muzza64 - 8:58 am on Sep 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

I think what seoskunk is seeing is more to do with the fact so many changes were made to the site - if titles and content are changed but traffic is still coming from the same keywords, those pages may not still be relevant, hence the higher bounce, etc. That won't change until Google has fully assimilated the changes, worked out which terms the site should now be ranking for and testing it for those terms (long process). It depends on the scale of the changes.

As realmaverick says, the only reason people struggle to recover from Panda is they are unable to identify the actual problem (and then know what is required to address it).

The example of the site recovering when it was bought by a brand is interesting - just the association with a well known brand would make customers trust a site more which would have a positive impact on user metrics (without any changes except the promotion of the new association across the site).

It's something I've been considering for a while as a way to help my Panda hit site. I believe my site is fairly equal to our competitors (we're working on making it better than the rest) but we're not so well known. I think we can recover by producing a better site, but being associated with a big brand could really improve our metrics and help the site recover. Interesting to hear it has worked for someone.