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?

[netmeg]

Yea, mine too. I figure GWT just isn't updated all the way.

[shazam]

3 Year old site,exact match keyword domain, steady #1-#4 rankings for the last year with high quality updated content and tons of pages got buried. This just happened in the last 4 or so days.

The index page is sitting at 980 now.

A few inner pages are showing up slightly higher for terms that the home page should be and was previously ranking for.

100% white hat, with unique high quality content.

It's not because of the exact match domain. A competitor's site (exact match domain) with less than half the backlinks, 1/4 the content, and slighty spammy has TWO spots in the top 5.

The first page serps are useless to google visitors for this term. One site has 2 spots, two other sites have 3 spots each. The remaining two positions are taken with worthless sites that have essentially no content, no backlinks and offer no real value.

I think it all fits perfectly into g's plan to increase adwords revenue.

[Pjman]

Just wanted to put in my 2 cents and not start any rumors. At least from my perspective every time WMT data gets out of it's mind, a ranking shifts happens 5-8 days after.

The last one happened on Panda. On looking at the 3 day old data on Monday everybody was saying WTF, there was a day with 0 data. 4 days later Panda strikes.

The one I remember before that was early November 2010, I had zero data on a day and then 3 days later my SERPS were the best in years.

Not trying to start rumors, just sharing my experience.

[vphoner]

I think I had heard that wordpress sites were hit by Panda? Any truth to this? That would make no sense to me, since Wordpress is just a software platform, and some use it as their website platform and disable the blogging part (the part where people make comments), and just use it to make their website. The reason I ask is that I have heard that many old fashioned html sites were not hit.

[vphoner]

Shazam, it sounds like you have lost 90% of your traffic. Interesting theory you have that putting content without much value at the top would increase adwords revenue. Certainly the better quality serps, you would think would cut into adwords revenue. The more relevant the serps would also cut into adwords revenue.

[Roaming Gnome]

PJman, I hope you are right. * Thumbs Up *

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

One more thing...just before this happened (GWT showing no traffic april 6th) I noticed a huge increase in total clicks (50% above normal) for about a week or so before this happened.

Ditto

My sites are US based and are now outranked slightly by several mashup sites that had fallen in serps during panda. they're back. I'm down 2-20 spots on most keywords as a result.

[ibmethatswhoib007]

I searched the web and found this discussion. My site dropped from ranking #2 for 22k keywords exact to #410 and now today I'm at #735. It happened mid day April 5th and I had hardly any traffic April 6th because I was getting most of my traffic from my main keyword. I hat mainkeywordhq.com, I'm using wordpress and amazon outgoing affiliate links. I had all original content and quality backlinks, I had a few comments on spammed blogs but other than that really quality high pr links. Maybe we can find some common thing that's causing this. Really pisses me off cuz I didn't blast with this site and I took my time.

[walkman]

The index page is sitting at 980 now.

That's a penalty, not Panda, IMO.

[ohno]

backdraft, seeing what you are...again! Spooky.

[ErnestHemingway]

I will wait few days before I can comment. My main site built by my cousin who hold PhD on topic with content going 2000 words each I am now not even on first 4 pages. I was ranking 3rd since 2001 until Monday morning 11th April. 100% legit site featured on WallStreetJournal, Wired and many other publications.

Shocking part, I didn't have any ADS on it. It was a totally informative website.

Google you ROCK.

[rlange]

Pjman wrote:
Just wanted to put in my 2 cents and not start any rumors. At least from my perspective every time WMT data gets out of it's mind, a ranking shifts happens 5-8 days after.

The last one happened on Panda. On looking at the 3 day old data on Monday everybody was saying WTF, there was a day with 0 data. 4 days later Panda strikes.

The one I remember before that was early November 2010, I had zero data on a day and then 3 days later my SERPS were the best in years.

Not trying to start rumors, just sharing my experience.

I don't recall this sort of hiccup prior to Panda, but I don't think I was paying much attention back then. However, if this is your experience, it seems to be holding true. The hiccup occurred on April 6th and today, five days later, this:

Google PANDA rolls out WorldWide [webmasterworld.com]
High-quality sites algorithm goes global, incorporates user feedback [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

--
Ryan

[asabbia]

"Today we’ve rolled out this improvement globally to all English-language"


so it's still for english only.. doh

[backdraft7]

Still down since April 6th. Traffic volume is still there, but quality is non-existent. Zombies are back.
Long tail seems to have been clipped since the 6th too. When will the roller coaster ride ever end?

[GlobalMax]

This is curious: In WebMaster Tools, "Your site on the web->Search queries->Top queries," I'm seeing no data point for April 6th on the graph; it jumps from April 5th to April 7th. The "Top pages" graph does not suffer a similar omission.

Anyone else (effected or not) notice a missing data point on April 6th?

Has anyone ever noticed missing points previously or know in general if there's any significance to a day's data missing?

[ErnestHemingway]

@GlobalMax same case here. I am just shocked that scraped content and spam is ranking on top. Is Google pushing its MFA sites to increase their revenue? Ehow is dominating it didn't lose much in last or this update. This is turning out to be a joke.

[asabbia]

there was an issue with google wmbt on 6th apr, just see the topics in the forum

[Shatner]

@GlobalMax same.

[backdraft7]

same here...no data for 4/6 - I think this is a system wide error, but indicative of another "tweak".
It's too early to tell, but subsequent days after the 6th show up only until the 8th, then then 9th and 10th are missing. I'd say Google is broken again...and we once again pay the price in lost sales.

[vphoner]

No improvement, in fact I see some deterioration of the remaining keywords I had. I now see that a big site has taken over the #1 spot on one keyword. A pure HTML site was hit on Monday, with the same bad results. So, this thing is continuing to hit mom and pop websites. Google is favoring the giant websites making it very hard for any up and coming sites to survive. Just like the rich get richer, now the big sites will get bigger. It looks like my long tail of keywords is missing. Most of my keyword hits were long tail in the past.

[kd454]

So, this thing is continuing to hit mom and pop websites. Google is favoring the giant websites making it very hard for any up and coming sites to survive. Just like the rich get richer, now the big sites will get bigger. It looks like my long tail of keywords is missing. Most of my keyword hits were long tail in the past.

Mom and Pop need to get a loan from the bank for a couple of million, hire a huge staff of programmers, link builders, writers etc. Then then can compete, other than that game over.

Panda = big boy game now, either your a big brand, big money or institution etc to play now.

And if you reading this and it has not effected you yet just wait, they are going to fine tune this baby to effect all serps, long tail etc before it is over so enjoy while you can mark my words this is just the beginning.

[ErnestHemingway]

From what I read in CNN article the new update has shifted almost $1billion revenue to big sites.

[rlange]

backdraft7 wrote:
[...] then 9th and 10th are missing. I'd say Google is broken again...

Webmaster Tools apparently lags by two days, which is why the past two days are "missing".

--
Ryan