Big Change Today? April 6th?

[vphoner]

I noticed today a big change in the sites listed for keywords (some are junk sites) and my organic clicks from google has dropped about 80-90%. I am no longer appearing from many terms. It appears that this hit sometime today. Is this a temporary reshuffling and has anyone else noticed this today? The strange thing is that I still rank very highly on some terms. If the site was hit by Panda, wouldn't you lose ranking on all keywords?

[Pjman]

If the site was hit by Panda, wouldn't you lose ranking on all keywords?

Not necessarily, if your site was so much more elite to the other choices.

For example I kept about 15 #1 rankings after panda, even though my site was devastated by it as a whole. Why? Let's look at the competition for those terms.

My page= 15 yo domain, 23,000 unique domain links (1,000 .edu,.gov), and honestly superior content to all competition plus a lot more of it.

My nearest competition for that term = 2 yo domain, 1,213 unique domain links (0 .edu,.gov). They have maybe 1/10 of the amount of content we have.

So I think Panda is just an overall devaluation, not a penalty (-3,-5) to all pages.

[vphoner]

In the reshuffling today, I see some junk sites I never saw before that have replaced some of the top listings. In your experience, do your clicks return over time as the deck gets reshuffled? I remember a year ago, I lost some keywords and they returned a while later. But this is the worst I have ever seen it.

[GlobalMax]

A site of mine took a huge hit yesterday (April 6) too. It had the #3 position for [best widget] at the beginning of the day. Sometime before the day was over, traffic fell off a cliff, and I discovered that that the site dropped to page 13 for [best widget].

US site; new site; launched 5 months ago; domain registered years ago. Has yo-yo'ed before, but #3 for a week was the best it's been, and I was hopeful it'd last this time. Sigh.

[kd454]

I have noticed very recently last few days sites that have been in top three for money terms for a few years getting pushed way down.

They said they are going to be "fine tuning" Panda so this could be what I am seeing, this could be your issue as well.

[vphoner]

Yes, the update occurred in the middle of yesterday. I also notice that junk sites with the keyword in the domain name are ranking very high. This leads me to believe that this update won't last in its current form. (I thought they reduced the ranking of domain names as to keywords....). My rankings have not changed at all today...hoping they do soon as I have calculated that as of today, down 90% in total clicks. Some keywords though still rank #1 which is strange. If anyone sees an improvement from yesterday, please post here.

[vphoner]

One more thing...just before this happened I noticed a huge increase in total clicks (50% above normal) for about a week or so before this happened. My rankings improved as well. I was hoping this would stick. Now its the reverse. This is strange.

[kd454]

vphoner,

This is what happened to a lot of sites that were hit by Panda, mine as well.. Just before Feb 24th, got a boost in traffic thing were great, then Panda struck lost 50-75% of traffic.

[Pjman]

People that saw this change...

Where are you geographically?

I see no change in New York City.

It might be a data center or two that are spilling it out right now.

[vphoner]

I am in the south jersey area. What are Panda's main targets? Link farms? Affiliates? Has anyone seen a reversal (even a little) after they got hit by Panda? Any steps to reverse? I don't do any active linking.

[indyank]

May be panda is catching up with other sites or niche now.

[tedster]

What are Panda's main targets? Link farms? Affiliates? Has anyone seen a reversal (even a little) after they got hit by Panda? Any steps to reverse? I don't do any active linking.

We have been having a huge discussion about this - for example:

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

Solid answers are in very short supply. Reports of recovery are so rare that they may not really be Panda recovery at all.

One thing is clear. Panda's target is not any particular type of site. Instead it is Google's first step into measuring "quality" in addition to "relevance". It's a brave new world and a major focus for the coming year, according to Matt Cutts. This recent update was over a year in development, so we know it's not a casual turn of any previously existing dial.

[GlobalMax]

Pjman: I'm in Ohio. However, I'd expect any datacenter effects to be geographical per searcher location or per server load rather than per site or per search. If some fraction of datacenters had some update, there'd still be traffic from the whacked keywords at a reduced level from the non-updated datacenters. For me, at least, the traffic from the critical keywords is completely gone.

[Planet13]

(I thought they reduced the ranking of domain names as to keywords....).

Not for SOME of the keywords I have been looking at. The formula for this niche is apparently:

keyword in domain + stuff title with keyword + spammy back links = top placement in SERPs

[vphoner]

Checking today (the first day after the event) I am still down 90% on google. I notice that there are a lot of spam results and product name in URL sites. I never saw these ranking to this degree. I see one guys listing shown 5 times in the first 15 results. He just uses different blogs. I can't believe that this will stand (At least I hope not). For myself, the few clicks I have are not specific model clicks as they were before (I got about 50/50 specific model clicks), but now are more general words. Maybe this tells us something (that specific model clicks are not showing).

[vphoner]

Seeing a lot more keyword in the domain sites popping up today. Seems like they (google)are favoring them. Maybe thats what caused everything to drop off.

[dibbern2]

I think I may have experienced this same thing on Thursday, April 7. Wondering and watching to see is its a short-timed hick-up or something more serious...

[flore_seo]

I definitely experienced a substantial drop (-2 to -7 slip) in my rankings. I started noticing the drop on Wednesday (April 6th) with one keyword that I track.

It blew me away when I came into the office today (April 8) and did my routine ranking check to see the rest of my keywords fell too.

I wasn't hit by the first Panda Update. In fact, I benefited from it. Something's up now, though. I know it.

[SE_Magnets]

I have had a catastrophic decrease in traffic since the 6th. I manage a site that sell sports apparel. It's only a couple of month's old. Traffic was increasing well for only being live since the end of January/early February.

On April 6th, traffic decreased by almost 50%, on April 7th, it decreased another 67%, and today were off to a worse start. Organic traffic from Google has dropped off by almost 80% since the 6th.

There's no apparent reason to this. All of our content is 100% unique. So I don't think we've been caught in the Panda update, although there's no way of knowing for sure. Our content hasn't been scraped either.

I'm leaning towards Google testing, but again I don't know for sure.

Do you think it's possible the the site was reported as spam and Google took that "suggestion" and penalized it? I know wit the Chrome extension you can block domains from your search results, and Google "looks" at the request.

[vordmeister]

Might be a complete coincidence, but over here in the UK spam registrations on a forum increased by 6 times on 6th April from a previously stable level.

Given where spam registrations tend to come from could geotargeting be involved?

[backdraft7]

Last three days have been pretty bad. Virtually no morning traffic or what we get is foreign / Zombie.
I have noticed the since 2/1/2011 every Wednesday & Thursday is extremely slow. Prior to 2/1/2011 Wednesday & Thursday's were fine.
Friday 4/8/2011 is looking similar to Mayday (May 18th 2010). I do notice that the internet traffic report is showing very high load. 77 index and trending lower. Might have something to do with the impending gov shutdown.

[vordmeister]

Now that's funny - happened to be looking at the search queries chart on Google webmaster tools and true enough I had a 95 percent traffic drop on 6th.

Apart from that it's not been a bad week. Revenues up a bit, traffic much the same, serps much the same. Checked through my server logs and google.com referrals are still at a constant steady level.

Does anyone noticing a drop happen to use Google Analytics as their main data source?

[ckissi]

@SE_Magnets, is this over the world or only US segment ?

[mslina2002]

WMT is obviously broke as Apr 6 shows no traffic and GA shows normal traffic both for Apr 6

[Forbin001]

One of my keywords got a serious bump. It was on the second page for about a month and this morning, there it is at the bottom of the first page. Not too bad.

[maximus12]

Yep something defiantly went wrong on the 6th. Search Queries took a nose dive hardcore, but analytic traffic is the same!

For the specific industry I am in my US sales have been down and european has gone up. Very strange! This all started at the end of the month.

Example: On the 31st of March 8 sales in that one day

Every since (April 1,2,3,4,5,6,7..) then about 1 sale a day.

Something shifted. Researching more on this ZOMBIE traffic because things just don't match up.

[maximus12]

OH BTW, my keywords are actually stable and just like Forbin reported. A few of mine jumped into first page and one that took a hit from PANDA from position #2 to #7 went back to # 2 this week.

[GlobalMax]

vordmeister:

Does anyone noticing a drop happen to use Google Analytics as their main data source?

Yes, I experienced a catastrophic drop April 6th and am using Google Analytics.

[vordmeister]

Just seems a coincidence that webmaster tools is showing me a 95% drop in Google referrals on 6th April but if I look at my own log files there is no drop. Just reckoned if Analytics used the same data then it might be wrong too.

Obviously anyone seeing an actual traffic drop on their sites may well have a problem. Just posted on the off chance that others might be worrying unnecessarily.

[asabbia]

Oh thanks god.

I just tried to open a topic when i saw that 90% drop within google webmaster tools, that must have been a bug.

This is my ghost drop: [img543.imageshack.us...]

Luckily it was not a real drop