Panda Hits Google UK ?

[BrianS]

Google UK has just been updated, I assume its the Panda update? and contrary to all the criticisms and whining about Panda so far, these serps look markedly improved.

I have so far only really had a detailed look at one very competitive product niche.

My initial observations are;

Not much movement in the first few results pages. But looking deeper down to page 50, shows some dramatic movements.

Some previously poor ranking quality/original content sites have risen, some significantly (e.g from page 38 to page 9).

Some sites with poor/little content have taken a drop, again some significant (e.g. page 8 to page 15).

Quite a number of crap blog, affiliate and article sites have dropped out of sight. Being replaced with genuine sites that users actually want to find.

There seems to be an increase in numbers of deeper (more relevant) pages, compared to home page listings.

It would also seem there is more emphasis on original quality content, the site's actual purpose, and far less on just volumes of links.

There a few exceptions, but these are far less than ever before!

Looks Really Good, Excellent Job Google :)

[HuskyPup]

My UK widget sector is still very messy, lots of very irrelevant stuff still being delivered in the SERPs.

[magpete]

@BrianS. Spot on!

[crobb305]

Google UK has just been updated, I assume its the Panda update? and contrary to all the criticisms and whining about Panda so far, these serps look markedly improved.

Your site(s) must have improved ranking with Panda. Congratulations.

[johnhh]

Um .. don't see any changes in the UK for our sector.

[Simsi]

Just done some checking and definitely some big changes in mine since I last checked (Thursday).

[browsee]

My serps are better in UK. US results are still bad.

[realmaverick]

No change here yet. Checked all my big keywords and no changes. Also no noted changes in competitors ranks either.

[Content_ed]

Searching google.co.uk from the U.S., it's pre-Panda for everything I could think of checking. Funny to see my Google results of last month.

[union_jack]

I am seeing quite a lot of movement across about half of the 30 sites I follow. All different industries and types of sites and its very hard to see a pattern to what is going on. Two keyword domains dropped but two still there. There is an annoying movement away from my ranking index page to internal pages that are not as relevant. Not sure what you can do about this as the index page is far stronger and better optimised in my opinion.

[chrisv1963]

I'm not convinced yet that this is Panda. My website that got hit badly by Panda is doing pretty well in the UK serps.

[Uber_SEO]

We're seeing significant improvements too. Unfortunately we just rolled out some major optimisation changes, so as per usual it's difficult to tell what's caused what, although the improvement I've seen is far greater than I'd expect from the changes we've made - which means there might be something else at play here - Panda?

What's weird is that our US traffic was hit hard by the Panda update. If this really is Panda in the UK, then it would appear that we're actually doing much better.

[chrisv1963]

We're seeing significant improvements too. Unfortunately we just rolled out some major optimisation changes, so as per usual it's difficult to tell what's caused what, although the improvement I've seen is far greater than I'd expect from the changes we've made - which means there might be something else at play here - Panda?

What's weird is that our US traffic was hit hard by the Panda update. If this really is Panda in the UK, then it would appear that we're actually doing much better.

Maybe Panda UK is taking the changes that have been made to sites into account and Panda US isn't doing that yet.

[indyank]

chris1963, I am not seeing the panda #*$! hit UK yet..

[Uber_SEO]

@chrisv1963 I don't think that's the case - the changes we've made weren't to rectify Panda related issues - just ongoing optimisation work

[almighty monkey]

Wow.

Erm, so I have a test site that i've been trying to spam to the top of a keyword (Just as an experiment. I've been buying xrumor and scrapebox blasts).

Um, I've gone from page 13 to page 2.


Good job Google. Well played. You've really gone made my professional life easier. Hi5.

[union_jack]

The question is will Matt Cutts tell us if it is? Cos there is no word from him. But it does seem quite a fairly major shake up.

[crobb305]

Funny to see my Google results of last month

Yep I see my old rankings from last month also, when I look at Google UK. Can't assume that every ranking reshuffle is going to be Panda. If it is spreading over, the UK is fortunate in that the US was the testbed for Panda. They have the luxury of listening to us "whine" while the algorithm gets tweaked and improved based on our assessments and the 2,000+ posts on the official Google/Panda discussion forum. :)

[Planet13]

Erm, so I have a test site that i've been trying to spam to the top of a keyword...

Thanks for doing this, AM. (Although it is sad to hear it has done so well.)

About how many links were in each blast?

How thin is the content on the test site? Is it mostly scraped?

[crobb305]

Erm, so I have a test site that i've been trying to spam to the top of a keyword (Just as an experiment. I've been buying xrumor and scrapebox blasts).

Um, I've gone from page 13 to page 2.


Good job Google. Well played. You've really gone made my professional life easier. Hi5.

Unbelievable. This explains how there are 11,000 scraped copies (portions) of my homepage from content that I created 2 months ago. Google wants to have the biggest index, but not necessarily the best. Their memory isn't big enough for simple cache comparisons to see when content first appeared (even within a ballpark estimate). Sad.

If the day ever comes when they can identify the original, I think scraped versions should automatically count as a backlink, even if the scraper doesn't link to you. If your content is good enough to be duplicated, it's good enough to be counted toward your PageRank.

Good experiment though.

[edited by: crobb305 at 3:04 pm (utc) on Mar 28, 2011]

[Content_ed]

I spent an hour or so this morning going back and forth between US and UK Google for phrases where we used to be #1 and now average around #4, and the one thing that jumps out is that all of the pages beating us now have community feedback. Whether they are on a WordPress template and accept comments or community sites like Yahoo Answers, every site that's moved above us is "social" in some way.

[Hyder_Ali]

Yes, the google panda update is hitting in UK & very badly. All my rankings which were coming on 2nd & 3rd page were dropped. Not also that, some of my competitors rankings were also dropped. And, first few pages were remained quite intact but other pages starting from 4 seems to get some hit. Results showing some good & quality websites on top. But my rankings are dropped,need to do some high quality seo work again :(

[BrianS]

Depending on your location you maybe be served from different datacentres, I am based in the UK, and this what I am being served.

[74.125.230.144...]

The results are definetly new, many sites that have held a stable (but not top) positions for long periods of time have shifted significantly. Most significantly, a lot of the crap has been kicked down out of sight.

Whether or not this is Panda, a tweaked PandaII or something new, its significant and IMHO its a massive improvement!

[thinkagain]

As far as I can see Panda hasn't hit yet, we are monitoring 100 keyword rankings that are littered with ezine type sites and waiting for them to be dumped out of the index.

We're also monitoring 15 UK based sites how have seen U.S. organic traffic drop since 24 feb, this drop has still not hit the UK for them.

My opinion is Panda is not live yet and the strange ranking issues above are nothing more than a regular google dance, ezine articles still rules in the UK search results so how can panda be live?

Keep an eye on traffic rather than rankings when trying to assess if Panda is live.

[BrianS]

Almighty Monkey

Erm, so I have a test site that i've been trying to spam to the top of a keyword (Just as an experiment. I've been buying xrumor and scrapebox blasts).

Um, I've gone from page 13 to page 2.

That can happen, but its a short lived gain, some of and perhaps all of those links will inevitably be devalued.

Its irrelevant to the purpose and objectives of this particular update.

[Shaddows]

There is definately a UK shake up, but its not the US Panda.

I'm currently running analysis on following hypotheses:

Split testing

An upgrade to Scraper as a precondition of Panda

Underlying quality rescoring which is more obvious in non-Panda SERPs

[tigger]

something kicked in a couple of days ago and I'm seeing massive shake up - I've made some gains and losses but overhaul held current traffic levels - if it reverts back dropped sites will hopefully pull back - thank frig for not putting all my traffic eggs onto one site

[HuskyPup]

@ BrianS

Using your link for one of my main keyword phrases I had to go to #48 before finding a non .co.uk result, then #55 and #65.

Using my G.co.uk the first non .co.uk is at #6 and then 2 or 3 on each page of results, all highly relevant I must add but simply gone...pooft, gone.

A bit of over-zealous geo-targetting methinks.

[BrianS]

@HuskyPup
My Google.co.uk and the link provided return identical 875 results at the moment.

What DC IP are you getting your results from ?

[HuskyPup]

[74.125.39.105...]

That's my standard Firefox Google.co.uk