martinibuster - 7:09 pm on Nov 19, 2012 (gmt 0)

I'm going to seriously question the statement that copied content doesn't lead to Pandalization... and thus the "Panda" misdiagnosis.

You're contradicting yourself. You start out questioning that copied content does not lead to pandalization and then end up talking about Panda being a misdiagnosis, that it's something other than Panda.

I tend to agree with you that it's possible that some people who thought they were affected by Panda were actually affected by copied content. Two different issues.

Is it possible that the Panda algo opened the door to some sites being more susceptible to copied content? Is it possible that some sites are more susceptible to this effect than others? If so, what makes those sites more susceptible, crap links?

But if it's crap links making them more susceptible to copied content rank loss, isn't it also plausible that the crap links themselves are causing the loss of rankings and that the copied content did not play a role?

Copied content is a given. Those that rank well and those that lost their rankings both have stolen content. So if you're going to state that the stolen content is the root cause, then you will have to also explain why the effect is not universal if stolen content is something that affects pretty much all websites.

Nobody has supplied that explanation so I started the ball rolling for you by jumping to the other side of the argument and throwing it out there that perhaps the difference is crap links.

Ok, now I'm arguing with myself. Here is the question you should be considering: If stolen content is universal to all sites, ranking and those who have lost their rankings, but you believe stolen content is the cause of lost rankings, why was one site more susceptible to the effect over the other?

Is this a stolen content issue unrelated to Panda or is there a connection to Panda? It's possible there's a connection but somebody will have to explain what the connection is. This is the only way to explain why stolen content does not affect those sites still ranking.

That's the big hole in the theory that needs to be thoughtfully discussed.

[edited by: martinibuster at 7:20 pm (utc) on Nov 19, 2012]