Google Panda Update 2015: Updates to Brand SERPS? [UPDATED]

What you need to know regarding the Google Panda update 2015.

It’s still early days just yet but it appears that Google has made a change to its SERPS and it appears that sites that “piggy-back” other people’s brands have been hit the hardest.

For example take a search term around “Red bull” or “Facebook” for example, previously the search results would bring up a range of results but now it appears that the majority of results are Red bull and Facebook domain relates.

More on this as we uncover exactly what’s going on with the 2015 google panda update.

Updated 7^th August 2015

After a little more research we understand this to mean something a little different: it’s not based on brand it’s based on authority.

Take for example the “ALT Agency” brand. It’s easier for us guys at ALT to rank for that as it’s our brand with a relevant domain etc., however, a competitor in a similar market could also rank for that keyword and appear just as high if not higher than us in Google SERPS, which is unfair. So what Google have done is give the brands such as ALT Agency more power to rank easier for their brands. The competitor can still rank for ALT Agency in the SERPS but it’s far more difficult to do now than it was a few years ago.

With this thinking, a competitor of ALT could leverage the authority of a major site to help them, for example if the BBC we’re to do a page competing with ALT Agency, they have more authority than ALT and so could possibly rank higher than ALT due to the BBCs major authority.