) by Panda.”

    Sites And Their Authority

    If you’re an authority on any topic, and you write about it a lot, this should be good news (in a perfect world, at least).

    “We have also been working on a lot of ways to help regular webmasters,” says Cutts. “We’re doing a better job of detecting when someone is more of an authority on a specific space. You know, it could be medical. It could be travel. Whatever. And try to make sure that those rank a little more highly if you’re some sort of authority or a site, according to the algorithms, we think might be a little more appropriate for users.”

    Advertorials

    Also on the Google menu is a bigger crackdown on advertorials.

    “We’ve also been looking at advertorials,” says Cutts .”That is sort of native advertising – and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines. So, again, if someone pays for coverage, or pays for an ad or something like that, those ads should not flow PageRank. We’ve seen a few sites in the U.S. and around the world that take money and do link to websites, and pass PageRank, so we’ll be looking at some efforts to be a little bit stronger on our enforcement as advertorials that violate our quality guidelines.”

    “There’s nothing wrong inherently with advertorials or native advertising, but they should not flow PageRank, and there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure, so that users realize that something is paid – not organic or editorial,” he adds.

    Queries With High Spam Rates

    Google will also be working harder on certain types of queries that tend to draw a lot of spam.

    Cutts says, “We get a lot of great feedback from outside of Google, so, for example, there were some people complaining about searches like ‘payday loans’ on Google.co.uk. So we have two different changes that try to tackle those kinds of queries in a couple different ways. We can’t get into too much detail about exactly how they work, but I’m kind of excited that we’re going from having just general queries be a little more clean to going to some of these areas that have traditionally been a little more spammy, including for example, some more pornographic queries, and some of these changes might have a little bit more of an impact on those kinds of areas that are a little more contested by various spammers and that sort of thing.”

    Denying Value To Link Spam

    Google will continue to be vigilant when it comes to all types of link spam, and has some new tricks up its sleeve, apparently.

    Cutts says, “We’re also looking at some ways to go upstream to deny the value to link spammers – some people who spam links in various ways. We’ve got some nice ideas on ways that that becomes less effective, and so we expect that that will roll out over the next few months as well.”

    “In fact, we’re working on a completely different system that does more sophisticated link analysis,” he adds. “We’re still in the early days for that, but it’s pretty exciting. We’ve got some data now that we’re ready to start munching, and see how good it looks. We’ll see whether that bears fruit or not.”

    Hopefully this won’t lead to a whole lot of new “fear of linking” from webmasters, as we’ve seen since Penguin first rolled out, but that’s probably wishful thinking.

    Hacked Sites

    Google intends to get better on the hacked sites front.

    “We also continue to work on hacked sites in a couple different ways,” says Cutts. “Number one: trying to detect them better. We hope in the next few months to roll out a next-generation site detection that is even more comprehensive, and also trying to communicate better to webmasters, because sometimes they see confusion between hacked sites and sites that serve up malware, and ideally, you’d have a one-stop shop where once someone realizes that they’ve been hacked, they can go to Webmaster Tools, and have some single spot where they could go and have a lot more info to sort of point them in the right way to hopefully clean up those hacked sites.”

    Clusters Of Results From The Same Site

    There have been complaints about domain clustering in Google’s results, and Google showing too many results from the same domain on some queries.

    Cutts says, “We’ve also heard a lot of feedback from people about – if I go down three pages deep, I’ll see a cluster of several results all from one domain, and we’ve actually made things better in terms of – you would be less likely to see that on the first page, but more likely to see that on the following pages. And we’re looking a change, which might deploy, which would basically say that once you’ve seen a cluster of results from one site, then you’d be less likely to see more results from that site as you go deeper into the next pages of Google search results.”

    “We’re going to keep trying to figure out how we can give more information to webmasters…we’re also going to be looking for ways that we can provide more concrete details, [and] more example URLs that webmasters can use to figure out where to go to diagnose their site.”

    So Google has a lot of stuff in the works that SEOs and webmasters are going to want to keep a close eye on. It’s going to be interesting to see the impact it all has. Given that Google makes algorithm changes every day, this has to be far from everything they have in the works, but I guess the video makes up for the lack of “Search Quality HIghlights” from Google in recent months. Still wondering if those are ever coming back. They were, after all, released to keep Google more transparent.

    What do you think of the changes Matt Cutts talked about. Looking forward to any of them? Dreading any? Let us know in the comments.

  • Are You More Or Less Worried About Google’s Panda Update Now?

    Are You More Or Less Worried About Google’s Panda Update Now?

    As previously reported, Google’s Matt Cutts revealed at SMX this week that Google would be pushing a refresh to its famous (or perhaps infamous) Panda update on either Friday or Monday. As of Friday, it appears that the refresh has arrived.

    Have you felt the effects of the latest Panda update? Noticed any improvements in Google’s search results? Let us know in the comments.

    Barry Schwartz is pointing to some forum chatter about webmasters already seeing the effects of the refresh, indicating that it has likely begun to roll out. As others have pointed out, it’s not uncommon for Google to do this on a Friday. Schwartz says signs point to the roll out starting on Thursday afternoon and into Friday.

    This isn’t just your typical run of the mill Panda refresh, however. This could very well be the last time Google manually pushes one, as Panda is becoming more of a “rolling” update. Schwartz quotes Cutts from SMX:

    Rather than having some huge change that happens on a given day. You are more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we rebuild the index. So you are less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes.

    As of the time of this writing, Google has not made a formal announcement about this latest Panda refreshed, and it’s entirely possible that they won’t. Given the nature of Pand deployment going forward, it’s unlikely that Google will do so from here on out. We have to just accept Panda as an ongoing thing. No more anticipation of the next big Pand update. You can just count on it happening on a regular, ongoing basis. Actually, Google has come out and said that it’s unlikely to confirm Panda updates from now on.

    It remains to be seen just what kind of an impact this will truly have on sites, but it’s not likely to make things much easier.

    Don’t worry though, you can still anticipate the next big Penguin update, which Cutts also discussed at SMX. He said they’re working on the “next generation of Penguin,” which he is implying is going to be a big one. Google is also talking about cracking down on “bad online merchants”. It will be interesting to see how this affects ecommerce sites, and what Google really considers “bad”.

    “We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results,” Cutts said about that.

    We have been waiting for the next Panda/Penguin. Maybe that’s the one we’re looking at. You have to wonder how many sites it will impact. I can easily envision a firestorm of merchant freak-out.

    Cutts also reportedly said Google will be targeting more link networks this year.

    We’re also still waiting on Google to put out what used to be its monthly lists of algorithm changes (or “search quality highlights” if you will) for the past several months, dating back to October. This is the longest Google has gone without releasing the lists since they started doing it, which they were doing in the name of “transparency”.

    Panda recently turned two years old, and opinions of Google’s search results since its implementation vary. With the latest refresh, Google has gone through 25 iterations of Panda.

    Now that Google has a new approach to how it deploys Panda, are you more or less worried about its impact? Let us know in the comments.

    Image: Tekken 5 (via YouTube)

  • Matt Cutts: Panda Update Coming Friday, ‘Big’ Penguin Update Later This Year

    According to Google webspam head Matt Cutts, we can expect the next Panda refresh to occur within the next few days.

    Speaking at the SMX conference, Cutts said that the next Panda update will take place this Friday, March 15th or by Monday, March 18th at the latest.

    The last Panda update rolled out on January 22nd, and Google said that it affected 1.2% of queries. Even if a Panda update launches this Friday, it will have been the longest time between updates in recent memory. Google previously released a Panda update a few days before Christmas, and two back in November.

    Although the Panda refresh is coming sooner, a Penguin update is also on the horizon – and Cutts said that it’ll be a big one. Cutts said that it will be one of the most talked-about updates of the year.

    They are “working on the next generation of Penguin,” said Cutts.

    More algorithm changes were discussed at SXSW last week. There, Cutts announced a possible crackdown on bad online merchants.

    “We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results,” he said.

    Check here for more on the future of Panda and Penguin in 2013

  • Have Google’s Results Improved After Two Years Of Panda?

    Have Google’s Results Improved After Two Years Of Panda?

    Google Panda Update It’s been two years since Google unleashed the Panda update. How the time flies.

    Do you think Google’s search results have improved significantly in that time? Let us know in the comments.

    As you probably know, the update was designed to promote higher quality content from sites in Google’s search results. Shortly after launching Panda, Google laid out some unofficial guidelines for what it means by “quality”. Victims of the update strived to recover from the huge drop in search visibility suffered as a result of it, by following these guidelines as best as possible. Few have been successful.

    Let’s revisit these guidelines, and see if Google is living up to its part of the bargain.

    Would you trust the information presented in this article?

    How often do you find search results with information that appears untrustworthy? This was a big issue when Panda was launched. So called “content farms” were cluttering up the results, and often getting top rankings with articles written by people with no real trustworthy credentials. Google continues to try and tackle this issue with authorship, but that’s completely separate from Panda. How do you think it’s done on the Panda front?

    Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

    In my opinion, this is kind of a trick question. This gives the impression that a result needs to be a long, in-depth piece on any given subject, yet when it comes down to it, a more “shallow” post (or even a tweet) from the right “expert” can carry a lot more weight in credibility. You can just browse Techmeme on any given day and get that impression (though that site certainly has its share of other issues).

    Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

    Is Google doing well at delivering trustworthy ecommerce results? Is it burying legitimate ecommerce sites because it doesn’t think they look trustworthy enough?

    Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

    Let’s be honest, these things happen to even the most highly-read publications on the web from time to time. The fast-paced culture of web content often breeds a “get it out, and update later” nature, and I’m not sure Panda has done anything to change that.

    Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

    As Rafat Ali, the founder of media industry follower PaidContent recently said:

    That said, isn’t it Google’s job to provide content that’s useful to its own users (searchers) as opposed to what’s useful to any given site’s audience? Sites typically want to expand their audiences anyway.

    Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?

    It’s a good question, but how often is this kind of content truly rewarded by the Panda update?

    Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?

    Ditto from last question.

    How much quality control is done on content?

    Ditto from question about spelling, stylistic, or factual errors.

    Does the article describe both sides of a story?

    I’m curious to know how Google might algorithmically approach this one. I’m also curious to know how much Google is really holding content accountable to this. What do you think?

    Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?

    Nothing wrong with showing users content from recognized authorities, but this also begs the question: How does one gain recognition without visibility?

    Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?

    If a piece of content is relevant for a query, isn’t that more important to the user experience than what content on some other page looks like? Sure, it’s good practice to maintain quality control, but should good, relevant content suffer because of lesser content on other parts of a site?

    Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?

    Once again, this goes along with the other questions about quality control and errors.

    For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?

    I think we pretty much covered this with the “trust” question, though for medical queries, the stakes can go up. In fact, this was one of the big concerns before Panda launched. Has Google gotten better at providing trustworthy medical-related results? It has launched its own Knowledge Graph results for some of this stuff. But again, that’s not really Panda-related.

    Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?

    Sites who are more authoritative on certain subjects often cover a much broader range of topics. This should really be more about the author of the article (along with other factors), should it not? Again, Google is really into this authorship thing, and probably with good reason, but I’m not sure Panda has all the answers on this one.

    Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?

    Frankly, this is not always needed in every article. That’s why the web is based around links. It’s probably also why Google loves Wikipedia so much.

    Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

    Can this be determined algorithmically?

    Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

    Wouldn’t it be helpful if Google tapped into Facebook for the social relevance of content?

    Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?

    I think this is covered by the page layout update.

    Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?.

    Isn’t print dying?

    Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?

    Does the right answer always have to be long?

    Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?

    Didn’t we already cover this?

    Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

    Not the most specific of guidelines.

    Some companies had to rethink their entire business models because of Panda. Smart content providers found ways to diversify their web traffic better as to not have to rely as much on Google. Demand Media’s site eHow has been the prime example of this. While it did go through a massive quality clean-up initiative to get back in Google’s good graces, it has also largely expanded its social media strategies, and increased partnerships, and the site is in as good of shape as ever, based on recent earnings calls from the company (which is now separating its content business from its registrar business).

    Demand Media ranked as a top 20 U.S. web property throughout last year, and was ranked at number 13 in January, according to comScore. The company reached over 125 million unique visitors worldwide in January, and eHow itself was ranked number 12 in the U.S. with 62 million unique visitors in January.

    Not everyone has been as successful as Demand Media. Matt McGee at Search Engine Land has put together some articles (apparently the first two in an ongoing series) looking at Panda victims two years later. He finds, citing Searchmetrics data (which has been questionable at times in the past, for the record), that none of 22 victims from the original Panda update, as listed by Searchmetrics, has returned to pre-Panda visibility, and that only two have improved compared to their post-Panda visibility.

    MotorTrend.com, which was hit by the original update for some reason, has managed to bounce back, and McGee calls it the “true Panda recovery” in terms of search visibility. Today, he says (again, citing Searchmetrics data), it appears to have better visibility than it had pre-Panda.

    For sites like EzineArticles, HubPages, and the like, no such luck. He says that even eHow’s visibility is down 63% from pre-Panda levels.

    But again, the Demand Media strategy is not as reliant on Google as it was pre-Panda. And that’s probably the best thing to take away from the whole thing. ChaCha, another Panda victim, has adopted a similar approach, as CEO Scott Jones recently described to us.

    Last year was all about Penguin, though Google continued to push Panda refreshes on a regular basis. Panda was kind of in the background as the Internet was already accustomed to it. Still, it’s Panda that tends to rear its head more often than Penguin.

    Google has been pushing out a major update early in each of the past couple years. We’re still wondering if they have a 2013 counterpart to Panda and Penguin in store. We’re also still waiting for Google to release months worth of its “search quality highlights”.

    Google announced the launch of its latest known Panda refresh in late January. The company said it affected 1.2% of English queries.

    Have Google’s results gotten better since it first launched Panda? Has quality gone up? Let us know what you think.

    Photo: Ken Bohn, San Diego Zoo (via National Geographic)

  • Google: Panda Update Data Refresh Rolling Out Now

    Google tweeted today that a new data refresh for the Panda update is currently rolling out in English, and that it affects 1.2% of queries.

    Lately, Google seems to be launching these Panda refreshes at least once a month. There was one in December, a few days before Christmas, and two in November.

    Google launched Panda in early 2011, then Penguin in the first quarter of 2012. We’re still waiting to see what (if any) major algorithm update the search engine will implement in 2013.

    More Panda coverage here.

    Image: Panda Express

  • What Will Be Google’s Panda/Penguin For 2013?

    Well, here we are ten days into 2013, and Google has been rather quiet in the New Year, at least in terms of new changes to algorithms. Rest assured, however, Google will not slow down behind the scenes in working to improve its algorithms and make its search results better.

    What do you want to see Google get better at in 2013? Let us know in the comments.

    Of course, Google Search has been in the news early this year, with the Federal Trade Commission having settled with the company with only a couple voluntary concessions made by Google with regard to search. Meanwhile, Google still has Europe to deal with on the antitrust front, but regardless of what happens with that, Google is not going to stop tweaking its algorithms and striving for better search results.

    The last two years each saw major Google algorithm changes that had sweeping effects on sites all over the web, and they just happened to be named after cute little animals. For those who lost a substantial amount of search visibility (and ultimately web traffic and revenue), there was nothing cute about them. I’m, of course referring to Panda and Penguin, though there were plenty of other algorithmic changes that didn’t get nearly the same amount of attention.

    In 2011, Google unleashed the Panda update, which continues to get refreshed periodically. I’m sure you know the story. Content farms were cluttering up the search results with low quality content, leaving the better stuff buried, and pretty much invisible. Panda was designed to reverse that, or at least establish some guidelines (in addition to Google’s official webmaster and quality guidelines) on what kind of content Google wants to rank well in its search results.

    The Panda update was controversial, and a lot of sites felt they were unfairly hit by it. Either way, Google sent a message loud and clear: Don’t create poor quality content and expect to rank in search results. Create useful, trustworthy content that users will be happy they found. It’s not perfect (no algorithm is, as Google will tell you), but it has arguably made a pretty big difference. There are still plenty of issues with Google’s results, but with regards to quality in depth content vs. thin, non-helpful content, I believe Panda has made a difference. I believe Google believes it has.

    As the webmasters and marketers came to grips with Panda, 2011 eventually gave way to 2012, and not foo far into the year (in April, actually), Google launched another huge update with Penguin. Like Panda, it too was designed to improve the quality of Google’s search results, but this one wasn’t as much about content as it was about ways people were beating the system by violating Google’s Quality Guidelines.

    Basically, Penguin was designed to do algorithmically, what Google had been doing manually for years. The penguin had a bloodlust for suspicious link activity, and a low tolerance for any kind of link schemes.

    Once again, a lot of webmasters felt that their sites were being penalized unfairly, and even those that accepted their fate worked rigorously at escaping the Penguin’s clutches, possibly even going overboard in trying to clean up their link profiles, requesting that sites remove links that they would otherwise have liked to have out there, regardless of whether or not they were helping in Google.

    Google’s grip on webmasters was never as abundantly clear as it was in 2012. Not all webmasters (plenty had already found other ways to diversify their web traffic), but for those who have historically relied on Google for traffic, they didn’t want any links out there that Google may not approve of. The problem was that they were getting rid of more than what Google probably did have a problem with.

    Eventually, Google launched the Link Disavow tool, which lets webmasters tell Google specific links to ignore, but some feel this tool is really more of a burden than a blessing, and it’s still a hoop webmasters have to jump through to make sure they’re in Google’s good graces. Of course, Google says most sites shouldn’t even use the tool.

    2012 also saw the transitions of Google Places to Google+ Local and from Google Product Search to the paid Google Shopping model, both of which have had their share of controversy among businesses.

    What will Google tackle in 2013? Will we see another huge animal-named algorithm change that affects a large number of webmasters? Regardless of the name, will there be a new update that webmasters have to sweat on a month to month basis. Will mores strategies that have helped for years start working against webmasters?

    Google makes over 500 changes to its algorithms every year, and makes changes every day. It’s been a while since there has been a really big one, and it seems like the big ones usually come in the first quarter of the year or so. We haven’t even seen Google’s lists of search quality highlights for the last three months of 2012 yet.

    What’s on the horizon? What do you see in Google’s search results that need to be improved? What things do you see working that shouldn’t be? How can Google improve its search results in 2013? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • There Was A Google Panda Update Data Refresh Nine Days Ago

    Remember about a week and a half ago when there was supposed to be a Panda refresh coming within the following week or so? It turns out that it happened the next day, so if you’re still waiting for it, you probably got by unscathed.

    Search Engine Land is reporting that it has confirmed with Google that the refresh occurred on November 21, and affected 0.8% of English queries “to a degree that a regular user might notice”.

    That would be the second known data refresh of the Panda update in November, with one having taken place around November 5.

    We’re now at the end of November, heading into December, which means there are now two full months for which Google hasn’t released its lists of “search quality highlights” and algorithm changes. Lately, they’ve been doing them two months at a time, so we may be able to expect the latest lists very soon. Then, we can look at the other types of changes Google has been focused on.

    More on Panda here.

    Image: Panda Cam (San Diego Zoo)

  • Do Your Blog Comments Have Search Ranking Value?

    When Google unleashed the Panda update, it waged war on “thin” content in its search results. Google wants to provide pages that offer information valuable to searchers, as opposed to content that was hastily thrown together.

    It’s easy to hear “thin” content, and associate that with content in which there is not a lot of actual content. In other words, you might take this to mean that Google does not like short articles, and would favor a longer article in a case where these two pieces of content are competing for rankings.

    Have you seen search ranking success with short content? Let us know in the comments.

    The fact is, Google may very well favor the longer, more in depth piece, but that does not mean Google will not value a short article.

    In a Google forum thread, a webmaster asked the question: Is short content = thin content?” As Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points out, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, weighed in on the discussion. Here’s what he said:

    “Rest assured, Googlebot doesn’t just count words on a page or in an article, even short articles can be very useful & compelling to users. For example, we also crawl and index tweets, which are at most 140 characters long. That said, if you have users who love your site and engage with it regularly, allowing them to share comments on your articles is also a great way to bring additional information onto the page. Sometimes a short article can trigger a longer discussion — and sometimes users are looking for discussions like that in search. That said, one recommendation that I’d like to add is to make sure that your content is really unique (not just rewritten, autogenerated, etc) and of high-quality.” Emphasis added.

    Last year, Google shared a set of questions that one could ask himself when assessing the quality of a page or an article. One of these was: “Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?”

    Shallow does not mean short. The beginning part of that, which talks about experts and enthusiasts, is likely to have a stronger bearing on how Google views the content. Who you are matters to Google. That’s why they’re looking to push authorship as a stronger signal in the future. Length of a specific piece of content is not necessarily as much of a factor.

    Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not a factor. If one piece of content is simply more informative, which it may very well be if it is longer, it might still be the better result, regardless of who you are. There’s still something to be said for a well researched, insightful article. Google is not looking to ignore this kind of content, by any means.

    Another of Google’s questions is: “Does the article describe both sides of a story?” Sometimes, it may take more text to answer that with a yes.

    One thing about Mueller’s comments that stikes me as interesting is the part about comments. In an article a while back, we looked at the SEO value of comments. Blogger Michael Gray, who turned off his comments several years ago, told us, “It was one of the best decisions I made, and regret not doing it sooner.”

    “Does Google take a look at factors like time on site and bounce rate?” he said at the time. “IMHO yes, but you should be looking to increase those with good information, and solid actionable content, not comments. The biggest effect comments have is giving Google a date to show in the SERP’s. This is a huge factor who’s importance can’t be unstated. If I’m looking for how to fix the mouse on my computer, or what dress Angelina Jolie wore to an awards show, having the date show up in the SERP has a lot of value for the user. If I’m looking to learn how to structure a website, the date plays almost no role. The author’s expertise and understanding of information architecture trumps the date.”

    It should be noted that Google’s Matt Cutts has reportedly said since then that Google doesn’t use bounce rate.

    Interestingly, according to Shoemoney blogger Jeremy Schoemaker, who we also spoke with for that particular article, a Google engineer said at the time that, if anything, comments were diluting the quality score of a page, by possibly diluting overall keyword density. There is also the possibility that the few comments that go through that are clearly spam, could send poor quality signals to Google.

    “So he said he did not see a positive to leaving indexable comments on my site,” Schoemaker told us at the time.

    But now, here we have Mueller talking up the value of comments.

    Of course, it’s not as if this is the first time that Google has sent mixed signals to webmasters and content creators. But on the other hand, you can’t really hold every person at Google, speaking candidly, accountable for knowledge about every aspect of how Google works, especially when it comes to the search algorithm – Google’s secret recipe.

    It stands to reason that Google would look at comments in similar fashion to how it views the rest of the content on the page. Some comments are obviously of higher quality than others, even if the spammy ones have been cut out. But if quality is there, Google may just see how such comments could be valuable to users.

    Perhaps webmasters should be more stingy with the comments they allow, but then you’re talking about censorship, which is not necessarily a path you want to travel.

    Do you think comments on your blog have helped or hurt you in search? Do you believe they’ve had any effect at all? Should Google take them into consideration? Tell us what you think.

  • Google Panda Update Refresh Coming In A Week Or So [Report]

    Earlier this month, Google announced that it rolled out a data refresh for the Panda update. It sounds like they’re getting ready to launch another one in about a week (or maybe a bit longer).

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable was talking about a Panda refresh possibly having occurred over the weekend. That didn’t happen, but Google did reportedly tell him that they’re planning on launching one in seven to ten days, “if all goes on according to plan.”

    It’s not very often that we hear about Panda updates or data refreshes before Google actually launches them (maybe they should start pre-announcing them more often). Webmasters can at least brace themselves and/or get prepared for a new one.

    Of course, at this point, you’ve had plenty of time to prepare. You know what Panda does, and what its purpose is. If you’re putting out the kind of content that Google has discussed repeatedly (with regards to how it views low quality), and you’ve managed to escape thus far, it’s probably only a matter of time before the Panda update gets you. You should be taking quality seriously if you want to continue to perform well in Google search results.

    Frankly, you’ve got enough other battles to deal with in that war, even if you do produce high quality content. If your’e not producing Panda-friendly content to begin with, the odds are not stacked in your favor.

    For more on all things Panda, peruse our coverage here.

  • This Google Panda “Victim” Just Posted Record Revenue And Profitability

    The Google Panda update, originally unleashed in early 2011, continues to take its toll on the Internet, for better or for worse (most would probably say better). While there are frequently rumors about new updates or refreshes to Panda, the last one that we’ve had official confirmation on was only last month (Update: Speak of the devil. Google just confirmed one is rolling out). Panda will continue to patrol Google’s search results for the foreseeable future, so webmasters who want to attract visibility in them should pay attention to the kinds of things Panda likes (or doesn’t like).

    Have you been hit by the Panda update at any time since it was first launched? Were you able to recover? Share your story.

    Demand Media paid attention when its major content property eHow fell victim to the update last year. Now, the company has released its quarterly earnings report to record revenue and popularity. If that’s not a Panda recovery story, I don’t know what is. It appears to be safe to say that Demand Media has conquered Panda, and is flourishing.

    Revenue was up 20% year-over-year at $98.1 million, with $3.2 million profit (compared to a $4.1 million loss for the same quarter last year).

    CEO Richard Rosenblatt said, “Demand Media’s audience surpassed 125 million monthly unique visitors during the third quarter, as we delivered record revenue and profitability. For the first time in over a year, we increased our content investments for two consecutive quarters as we expanded the distribution of our content platform. We remain focused on our long-term growth initiatives, which include continuing to increase our investment in core content as well as in opportunities across mobile, video, international, and new generic Top Level Domains.”

    Now, to be clear, Demand Media has revenue sources that have little to do with Panda. For one, the company runs a major registrar business. However, the content side of things, and even eHow itself, continue to improve in performance. Make no mistake. Demand Media has come back from the Panda update.

    The company’s owned and operated page views increased 33% year-over-year, driven primarily by strong traffic growth on eHow.com and LiveStrong.com, the company says.

    eHow has historically been the poster child of the Panda update, you might say. Some believe Demand Media was one of the major drivers in Google even creating the update. If you can remember back before the update was first unleashed, there was a lot of discussion in the media and Blogosphere about content farms. eHow was often cited (if not the most often cited) as falling into this category. In fact, many were shocked when Google finally pushed the update, and eHow appeared to escape unscathed.

    That did not last, however. As Google continued to push out more updates for Panda, Demand Media eventually felt the effects, and by then it was a public company, and had to answer to investors. It deleted tons of articles. At first the number it gave was 300,000. In May, Demand Media revealed that it had deleted as many as 600,000 articles. It’s unclear whether they’ve deleted more since then. They didn’t just delete articles they found to be of low quality though. They also sent numerous articles through a more rigorous editing process, and added a feedback tool to all content so users could indicate any problems they come across. They also got rid of a lot of non-professional writers, and added more “expert” and celebrity curators. Essentially, eHow got a big boost in the quality control department.

    Since the clean-up initiative, the company has hardly looked back. eHow has increased its audience steadily. Now, eHow is ranked as the #13 site in the U.S. according to comScore. That’s up even from the previous quarter, when it was ranked #16. ehow had over 100 million unique monthly visitors worldwide for the 11th consecutive quarter, according to Rosenblatt, who cited internal numbers.

    Demand Media’s properties are seeing a billion worldwide monthly uniques, which is a record for the company. Demand has been so pleased with the progress it has made in the content area, the company promoted Michael Blend, who had been leading its content and media services, to President and COO earlier this year.

    Rosenblatt discussed the progress during the company’s earnings conference call, attributing the success largely to articles, videos and mobile apps with quality content and engaged communities. “All in all we really raised our game,” he said, noting that they have expanded the diversity of articles and added assignment curators.

    He also noted that almost half of the company’s articles are being published to its network of content partners.

    One important thing to note about all of this, with regards to the Panda update and search referrals, is that this whole quality control initiative has greatly helped the company to gain traffic from social media (especially Facebook). I think it’s safe to say that a decreased dependence on Google is really the cornerstone for a true Panda recovery. That way, if you do get hit by Panda at a later time, it doesn’t kill your traffic entirely. Of course, if you’re producing the kind of content that people want to share on social networks, it’s highly unlikely that you’re doing things that Panda wouldn’t like.

    If you still haven’t taken the time to assess the quality of your site’s content. You may want to do so. The next Panda refresh is likely just around the corner.

    What do you think of Demand Media’s efforts in bouncing back from Panda? Let us know in the comments.

    Here’s Demand Media’s earnings release in its entirety: 

    SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nov. 5, 2012– Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD), a leading digital media company, today reported financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2012.

    “Demand Media’s audience surpassed 125 million monthly unique visitors during the third quarter, as we delivered record revenue and profitability,” said Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO ofDemand Media. “For the first time in over a year, we increased our content investments for two consecutive quarters as we expanded the distribution of our content platform. We remain focused on our long-term growth initiatives, which include continuing to increase our investment in core content as well as in opportunities across mobile, video, international, and new generic Top Level Domains.”

    Financial Summary
    In millions, except per share amounts
    Three months ended September 30,
    2011 2012 Change
    Total Revenue $ 81.5 $ 98.1 20 %
    Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC(1) $ 47.4 $ 58.8 24 %
    Registrar Revenue 30.7 34.0 11 %
    Total Revenue ex-TAC(1) $ 78.1 $ 92.8 19 %
    Income (loss) from Operations $ (3.3 ) $ 4.5 NA
    Adjusted EBITDA(1) $ 21.7 $ 27.6 28 %
    Net income (loss) $ (4.1 ) $ 3.2 NA
    Adjusted net income(1) $ 5.0 $ 9.8 97 %
    EPS $ (0.05 ) $ 0.04 NA
    Adjusted EPS(1) $ 0.06 $ 0.11 83 %
    Cash Flow from Operations $ 22.1 $ 24.6 12 %
    Free Cash Flow(1) $ 6.0 $ 16.6 177 %
    (1) These non-GAAP financial measures are described below and reconciled to their comparable GAAP measures in the accompanying tables. Effective Q1 2012, the Company began reporting Adjusted EBITDA instead of Adjusted OIBDA. Reconciliations for both measures are available on the investor relations section of the Company’s website.

    Q3 2012 Financial Summary:

    • Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC grew 24% year-over-year, due primarily to strong page view growth on the Company’s owned & operated properties, as well as 50% growth in network RPMs, reflecting higher revenue from our growing network of content partners. Sequentially, Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC increased 6% compared to the second quarter of 2012, driven primarily by network RPM growth.
    • Registrar revenue grew 11% year-over-year and increased 2% compared to the second quarter of 2012. Revenue growth was driven by an increase in number of domains on our platform, due primarily to growth from new partners.
    • Free Cash Flow was $16.6 million compared to $6.0 million a year ago, reflecting growth in cash flow from operations and a year-over-year reduction in intangible asset content spend, primarily on eHow. Sequentially, investment in intangible assets increased 36% compared to the second quarter of 2012.

    “We continued our 2012 financial momentum in Q3 with record adjusted EBITDA and strong free cash flow growth, while increasing our investment in content sequentially,” said CFO Mel Tang. “We are raising our 2012 financial guidance and remain focused on driving Demand Media’s long-term growth through continued disciplined investments.”

    Q3 2012 Business Highlights(1):

    • On a consolidated basis, Demand Media ranked as a top 20 US web property throughout the first nine months of 2012, ranking as #13 in September 2012, up from #17 in January 2012. Demand Media’s web properties reached over 125 million unique users worldwide in September 2012.
    • On a standalone basis, eHow.com ranked as the #13 website in the US in September 2012.
    • LIVE ranked as the #3 Health property in the US in September 2012.
    • Cracked.com maintained its ranking as the most visited humor site in the US throughout the first half of 2012, with more time spent on the site than any other humor website. The Cracked Network, which includes IndieClick, ranked as the #1 Humor property in the US in September 2012.

    (1) Source: comScore.

    Operating Metrics:

    Three months ended
    September 30,
    2011 2012 %
    Change
    Content & Media Metrics:
    Owned and operated
    Page views(1) (in millions) 2,527 3,363 33 %
    RPM(2) $ 15.16 $ 13.49 (11 )%
    Network of customer websites
    Page views(1) (in millions) 5,046 4,965 (2 )%
    RPM(2) $ 2.47 $ 3.78 53 %
    RPM ex-TAC(3) $ 1.80 $ 2.70 50 %
    Registrar Metrics:
    End of Period # of Domains(4) (in millions) 12.2 13.7 12 %
    Average Revenue per Domain(5) $ 10.20 $ 9.99 (2 )%

    ____________________

    (1) Page views represent the total number of web pages viewed across (a) our owned and operated websites and/or (b) our network of customer websites, to the extent that the viewed web pages of our customers host the Company’s content, social media and/or monetization services.
    (2) RPM is defined as Content & Media revenue per one thousand page views.
    (3) RPM ex-TAC is defined as Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC per one thousand page views.
    (4) Domain is defined as an individual domain name paid for by a third-party customer where the domain name is managed through our Registrar service offering.
    (5) Average revenue per domain is calculated by dividing Registrar revenue for a period by the average number of domains registered in that period. Average revenue per domain for partial year periods is annualized.
    Beginning July 1, 2011, the number of net new domains has been adjusted to include only new registered domains added to our platform for which we have recognized revenue. Excluding the impact of this change, average revenue per domain during the three months ended September 30, 2012 would have increased 1% compared to the corresponding prior-year periods.

    Q3 2012 Operating Metrics:

    • Owned & Operated page views increased 33% year-over-year, driven primarily by strong traffic growth on eHow.com and LIVESTRONG.COM. Owned & Operated RPMs decreased 11% year-over-year, due primarily to page view growth from lower RPM properties and traffic sources, including growth in mobile traffic.
    • Network page views decreased 2% year-over-year to 5.0 billion, due primarily to lower traffic from our social media partners. Network RPM ex-TAC increased 50% year-over-year, reflecting higher revenue from our growing network of content partners, primarily YouTube.
    • End of period domains increased 12% year-over-year to 13.7 million, driven primarily by the addition of higher volume customers and continued growth from existing resellers, with average revenue per domain decreasing by 2%, due to a mix shift to higher volume resellers.

    Business Outlook

    The following forward-looking information includes certain projections made by management as of the date of this press release. The Company does not intend to revise or update this information, except as required by law, and may not provide this type of information in the future. Due to a variety of factors, actual results may differ significantly from those projected. The factors that may affect results include, without limitation, the factors referenced later in this announcement under the caption “Cautionary Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements.” These and other factors are discussed in more detail in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    Excluding up to $3 million of 2012 expenses that the Company expects to incur related to the formation of its generic Top Level Domain (“gTLD”) initiative, the Company’s guidance for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ending December 31, 2012 is as follows:

    Fourth Quarter 2012

    • Revenue in the range of $101.5 – $103.5 million
    • Revenue ex-TAC in the range of $95.5 – $97.5 million
    • Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $27.5 – $28.5 million
    • Adjusted EPS in the range of $0.10 – $0.11 per share
    • Weighted average diluted shares of 89.5 – 90.5 million

    Full Year 2012

    • Revenue in the range of $378.9 – $380.9 million
    • Revenue ex-TAC in the range of $359.8 – $361.8 million
    • Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $101.6 – $102.6 million
    • Adjusted EPS in the range of $0.37 – $0.38 per share
    • Weighted average diluted shares of 86.5 – 87.5 million

    Conference Call and Webcast Information

    Demand Media will host a corresponding conference call and live webcast at 5:00 p.m. Eastern timetoday. To access the conference call, dial 877.565.1268 (for domestic participants) or 937.999.3108 (for international participants). The conference ID is 48753341. In order to participate on the live call, it is recommended that analysts should dial-in at least 10-minutes prior to the commencement of the call. A live webcast also will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Company’s corporate website at http://ir.demandmedia.com and via replay beginning approximately two hours after the completion of the call.

    About Non-GAAP Financial Measures

    To supplement our consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”), we use certain non-GAAP financial measures described below. The presentation of this additional financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. For more information on these non-GAAP financial measures, please see the tables captioned “Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Measures to Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Operations” included in this release.

    Effective Q1 2012, the Company began reporting Adjusted EBITDA instead of Adjusted OIBDA. While the dollar value of each measure is the same, a comparison of the historical reconciliation of both measures is provided in our supplemental financial schedules posted on the investor relations section of our corporate website at http://ir.demandmedia.com. The non-GAAP financial measures presented in this release are the primary measures used by the Company’s management and board of directors to understand and evaluate its financial performance and operating trends, including period to period comparisons, to prepare and approve its annual budget and to develop short and long term operational plans. Additionally, Adjusted EBITDA is the primary measure used by the compensation committee of the Company’s board of directors to establish the funding targets for and fund its annual bonus pool for the Company’s employees and executives. We believe our presented non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors both because (1) they allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision-making and (2) management frequently uses them in its discussions with investors, commercial bankers, securities analysts and other users of its financial statements.

    Revenue ex-TAC is defined by the Company as GAAP revenue less traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”). TAC comprises the portion of Content & Media GAAP revenue shared with the Company’s network customers. Management believes that Revenue ex-TAC is a meaningful measure of operating performance because it is frequently used for internal managerial purposes and helps facilitate a more complete period-to-period understanding of factors and trends affecting the Company’s underlying revenue performance of its Content & Media service offering.

    Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (“Adjusted EBITDA”) is defined by the Company as net income (loss) before income tax expense, other income (expense), interest expense (income), depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation, as well as the financial impact of acquisition and realignment costs, the formation expenses directly related to its gTLD initiative, and any gains or losses on certain asset sales or dispositions. Acquisition and realignment costs include such items, when applicable, as (1) non-cash GAAP purchase accounting adjustments for certain deferred revenue and costs, (2) legal, accounting and other professional fees directly attributable to acquisition activity, and (3) employee severance payments attributable to acquisition or corporate realignment activities. Management does not consider these expenses to be indicative of the Company’s ongoing operating results or future outlook.

    Management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures reflect the Company’s business in a manner that allows for meaningful period to period comparisons and analysis of trends. In particular, the exclusion of certain expenses in calculating Adjusted EBITDA can provide a useful measure for period to period comparisons of the Company’s underlying recurring revenue and operating costs, which is focused more closely on the current costs necessary to utilize previously acquired long-lived assets. In addition, management believes that it can be useful to exclude certain non-cash charges because the amount of such expenses is the result of long-term investment decisions in previous periods rather than day-to-day operating decisions. For example, due to the long-lived nature of a majority of its media content, the revenue generated by the Company’s media content assets in a given period bears little relationship to the amount of its investment in media content in that same period. Accordingly, management believes that content acquisition costs represent a discretionary long-term capital investment decision undertaken at a point in time. This investment decision is clearly distinguishable from other ongoing business activities, and its discretionary nature and long-term impact differentiate it from specific period transactions, decisions regarding day-to-day operations, and activities that would have an immediate impact on operating or financial performance if materially changed, deferred or terminated.

    Adjusted Earnings Per Share is defined by the Company as Adjusted Net Income divided by the weighted average number of shares outstanding. Adjusted Net Income is defined by the Company as net income (loss) before the effect of stock-based compensation, amortization of intangible assets acquired via business combinations, accelerated amortization of intangible assets removed from service, acquisition and realignment costs, the formation expenses directly related to its gTLD initiative, and any gains or losses on certain asset sales or dispositions, and is calculated using the application of a normalized effective tax rate. Acquisition and realignment costs include such items, when applicable, as (1) non-cash GAAP purchase accounting adjustments for certain deferred revenue and costs, (2) legal, accounting and other professional fees directly attributable to acquisition activity, and (3) employee severance payments attributable to acquisition or corporate realignment activities. Management does not consider these expenses to be indicative of the Company’s ongoing operating results or future outlook.

    Management believes that Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Earnings Per Share provide investors with additional useful information to measure the Company’s underlying financial performance, particularly from period to period, because these measures are exclusive of certain non-cash expenses not directly related to the operation of its ongoing business (such as amortization of intangible assets acquired via business combinations, as well as certain other non-cash expenses such as purchase accounting adjustments and stock-based compensation) and include a normalized effective tax rate based on the Company’s statutory tax rate.

    Discretionary Free Cash Flow is defined by the Company as net cash provided by operating activities excluding cash outflows from acquisition and realignment activities, and the formation expenses directly related to its gTLD initiative, less capital expenditures to acquire property and equipment. Free Cash Flow is defined by the Company as Discretionary Free Cash Flow less investments in intangible assets and is not impacted by gTLD application payments, which were$18.1 million in Q2 2012. Management believes that Discretionary Free Cash Flow and Free Cash Flow provide investors with additional useful information to measure operating liquidity because they reflect the Company’s underlying cash flows from recurring operating activities after investing in capital assets and intangible assets. These measures are used by management, and may also be useful for investors, to assess the Company’s ability to generate cash flow for a variety of strategic opportunities, including reinvestment in the business, pursuing new business opportunities, potential acquisitions, payment of dividends and share repurchases.

    The use of these non-GAAP financial measures has certain limitations because they do not reflect all items of income and expense, or cash flows that affect the Company’s operations. An additional limitation of these non-GAAP financial measures is that they do not have standardized meanings, and therefore other companies may use the same or similarly named measures but exclude different items or use different computations. Management compensates for these limitations by reconciling these non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP financial measures within its financial press releases. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for, financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. Further, these non-GAAP financial measures may differ from the non-GAAP financial information used by other companies, including peer companies, and therefore comparability may be limited. We encourage investors and others to review our financial information in its entirety and not rely on a single financial measure. The accompanying tables have more details on the GAAP financial measures and the related reconciliations.

    About Demand Media

    Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE: DMD) is a leading digital media company that informs and entertains one of the internet’s largest audiences, helps advertisers find innovative ways to engage with their customers and enables publishers to expand their online presence. Headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, Demand Media has offices in North America, South America and Europe. For more information about Demand Media, please visit www.demandmedia.com

    Cautionary Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

    This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties regarding the Company’s future financial performance, and are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, financial condition, operating performance and results of operations, including certain assumptions related thereto. Statements containing words such as “guidance,” “may,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “project,” “projections,” “business outlook,” and “estimate” or similar expressions constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance. Potential risks and uncertainties include, among others: changes in the methodologies of internet search engines, including ongoing algorithmic changes made by Google to its search results as well as possible future changes, and the impact such changes may have on page view growth and driving search related traffic to our owned and operated websites and the websites of our network customers; changes in our content creation and distribution platform, including the possible repurposing of content to alternate distribution channels, reduced investments in intangible assets or the sale or removal of content; our ability to successfully launch, produce and monetize new content formats; the inherent challenges of estimating the overall impact on page views and search driven traffic to our owned and operated websites based on the data available to us as internet search engines continue to make adjustments to their search algorithms; our ability to compete with new or existing competitors; our ability to maintain or increase our advertising revenue; our ability to continue to drive and grow traffic to our owned and operated websites and the websites of our network customers; our ability to effectively monetize our portfolio of content; our dependence on material agreements with a specific business partner for a significant portion of our revenue; future internal rates of return on content investment and our decision to invest in different types of content in the future, including premium video and other formats of text content; our ability to attract and retain freelance creative professionals; changes in our level of investment in media content intangibles; the effects of changes or shifts in internet marketing expenditures, including from text to video content as well as from desktop to mobile content; the effects of shifting consumption of media content from desktop to mobile; the effects of seasonality on traffic to our owned and operated websites and the websites of our network customers; our ability to continue to add partners to our registrar platform on competitive terms; our ability to successfully pursue and implement our gTLD initiative; changes in stock-based compensation; changes in amortization or depreciation expense due to a variety of factors; potential write downs, reserves against or impairment of assets including receivables, goodwill, intangibles (including media content) or other assets; changes in tax laws, our business or other factors that would impact anticipated tax benefits or expenses; our ability to successfully identify, consummate and integrate acquisitions; our ability to retain key customers and key personnel; risks associated with litigation; the impact of governmental regulation; and the effects of discontinuing or discontinued business operations. From time to time, we may consider acquisitions or divestitures that, if consummated, could be material. Any forward-looking statements regarding financial metrics are based upon the assumption that no such acquisition or divestiture is consummated during the relevant periods. If an acquisition or divestiture were consummated, actual results could differ materially from any forward-looking statements. More information about potential risk factors that could affect our operating and financial results are contained in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2011 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission(http://www.sec.gov) on February 24, 2012, and as such risk factors may be updated in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, information under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”

    Furthermore, as discussed above, the Company does not intend to revise or update the information set forth in this press release, except as required by law, and may not provide this type of information in the future.

    Demand Media, Inc. and Subsidiaries

    Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations

    (In thousands, except per share amounts)
    Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30,
    2011 2012 2011 2012
    Revenue $ 81,473 $ 98,147 $ 240,451 $ 277,436
    Operating expenses
    Service costs (exclusive of amortization of intangible assets shown separately below) (1) (2) 40,109 46,524 115,632 132,153
    Sales and marketing (1) (2) 9,200 11,625 28,069 33,678
    Product development (1) (2) 9,791 10,278 28,684 30,989
    General and administrative (1) (2) 14,837 15,705 45,648 46,854
    Amortization of intangible assets 10,828 9,501 30,781 31,216
    Total operating expenses 84,765 93,633 248,814 274,890
    Income (loss) from operations (3,292 ) 4,514 (8,363 ) 2,546
    Other income (expense)
    Interest income 5 9 52 34
    Interest expense (385 ) (155 ) (710 ) (465 )
    Other income (expense), net (79 ) (13 ) (338 ) (77 )
    Total other expense (459 ) (159 ) (996 ) (508 )
    Income (loss) before income taxes (3,751 ) 4,355 (9,359 ) 2,038
    Income tax (expense) benefit (394 ) (1,180 ) (2,739 ) (611 )
    Net income (loss) $ (4,145 ) $ 3,175 $ (12,098 ) $ 1,427
    (1) Stock-based compensation expense included in the line items above:
    Service costs $ 757 $ 672 $ 1,341 $ 2,141
    Sales and marketing 1,405 1,400 3,441 4,521
    Product development 1,403 1,396 3,649 5,169
    General and administrative 4,190 4,578 13,671 12,155
    Total stock-based compensation expense $ 7,755 $ 8,046 $ 22,102 $ 23,986
    (2) Depreciation included in the line items above:
    Service costs $ 4,112 $ 3,587 $ 12,305 $ 10,789
    Sales and marketing 109 105 296 345
    Product development 399 234 1,158 787
    General and administrative 683 906 2,133 2,703
    Total depreciation $ 5,303 $ 4,832 $ 15,892 $ 14,624
    Income (loss) per common share:
    Net income (loss) $ (4,145 ) $ 3,175 $ (12,098 ) $ 1,427
    Cumulative preferred stock dividends (3) — — (2,477 ) —
    Net income (loss) attributable to common stockholders $ (4,145 ) $ 3,175 $ (14,575 ) $ 1,427
    Net income (loss) per share – basic $ (0.05 ) $ 0.04 $ (0.19 ) $ 0.02
    Net income (loss) per share – diluted $ (0.05 ) $ 0.04 $ (0.19 ) $ 0.02
    Weighted average number of shares – basic 83,934 85,182 77,001 84,020
    Weighted average number of shares – diluted 83,934 88,751 77,001 86,895
    (3) As a result of the Company’s initial public offering which was completed on January 31, 2011, all shares of the Company’s preferred stock were converted to common stock.
    Demand Media, Inc. and Subsidiaries

    Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets

    (In thousands)
    December 31,
    2011    		 September 30,
    2012
    Current assets
    Cash and cash equivalents $ 86,035 $ 112,916
    Accounts receivable, net 32,665 41,118
    Prepaid expenses and other current assets 8,656 8,501
    Deferred registration costs 50,636 57,437
    Total current assets 177,992 219,972
    Property and equipment, net 32,626 33,740
    Intangible assets, net 111,304 88,577
    Goodwill 256,060 256,037
    Deferred registration costs 9,555 11,108
    Other long-term assets 2,566 21,607
    Total assets $ 590,103 $ 631,041
    Liabilities, Convertible Preferred Stock and Stockholders’ Equity
    Current liabilities
    Accounts payable $ 10,046 $ 11,340
    Accrued expenses and other current liabilities 33,932 33,623
    Deferred tax liabilities 18,288 19,586
    Deferred revenue 71,109 78,805
    Total current liabilities 133,375 143,354
    Deferred revenue 14,802 15,966
    Other liabilities 1,660 2,361
    Total liabilities 149,837 161,681
    Stockholders’ equity
    Common stock and additional paid-in capital 528,042 559,689
    Treasury stock (17,064 ) (21,020 )
    Accumulated other comprehensive income 59 35
    Accumulated deficit (70,771 ) (69,344 )
    Total stockholders’ equity 440,266 469,360
    Total liabilities, convertible preferred stock and stockholders’ equity $ 590,103 $ 631,041
    Demand Media, Inc. and Subsidiaries

    Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows

    (In thousands)
    Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30,
    2011 2012 2011 2012
    Cash flows from operating activities:
    Net income (loss) $ (4,145 ) $ 3,175 $ (12,098 ) $ 1,427
    Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to net cash provided by operating activities:
    Depreciation and amortization 16,131 14,332 46,673 45,839
    Stock-based compensation 7,727 8,046 21,989 23,986
    Other 294 967 2,363 584
    Net change in operating assets and liabilities, net of effect of acquisitions 2,050 (1,925 ) (802 ) (6,890 )
    Net cash provided by operating activities 22,057 24,595 58,125 64,946
    Cash flows from investing activities:
    Purchases of property and equipment (3,194 ) (4,982 ) (14,024 ) (12,425 )
    Purchases of intangibles (13,927 ) (3,468 ) (43,989 ) (8,590 )
    Payments for gTLD applications — — — (18,202 )
    Cash paid for acquisitions (27,133 ) (1,011 ) (30,972 ) (1,280 )
    Other — — — (855 )
    Net cash used in investing activities (44,254 ) (9,461 ) (88,985 ) (41,352 )
    Cash flows from financing activities:
    Proceeds from issuance of common stock, net — — 78,625 —
    Repurchases of common stock (3,728 ) — (3,728 ) (3,956 )
    Proceeds from exercises of stock options and contributions to ESPP 2,832 5,160 4,357 11,016
    Other (1,332 ) (1,568 ) (1,547 ) (3,755 )
    Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities (2,228 ) 3,592 77,707 3,305
    Effect of foreign currency on cash and cash equivalents (23 ) 3 (31 ) (18 )
    Change in cash and cash equivalents (24,448 ) 18,729 46,816 26,881
    Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 103,602 94,187 32,338 86,035
    Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 79,154 $ 112,916 $ 79,154 $ 112,916
    Demand Media, Inc. and Subsidiaries

    Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Measures to Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Operations

    (In thousands, except per share amounts)
    Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30,
    2011 2012 2011 2012
    Revenue ex-TAC:
    Content & Media revenue $ 50,744 $ 64,136 $ 152,418 $ 177,766
    Less: traffic acquisition costs (TAC) (3,381 ) (5,350 ) (9,384 ) (13,109 )
    Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC 47,363 58,786 143,034 164,657
    Registrar revenue 30,729 34,011 88,033 99,670
    Total Revenue ex-TAC $ 78,092 $ 92,797 $ 231,067 $ 264,327
    Adjusted EBITDA(1):
    Net income (loss) $ (4,145 ) $ 3,175 $ (12,098 ) $ 1,427
    Income tax expense/(benefit) 394 1,180 2,739 611
    Interest and other expense, net 459 159 996 508
    Depreciation and amortization(2) 16,131 14,333 46,673 45,840
    Stock-based compensation 7,755 8,046 22,102 23,986
    Acquisition and realignment costs(3) 1,058 20 1,828 132
    gTLD expense(4) — 707 — 1,589
    Adjusted EBITDA $ 21,652 $ 27,620 $ 62,240 $ 74,093
    Discretionary and Total Free Cash Flow:
    Net cash provided by operating activities $ 22,057 $ 24,595 $ 58,125 $ 64,946
    Purchases of property and equipment (3,194 ) (4,982 ) (14,024 ) (12,425 )
    Acquisition and realignment cash flows 1,068 — 1,068 —
    gTLD expense cash flows(4) — 488 — 1,224
    Discretionary Free Cash Flow 19,931 20,101 45,169 53,745
    Purchases of intangible assets (13,927 ) (3,468 ) (43,989 ) (8,590 )
    Free Cash Flow(4)(5) $ 6,004 $ 16,633 $ 1,180 $ 45,155
    Adjusted Net Income:
    GAAP net income (loss) $ (4,145 ) $ 3,175 $ (12,098 ) $ 1,427
    (a) Stock-based compensation 7,755 8,046 22,102 23,986
    (b) Amortization of intangible assets – M&A 2,969 2,666 9,799 8,332
    (c) Content intangible assets removed from service(2) — — — 1,818
    (d) Acquisition and realignment costs(3) 1,058 20 1,828 133
    (e) gTLD expense(4) — 707 — 1,589
    (f) Income tax effect of items (a) – (e) & application of 38% statutory tax rate to pre-tax income (2,658 ) (4,822 ) (6,521 ) (13,789 )
    Adjusted Net Income $ 4,979 $ 9,792 $ 15,110 $ 23,496
    Non-GAAP Adjusted Net Income per share – diluted $ 0.06 $ 0.11 $ 0.17 $ 0.27
    Shares used to calculate non-GAAP Adjusted Net Income per share – diluted(6) 87,973 88,754 89,098 87,003
    (1) Effective Q1 2012, the Company began reporting Adjusted EBITDA instead of Adjusted OIBDA. While the dollar value of each measure does not differ, a comparison of the historical reconciliation of both measures is provided in our supplemental financial schedules available on the investor relations section of our corporate website.
    (2) In conjunction with its previously announced plans to improve its content creation and distribution platform, the Company elected to remove certain content assets from service, resulting in $1.8 million of accelerated amortization expense in the first quarter of 2012.
    (3) Acquisition and realignment costs include such items, when applicable, as (1) non-cash GAAP purchase accounting adjustments for certain deferred revenue and costs, (2) legal, accounting and other professional fees directly attributable to acquisition activity, and (3) employee severance payments attributable to acquisition or corporate realignment activities. Management does not consider these costs to be indicative of the Company’s core operating results.
    (4) Comprises formation expenses directly related to the Company’s gTLD initiative that is not expected to generate associated revenue in 2012.
    (5) In April 2012, the Company invested $18.1 million in gTLD applications, which did not impact its recurring Free Cash Flow metric.
    (6) Shares used to calculate non-GAAP Adjusted Net Income per share – diluted include the weighted average common stock for the periods presented and all dilutive common stock equivalents at each period. Amounts have been adjusted in 2011 to reflect the revised capital structure following the Company’s initial public offering which was completed on January 31, 2011, whereby the Company issued 5,175 shares of common stock and converted certain warrants and all of its previously outstanding convertible preferred stock into 62,155 shares of common stock as if those transactions were consummated on January 1, 2011.
    Demand Media, Inc. and Subsidiaries

    Unaudited GAAP Revenue, by Revenue Source

    (In thousands)
    Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30,
    2011 2012 2011 2012
    Content & Media:
    Owned and operated websites $ 38,298 $ 45,377 $ 117,917 $ 129,715
    Network of customer websites 12,446 18,759 34,501 48,051
    Total revenue – Content & Media 50,744 64,136 152,418 177,766
    Registrar 30,729 34,011 88,033 99,670
    Total revenue $ 81,473 $ 98,147 $ 240,451 $ 277,436
    Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30,
    2011 2012 2011 2012
    Content & Media:
    Owned and operated websites 47 % 46 % 49 % 47 %
    Network of customer websites 15 % 19 % 14 % 17 %
    Total revenue – Content & Media 62 % 65 % 63 % 64 %
    Registrar 38 % 35 % 37 % 36 %
    Total revenue 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 %

     

    Source: Demand Media, Inc.

  • Google Panda Update Data Refresh Is Rolling Out

    Update: What do you know? They just formally announced it (and it’s just a data refresh, not an actual update):

    Google has without question been more transparent about algorithm updates over the past year or so. However, the search giant has shown a great deal of inconsistency around this transparency. Take the Panda update, for example. Sometimes, the company will announce that there has been a new update or data refresh. At the end of September / beginning of October, we saw Google announce a handful of updates, and eventually announce a Panda update about a week after it happened.

    According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, Google confirmed that a Panda update happened yesterday, though this was not announced. Sullivan reports:

    “Google said that worldwide, the update will impact about 0.4% of queries that a regular user might notice. For those searching in the United States in English, the percentage is higher. 1.1%, Google says.”

    Also yesterday, Demand Media (which some might say is the poster child for Panda update affected sites) released its quarterly earnings report, posting record profit and revenue.

    With regards to Google algorithm changes and transparency, we’re still waiting to see the company’s list of “search quality highlights” for the month of October, though they might wait and do October and November together.

    Image: Panda Express

  • Matt Cutts Talks Quality Raters’ Impact On Algorithms, Says Guidelines May Be Made Public

    While it has been known that Google’s “quality raters” (the people who judge sets of search results behind the scenes) don’t directly influence Google’s algorithms, there is still a misconception out there to the contrary.

    Nobody at Google (as far as we know) is looking at these sets of search results and voting sites up and down as if they were browsing reddit.

    Google’s Matt Cutts talked about this in a new Webmaster Help video released today. He responds to the user-submitted question:

    If you have human ‘quality raters’ evaluating the SERPs and influencing which sites may be impacted by Panda, how do you confirm that consumers are more satisfied with the results?

    “There’s a problem with this question…the word ‘influencing,’” says Cutts. “So, we have evaluation raters who look at the quality of pages, using their own judgment, as well as guidelines that we give them on when things are navigational, when things are vital, which things are off topic, which things are spam…all that sort of stuff. But those folks don’t influence our algorithm in any direct sense.”

    “When an engineer has…an idea for an algorithm – call it “panda” – he’ll come up with an algorithm, and it will rank the results 1-10, so you’ll have a side by side (left side and right side), so you’ll actually have the results right there,” he continues. “That goes out to the evaluation team and these human quality raters, and as a blind taste test, they say, ‘I prefer the left side of the search results’ or ‘the right side of the search results’…and then we’ll get that feedback back, but that evaluation where the search quality evaluators say, ‘I prefer this side’ or ‘I prefer that side’ does not directly affect the algorithm. It doesn’t affect Panda.”

    Cutts does suggest that we might see the actual guidelines Google gives to the quality raters made public. They have been leaked in the past, as he notes, but Google may sometime soon post those for anyone to see anytime.

    “We might be able to make those human quality rater guidelines that we make available to people at Google available to the larger world, and I think that would be a good thing because then people would be able to read through it,” says Cutts. “It leaked a few years ago, and what someone said was, ‘The biggest surprise is that there weren’t really that many surprises. All the guidelines that we provide are pretty much common sense, and would match with what I think just about anybody would sort of say about…’Yeah, it does make sense that this is a navigational page or that this is pages off topic.’”

    For more on what Cutts has said about Google’s Quality Raters process in the past, read this.

  • Google Panda Update: Rumors Surface Of One Launching Last Week

    This is pretty commonplace now, but there are rumors going around that Google may have launched a Panda update last week.

    Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable links to WebmasterWorld, where these rumors are often born. Sometimes they turn out to be accurate, and sometimes they don’t. We won’t know until we get confirmation from Google.

    We’ve reached out to Google for comment, and will update the article if and when we receive one. Here’s the part where I give you the spiel about how Google launches changes to its algorithms every day. It makes over 500 changes a year. Many of these have the potential to affect the rankings of your website. Even if a change does not directly impact your site, it may impact other sites in the listings, causing your ranking to go up or down.

    Google did recently confirm a Panda update, but only after announcing a separate, unrelated update. Google often issues “weather reports” (otherwise known as tweets from Matt Cutts about algorithm changes), announcing various updates. However, there is really no consistency to this, and webmasters are still often left guessing what might have happened.

    There’s a chance that Google will inform us whether this was Panda or not, but there’s also a good chance they won’t. There’s not much consistency to that either.

    Update: We haven’t heard official word, but Schwartz is now saying that Google “implied” that there was no update.

    Image: Tekken 5 (via YouTube)

  • Google’s 7-Result SERPs Having A Bigger Effect On Sites Than Panda?

    Google has been making it harder to get first-page rankings. That’s not just because all of the algorithm updates the search giant keeps launching, an increased emphasis on “answers” results, which require users to click over to other sites less often, and the addition of Google’s Knowledge Graph to search results. Sure, these things all come into play, but for more and more queries, Google has also been showing less traditional results altogether.

    Google results pages have commonly and historically showed ten main organic results, but for a growing number of queries, that number has been reduced to seven. Specifically, this is happening on results pages in which the top result displays additional “sitelinks”. Here’s what Google has had to say about it (via Danny Sullivan):

    “We’re continuing to work out the best ways to show multiple results from a single site when it’s clear users are interested in that site. Separately, we’re also experimenting with varying the number of results per page, as we do periodically. Overall our goal is to provide the most relevant results for a given query as quickly as possible, whether it’s a wide variety of sources or navigation deep into a particular source. There’s always room for improvement, so we’re going to keep working on getting the mix right.”

    Dr. Peter J. Meyers, President of User Effect, recently shared some interesting research at SEOmoz about this phenomenon, which seems to have begun in early to mid August.

    Now, BrightEdge has put out some new research on the topic based on analysis of queries for 26,000 keywords. According to CEO Jim Yu, the effects from this are even greater than those of the Panda update.

    In a piece sharing the firm’s analysis at Search Engine Land, he writes, “The percentage of keywords impacted is currently 8% across the industries we examined. This is significant, considering that a critical update like Panda affected 5% of searches.”

    “We have found that the impact varies by industry,” he adds. “The Technology – B2B sector has 9.4% of its keywords affected, while Technology – B2C industry sees 12.1% keywords impacted. Financial Services industry has about 2.7% of keywords affected, and about 3.5% of keywords in Retail are impacted by this change.”

    Even if a site’s rankings did not technically drop, a move from the first page to the second page in search can bring a significant barrier to visibility.

    It’s interesting that Google has not brought infinite scroll to web search as it has to image search. You can get through ten pages of image results in no time with this feature. A simple click to another page may not seem like a huge step for a user, but it’s still an additional step. It seems like introducing this feature to web search would also go along with Google’s emphasis on increasing speed in search. It’s certainly faster to scroll down further than it is to click to another page. Yet, Google seems to be going in the opposite direction, and actually reducing the number of results on the page.

    To be fair, Google usually does its job in returning the information needed on the first page (at least in my experience), and if you have to go past page one, perhaps Google is not doing its job. If you have to go deeper than seven results, even, it’s not doing that great a job. There is, however, a discoverability element that is eliminated, or at least impeded, by showing less results. Perhaps you found what you were looking for in the top results, but missed something that could have been equally helpful or interesting had you had a chance to see it.

    Image: gigglecam (YouTube)

  • Google EMD Update: It Will Be Back Repeatedly

    Not that this will come as much of a surprise, but Google’s EMD update, which Matt Cutts announced a week ago, will be an ongoing, periodic update, much like our other algorithmic friends Panda and Penguin.

    Danny Sullivan confirmed as much with Google. He writes, “Google confirmed for me this week that EMD is a periodic filter. It isn’t constantly running and looking for bad EMD domains to filter. It’s designed to be used from time-to-time to ensure that what was filtered out before should continue to be filtered. It also works to catch new things that may have been missed before.”

    Like I noted here, Sullivan says the advice for EMD recovery is pretty much like that for Panda recovery. “After you’ve removed the poor quality content, it’s waiting time. You’ll only see a change the next time the EMD filter is run,” he says. “When will that be? Google’s not saying, but based on the history of Panda, it’s likely to be within the next three months, and eventually it might move to a monthly basis.”

    Google, if you haven’t heard, actually did launch a new Panda update to roll out alongside the EMD update, so webmasters have had to deal with both updates at the same time, trying to figure out which one they’re actually being affected by. Luckily, the cure is probably the same for both. Quality.

    By the way, Google has been making other changes to its algorithm related to the quality of pages. More on that here. There was also another recent domain-related algorithm tweak (in addition to the domain diversity update).

  • Google Page Quality Algorithm Changes Don’t Always Come Under The Panda Label

    When it comes down to it, most of the signals Google uses to rank the web’s content are rooted in quality. Google’s constantly changing algorithms are specifically geared towards creating a higher quality search experience for its users. Not everyone believes that, but it’s generally the stance Google takes. When Google releases its lists of changes it has made for each month (as it did today for August and September), it calls them “search quality highlights”. It’s ALL about quality.

    Still, only a certain subset of the changes are directly related to “page quality”. Presumably, that means the quality of the web pages it is ranking in organic search results (even if less of them are making the first page these days).

    The Panda update falls under the broader “Page Quality” project banner. In August’s list, Google notes that it refreshed data for the Panda “high quality sites algorithm,” and this is listed under project “Page Quality”. This is not the only page quality change Google announced on the big list of 65 changes, however. There are three others they are:

    #82862. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

    #83689. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

    #84394. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.

    Really helpful. I know. That’s as specific as Google is going to get on that. It’s Panda and these other vague changes. There were three known Panda updates/refreshes in August/September. See the dates here, yet there were four Page Quality changes in these lists for that time period, and only one of them is specifically described as Panda by Google.

    It should tell you one thing, however. The search industry press may talk about Panda a lot, and it has certainly wreaked havoc on plenty of webmasters and businesses, but Google is always making other changes directly related to the quality of your pages that don’t carry the Panda banner, though from their vague descriptions, they seem to set to out to accomplish the same basic thing.

    It always comes back to quality content. See our article on the EMD Update and Panda here.

    Image: Awesome fat Panda eating=]] (YouTube)