Google Testing option to block selected domains

Try this out, search for something in google, click on a result site, click the back button and come back to search.... You may be lucky to see a new option that Google is selectively testing

Block all website name here results

There is already a buzz around Google's latest Exact Match Domains (EMD) updates.

This seems to be a parallel test in progress pushed quietly :)

Google Panda 3.7 Refresh Official

 Taking another shot for quality improvement and 'better' search results, Google has fired another 'refresh'  update last friday, now understood as Google Panda update 3.7.

Similar to what has been said last time, the lastest Panda update will affect 1% of query volume.

Here is more to that news:

Google has now confirmed there was a refresh late Friday affected less than 1% of queries. Google said, "Panda data refresh started rolling out on Friday. Less than 1% of queries noticeably affected in the U.S. & 1% worldwide." We saw reports of this over the weekend and reported on those rumors. Google has confirmed there was an update.
Over the weekend there was a large spike in webmaster and SEO chatter at WebmasterWorld around Google's shift in the search results.
Update: Google has now confirmed there was a refresh late Friday affected less than 1% of queries. Here is their tweet from today:

A Googler @google

FYI Panda data refresh started rolling out on Friday. Less than 1% of queries noticeably affected in the U.S. & 1% worldwide

11 Jun 12

Source: SearchEngineRoundTable

Exploring Google Updates - Part I

On a mission to explore Google's mystery updates, here is my first post of a complete series planned. (starting with January'11, will cover a snapshot - highlights for the earlier ones soon)


Author or Content Authority update (Jan'11)

This Google update was intended to attribute the 'real' author of a document and penalize the copycats or scrapers. This algo change has approximately affected 2% of the search query volume.

Farmer Update - Further known as Panda 1.0 (Started Feb'11)

This major update which caused many sites to go dark in terms of traffic and indexing in Google SERP aimed at removing 'low quality' sites. The Name 'Panda' was given after Google Engineer Navneet Panda.
Similar to what Farmer does to remove the weeds from his farm, Google Panda update removes spammy and low quality sites from his index ( with a penality). First human testers were employed to see and analyze patterns for 'high quality' sites - those who are useful and filter out those who are of 'low quality' where they won't be interested to come back again.
Basis the pattern, unique content and relevancy a search algo update was made to 'tag' sites and sections as high value or low value. Rest is how to treat this was an easy task :)
Panda is also known as a 'Freshness' update giving more importance to unique and consistently updated content. Tailormade for Bloggers!

Panda 2.0 (Apr'11)
Unlike the previous update (Panda 1.0), this update was targeted toward 'thin affiliate sites'. Thin affiliate sites are those who use templates and the feed content /links going to the respective product owner site (ofcourse with an affilate id). Many good sites with original content also got affected as the content to link ratio was more on the affiliate side. With Google's Panda 2.0 update, thin affiliate sites die a slow death over time.