Many Weeks since the Panda Update - Any Improvements? [part 2]

[rustybrick]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

So, still, no one is seeing any significant improvements?

[edited by: tedster at 5:00 pm (utc) on Mar 25, 2011]

[wheel]

It may not be disastrous in reality. There's always fallout when Google makes a change like this. Incidental damage. Google doesn't care - not even a little bit.

I think there may even have been less incidental damage with this one than there was in previous large updates.

And in a lot of places, panda had 0 effect. It hurts if you got hit, but numerically, the update wasn't as much a PR stunt as anything.

[crobb305]

It seems like this Panda update attacked large sites.

My sites are under 140 pages.

My theory: Google has knocked the site score so nothing will rank as it should (or better than scrappers) until your score is upped

Walkman, I think you're right and it's foolish of Google to do this. When webmasters see other sites outranking them for snippets of their own content, they are going to give up on the content and start removing ads (in order to "fix" their ad/content ratios). I know I did. I rewrote a few articles, sent out some DMCA notices, and still saw other sites outranking me for snippets of my content. So, I began deleting affiliate links (what few I had) and Adsense. Sorry Google, the 1,000+ visitors I still get from Bing won't be clicking on Adsense now.

An alternative to this? Google could have re-ranked pages as necessary, but under no circumstances should scrapers ever be allowed to outrank the original for exact snippets (I know the word count is subjective, but perhaps an exact match of 5 words or longer). I say this if and only if the scraper phenomenon is the result of the new score (demoting a site to the point that it can't even rank for exact sentences from its original documents). On the other hand, if scrapers are outranking because Google can't identify the original, that's a different story.

[SEOPTI]

Now back into the Panda toilet again. There is no chance to escape from this mess.

I got a few new domains and will move content today and tomorrow. The hardest lesson was with the -50 penalty and 18 months without recovery, lesson learned. Don't wait for them to change your rankings, I'm trashing most of my old domains now.

[walkman]

walkman, that cutts statement is probably significant since johnmu also said something very similar, but about changes in general. If two of them are saying very similar things, then I'd bet they are sending a strong message, without actually coming out and giving a time-frame for new Panda calc. So we have until May before full-scale panic sets in, I guess.

Matts' video (couldn't find it now) was added 3 weeks ago and JohnMu said that it takes time to crawl and some time for the algo to make your site changed (whatever that may mean.) Since no site has really come out, there must be something here. Just looks odd that as far as we can tell, no one has come out out of Panda's classification. Some people might not tell, but many would tell of their better rankings IMO.

Labnol and Cultofmac either didn't have Panda issues or were manually adjusted.

[falsepositive]

@walkman, agree with you completely. Labnol and Cultofmac were manual cases or non-Panda. I heard of some alleged cases in the G forums where some recovered (such as a huge European travel site) and some other science site (if I recall). Don't know if they would fall in the same bucket as non-Panda either. But certainly, there's nothing around that would give me hope yet that this can be bucked automatically/algorithmically.

@SEOPTI, wish I could ditch my domain but many of us hit have one big flagship domain that was affected. Unfortunately, we can't afford to just let our sites go (mine still receives thousands of uniques per day, albeit, cut in half). I'd love to crawl out of this still. I'll let you all know if I'm going to cry uncle.

[rowtc2]

Until we don't see reports of recovery is hard to tell. I've had a few days with time in city life, maybe i have more inspiration next days.

I am reminding the 950 penalty drops traffic completely just for one modification in internal anchor text. Can be a small thing or more factors involved, but why we don't see recovery reports?

I have started to not like Google,i am treated like a V*agra spam site, loosing confidence in them since i have seen really good sites penalized by this update.

I have a new blog, really i don't know if is worth to make the effort, how i should write articles and so on.

I saw people accusing ehow to be a content farm, weeks before Panda i saw a post in Matt Cutts blog where he show as an good example this site, i can't find it now because many people has added comments with this word. I have found ehow good looking and pretty useful that time, i don't know what tricks they use (put writers to build links to their articles or whatever). But nothing is perfect, even Youtube can be considered a content farm, what is the value besides a hosting service?

[SEOPTI]

@rowtc2, yes, the -950 re-ranking was a small thing, the algo usually kicked in within a few days after completing onsite changes even with huge sites.

But this monster is frozen, somewhere in the Antarktis, probably an alien?

I see at least three different data sets rotating at the moment. They are testing ... therefore we see traffic fluctuations with panda sites.

[grimmer]

make many changes to the site in last several weeks. haven't seen any major improvements yet.

[tedster]

I have had one private report of a site that lost significant search traffic with Panda, made changes, and now is seeing traffic at higher than pre-Panda levels.

In this instance it was a case of just plain removing a lot of URLs with shallow - and I do mean remove as in completely gone, not redirected, not any attempt to squeeze some theoretical last drop of juice from those URLs.

[crobb305]

I have had one private report of a site that lost significant search traffic with Panda, made changes, and now is seeing traffic at higher than pre-Panda levels. In this instance it was a case of just plain removing a lot of URLs with shallow

Ted,

Did they indicate how "shallow" the pages were? What were their criteria for identifying them as shallow? Did they use WMT?

[SEOPTI]

tedster, thanks for this report, do you think noindex,follow also counts in this case? I love noindex,follow for site navigation URLs with links and less content, this tag always did a good job.

[walkman]

I have had one private report of a site that lost significant search traffic with Panda, made changes, and now is seeing traffic at higher than pre-Panda levels.

In this instance it was a case of just plain removing a lot of URLs with shallow - and I do mean remove as in completely gone, not redirected, not any attempt to squeeze some theoretical last drop of juice from those URLs.

Thank you for the report, brings us hope. Can you share how much time passed from deletion to improvement?

[grimmer]

indeed, this brings us some hope, tedster, please help to shed more lights.

[Jane_Doe]

I have had one private report of a site that lost significant search traffic with Panda, made changes, and now is seeing traffic at higher than pre-Panda levels.

Is the U.S. traffic higher? Is it from the terms that were lost in Panda?

I have sites that have recovered total traffic, but it is from different terms than those that lost traffic from Panda, and in some cases the new traffic is from outside the U.S. So if Panda gets rolled out to other countries soon it may not last.

[tedster]

In this case, I don't have a lot of detail about time - just that removed pages had little unique text on them.

[incrediBILL]

In this instance it was a case of just plain removing a lot of URLs with shallow - and I do mean remove as in completely gone, not redirected, not any attempt to squeeze some theoretical last drop of juice from those URLs.

Been doing that since day one but when you have as many URLs as I do, it can take weeks to get rid of a fraction in the index. Then I find out someone may be SEO bombing my site to create more or less blank pages thanks to a bug in my software, now fixed, so I'm riding a perfect storm from hell.

[dickbaker]

So, do you think that outright removing pages--even if they rank well on Bing and Yahoo--is preferable to noindexing them as far as Google is concerned?

[mromero]

Real-life anecdotal experience to add to the algo.

Today I went into eBay to look for a certain part.

Entered the part number and Bingo! Located a used part for a reasonable price. Now this is almost as expensive as a new part but no special order as with a new one (wait two weeks) and shipping is O.K. So purchased.

Out a curiosity went to the sellers store and Oh My!

A replica of the eBay store except it is littered with Adsense.

Three huge units per page and the page has like 20 words plus the part number. Need great care to run the gauntlet of adsense top, right and bottom.

This I believe is GREEDY considering the big mark up on the used part in eBay, and a reason for G to clamp down on eCommerce sites.

Made me think less of the eBay seller and will now triple check the item when it arrives and will not hesitate to nail him to the wall if it is not what I paid for.

The seller seems to be an O.K. gentleman but his standalone website conveys a "thin" experience.

[tedster]

It's just got to depend on the individual situation. Recovered rankings in Google for the whole site might easily trump the loss of some individual ranking pages in Bing. But Google has advised some noindex action, too. It's just that no one who has gone the noindex route is reporting more than a slight improvement so far.

In the case of one site I work with, I advised dumping the clearly offending pages altogether - 410 Gone. It will be another week or two until that job is done because it involves a lot of internal linking and menu changes that need some study and technical precision, so no progress to report on that one right now.

[walkman]

My case: I deleted all my tags, overall more than the number of pages. I deleted them via Google Webmaster Central on 2/25 and since then I have allowed google to see the 410.

I also deleted and/or noindexed many pages so I cannot tell if my traffic is 10%-20% more or less since some deleted pages may have brought traffic, but I can tell you that I have not come back. My total number of pages in site: is now with 50 of the exact number but I see no changes in Google. (Last night my Google traffic was a lot than normal but it died down. )

[Roaming Gnome]

Thankfully I have kept my UK rankings (so far). The thing I do not understand is why some sites got such a boost when their content is so vanilla. One of my competitors has #1-#3 rankings for around 5 very popular terms and my site fell to +400 on the same terms. I look at what their site offers and its peanuts compared to mine. Yes, I had some iffy pages in the mix, but the overall quality of my site is like comparing lobster to chum. I really dont understand it. I see keyword domains enjoying high rankings even though they consist of only a landing page. Really? I was hoping that the drop in rank was only for a month, but now I am really worried. Since the last update I have been re-doing my "thin" pages until the next update rolls around.

[Martin Ice Web]

Today fells like google pulled out their biggest punish hammer they could find. About -50% organic traffic.
Almost all of my competitors ( and myself ) got knock down.
Instead of some good pages, amazon rules with #1 to #3 spots, within almost all queries in our niche.
Never seen this bad serps before.

[Shatner]

So it wasn't just me. Yesterday Google took another dip for me too. Down about another 2 or 3k. And just when it had started to seem like it was stabalizing or maybe even slightly improving.

Really, really getting sick of this. It's not just unfair it's bad for the internet. I should be focusing on creating great content, not spending every waking second worrying about whether Google knows I'm creating great content.

[crobb305]

Has anyone noticed that Google cleaned up the SERPS for the phrase Google Panda? We were all laughing at Google just a couple of days ago because Bing provided good results for that phrase, while Google's first three results were videos of a panda sneezing. Today, the SERPS are clean and no videos of sneezing panda. They're listening...and manually tweaking.

[tedster]

It could also be an automated response from their freshness algorithm, rather than a manual tweak. The search might have been reclassified from the theoretical QDD status (Query Deserves Diversity) to QDF (Query Deserves Freshness)

[crobb305]

True. But given that Google Panda occurred over a month ago and that other panda sneezed years ago, the freshness algorithm seems slow to respond.

[edited by: crobb305 at 5:52 pm (utc) on Mar 31, 2011]

[tedster]

I agree - but I find it VERY hard to believe Google would manually tweak that query term, so I'm considering other possibilities.

[Shatner]

Side note... I'm starting to notice people on twitter, who have nothing to do with any of this and have no idea that Panda even exists, complaining about the quality of Google search results.

[crobb305]

Shatner, for those of us who don't tweet, I'm curious as to how many complaints you've seen? If everyday users are seeing a drop in quality, it may add credence to the 2,000+ posts in the official Panda complaint forum and to everything we've been saying about scrapers, etc.

[ascensions]

Drinking a full glass of beaujolais wine makes the SERPs look magically better. Panda? Who cares....