On Google Webmaster Help, an interesting and informative discussion broke out between a community site and Google. The site, which has been in existence since the 90s, supposedly had its content heavily moderated. A site is a place where people ask questions in English and others respond. The site used to do well in Google searches, and even before Google was even in the mainstream. But since the launch of the Panda 22 update, the site has taken a major hit in Google’s search engine results.
Update of Google Panda
During the course of the conversation, Google came in and pinpointed certain pages with poor content quality and directed the owner of the website to the official Google Panda advice blog post. He then went on deeper and talked about the pros and cons of user-generated content (UGC). policing and evaluating the content, most sites are overrun by spam and content,” opined John, to which the owner of the website owner quipped, “Unless I’m being a ‘love-blind’ we wouldn’t have survived this long (as a community) without a heck of a lot of policing and housekeeping.” The owner even went out to list all the things they do to police and moderate the content of the website, which was a long list indeed.
This is not the first UGC website to have been hit by the 22nd update of Google Panda. Other websites also posted such details in different threads. Some of these websites are hugely popular communities that are supposedly heavily moderated. It is up to you to decide if it is Google Panda that is not working right or if the moderation guidelines of these sites are not top-notch.
Your Website’s Performance Taking
In order to avoid your website’s performance taking a hit in Google’s search results, it is advisable to heavily moderate the user-generated content in order to free your website of any content that it may contain. However, with so many hugely popular community websites driven by UGC having taken a hit even after claiming that their content is already heavily moderated, that still might not be enough. It might also be handy to use only as much UGC as is necessary and ascertain high ranking and popularity in Google’s search.
