The past few weeks webmasters and SEO community throughout the world felt very apprehensive about the new Google Penguin update . Matt Cutts, Google's mastermind behind the new algorithm specified that new Google Penguin update is going to be deeper in affecting many sites with so called unregulated practices and this started new discussion and speculation on what the future of SEO is going to be and so there are discussions on difference between Google Penguin and Google Panda, two Google algorithms mastered to monitor and take measures for down ranking and black listing websites that are not in coherence with Google webmaster guidelines. In spite of the differences on their focus in alleviating web experience through punishing back door web tactics for SEO , there are some differences between Google Penguin and Google Panda that are worth a recap for the SEO community and web users.
The main difference between Google Panda and Google Penguin is their target area in alleviating the web experience for the users. While Google Panda is an algorithm that is mainly rolled in order to down raking those sites and web pages with thin content that does not add much value to the reader or overall web experience, Google penguin is targeted mainly to stop spam and all similar dubious practices to misguide the reader on the web. But having said that you just cannot remain complacent as Google Penguin update is equally serious about those sites with poor content, especially when they use Black Hat SEO tactics to come up the search ranks.
Till date Google Panda is known for its wide known measures to down rank sites with poor content qualities rather than other promotional activities like poor or low quality link building, spam, etc. If your site is publishing copied content or poor content that does not add value to the web user's knowledge on that particular search tags, you can face the wrath of Google Panda through a drop in the search ranks that make your site just vanish from first page or even beyond 10th page. On the other hand Google penguin is to overlook all attributes of a website or blog or web page including link building, spam, hidden content, cloaking, etc. The idea is to put the focus on unique and value adding genuine content rather than dubious practices that make websites use for promoting business interests.
The end result of wrath that a website is to face violating the Google webmaster guidelines is reflected in the difference between Google Penguin and Google panda in respect of punishment that they receive. Through Google Panda a website is supposed to face down ranking for its poor content while spamming and similar bad links of a web site can face complete wipe out with Google Penguin into effect.
This aspect is just the central to the difference between Google Penguin and Google Panda. Google penguin is mainly focused on the quality of links that means if your content presents some unnatural links without any relation to the content or if you are providing links that guide the reader to pages of poor quality or content and does not add value to the web experience then the site can be punished from search ranks. On the other hand whether the content published is of any value in relation to the search title or how unique and well written the content is, these are the considerations of Google Panda based on which it takes appropriate measures to down rank websites.