suggy - 12:50 pm on Aug 18, 2011 (gmt 0)

No it's definitely site wide, but perhaps sub-domains might be effected differently.

Does anyone else agree with this or am I unique? I doubt it.

Both are correct

Panda is site wide in it's effect on specific keywords/ keyword niches.

So, you can be pandalised for the generic (say 'hoovers' or 'vacuum cleaner') but not for a specific brand search (eg 'Sebo x4') or vice versa or both. It depends where your content problems lie.

Personally, I have plenty of brand + product name searches ranking number 1, yet searching for the brand + generic sees me pandalised.

Likewise, I have very generic terms pandalised and others that are closely related where I am #1 or #2 out of tens of millions of results.

So, I conclude Panda is sitewide in its effects (ie any semantically related page/ search will be effected), but also ring-fenced semantically within Google's keyword/ semantic clusters (the ones that make it so smart at understanding what we are searching for).

The effect is to taint everything related (not necessarily linked) to your bad content.