Google PANDA rolls out WorldWide

[incrediBILL]

Today, for the first time, after checking daily, I can now see US Panda results on Google properties worldwide including but not limited to: .co.uk, .ca, .co.in, .com.au, .fr, .de, .se, etc.

Congratulations, it's no longer speculation if you have Panda, it's quite visibly there.

[roodle]

No massive serp changes here (UK), but distinctly better traffic yesterday and today for 1 site that has been suffering a bit over the past couple of months. The traffic is resembling more how things were about 6 months ago. The site's not directly e-commerce. No adverts. Unique content which is gradually updated, a blog and a monthly third-party special offers page.

Much better G. Thanks (dare I say it...)

[rlange]

Huh... Of the 12 websites that my company operates (9 of which are U.S.-centric), only one was obviously smacked by the U.S. Panda release on February 23-24.

Oddly, it looks as if another one of our sites (U.S.-centric) has been smacked by the worldwide release of Panda yesterday. It also looks like two more (also U.S.-centric) may have been slapped, but not quite as hard as the others.

That makes no sense...

--
Ryan

[ErnestHemingway]

I thought ExactMatch domains were getting a look. Matt Cutts make me laugh at times, either he was on some high end stuff which we cannot get in black market or he was straight lying.

ExactMatch are dominating the results in this new update.

Now the funny part is that even exact-match-domain.com/org are doing good so as long as you have the keyword with dashes you are doing good.

Anyone want samples I have over 70 queries where top result is exactmatch without any authority and script generated content of "top schools" + 50 or so state related school pages and each containing a script generated page.

You call this quality?

[netmeg]

I'm pretty sure Google will get around to doing something about eHow. It might not be on our timetable, but they make Google look stupid, and Google doesn't like it when you make them look stupid. I doubt they'll completely tank, but will probably be quietly told to clean up their act (behind the scenes, where we don't see it) and eHow will make a big splash with balloons and press releases about their "new commitment to quality" and maybe take it down to only one page about nose picking.

[Mal_Jones]

ExactMatch are dominating the results in this new update.

They will be dealt with given a small amount of time. These are early results without the tweaks .......Keyphrase domains will be history once Google devalues them unless the domain is a well known brand name.

[Leosghost]

I've seen that for another site that I'm aware of. I wouldn't take that as any kind of bias toward eHow on Google's part. Google seems to display it for sites that use the Google Custom Search feature.

Mal ..You'll note I said "anyone"..so you were not being singled out; -)

I am not a dreamer either so back off please.

However asking if we are all spammers? from someone who only joined last November and has made less than 50 posts is hardly polite..nor constructive ..nor does it promote clear thinking...in past times as many here know , I'd have bitten back ..hard..

But that would achieve nought in this thread

I repeat ..I haven't been affected adversely at all by panda..but I'm in this thread ( and was still posting at 05.00 am this morning my time when I could have just said "I'm OK and gone to sleep ) because people who I know not to be spammers ( people who have been members here for years and who have made many many posts helping others ) are struggling to make sense of "why".

Google do not think they are in error ..or at least not much..so down voting sites that each of us thinks is "spam" won't IMO get anyone very far.

Analysing what didn't get hit ( apart from ehow etc ) IMO will get those hit further along the way to recovery..

[c41lum]

Thank You Leosghost. We do appreciate your help and insight on this latest update. Together we can find a work around.

[browsee]

I'm pretty sure Google will get around to doing something about eHow.

Just saw G webmaster forum, somebody pointed out. Looks like there is an indirect involvement or investment from G ex CEO. So, I doubt they will do something about eHow.

[jinxed]

On a side note, I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find an article about how to effectively pick my nose? Thanks.

[crobb305]

Just saw G webmaster forum, somebody pointed out. Looks like there is an indirect involvement or investment from G ex CEO. So, I doubt they will do something about eHow.

browsee,

I just noticed today, for the first time ever, .gov links in the Reference sections are followable. I only see this on .gov links (for the sample of the E-How Money pages I have checked). I can say that I have never seen a link on E-How that wasn't nofollow, so unless I overlooked it, it was just changed. This is interesting to me in light of the interview this weekend where MC said that they were happy about government sites ranking higher for queries about a major medical disorder. Maybe there is a deliberate attempt to further increase the ranking of government documents from the "authority" nature of E-How.

On a side note, I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find an article about how to effectively pick my nose? Thanks.

ROFL. Well, as it turns out, there is a proper way to pick your nose and I think you will find an excellent source in the top 3 or 4 on Google. I won't name any names LOL

[asabbia]

has ehow just disapper from 'how to effectively pick my nose' serp?

[johnhh]

[ehow.com...]

[Stas]

it does say here that ehow.com lost 50% and ehow.co.uk 70% with global panda roll out

[Stas]

[blog.searchmetrics.com...]

[johnhh]

Stas : nice post ! I will go and wander through that - not sure what the accuracy rate is though

[OldIrish]

I have premium exact keyword match .com and .org domains and I have been completely annihilated by this update. If anything this update seems to have targeted exact keyword match domains in my keyword niches.

What is strange is that the first Panda update didn't affect me at all once it settled. In fact I haven't lost more than -5% of my traffic in any previous Google update. This update however has nearly wiped out all of my Google traffic.

This feels like search traffic lock-out to me. If I can't get search traffic with 100% original quality content then how do I get traffic? If I can't get search traffic by following every one of Google's quality guidelines then how do I get traffic? I am at a complete and total loss as to how to move forward on this.

[edited by: OldIrish at 11:20 pm (utc) on Apr 12, 2011]

[browsee]

@stas,ehow lost 50% only in UK( hub pages lost more than 80% in UK), they are doing great herein US. It tells me that eHow is whitelisted here in US as both algos are same now.

[browsee]

I just noticed today, for the first time ever, .gov links in the Reference sections are followable.

That's new. Actually they changed JavaScript nofollow to normal nofollow few weeks ago. Hope they will use do follow for my links.

[indigojo]

Breaking story....search PhD's trying to fix the algo....[youtube.com ]...notice search lead does appear to code/type a little.

[Leosghost]

indigojo ;-) I nearly died laughing when I saw where your link went . Thankyou ..:)

[walkman]

eHow is staying because Knol is dead. Others, too bad. Review site? Google has them, by scraping yelp and others so you go bankrupt.
Shopping site? Google has shopping.
Local listing? Google has them.
Financial site? have you seen google's rate compare? Why is your site needed?
and so on. They will be gunning one by one all these sites.

[crobb305]

has ehow just disapper from 'how to effectively pick my nose' serp?

I have not seen them rank with "effectively". I have seen them for "how to pick your nose" top 5 (and dropping it seems), and Wikihow has 3 top spots. Wikihow is up there for many, many searches, often taking two or three spots. Algorithm Fail.

That's new (e-how allowing followable .gov links). Actually they changed JavaScript nofollow to normal nofollow few weeks ago. Hope they will use do follow for my links.

It doesn't seem that they are going to follow any of the .coms that they stole content from. Just giving link credit to .gov, which seems to satisfy Google's initiative -- to push government sources to the top. They should just create a new function (like Image search) that allows a user to search only government documents. Most of us don't want to see .gov ranking on everything, because we haven't been brainwashed into believing that the Government knows all. Unfortunately, a large portion of society has been --give them the option to search government only. I want to see unbiased SERPS with private-sector literature fairly ranking.

[edited by: crobb305 at 11:46 pm (utc) on Apr 12, 2011]

[Asia_Expat]

I have been completely annihilated by this update

From the above, and judging from similar comments from others, it seems I've got off light, because I still have nearly all of my traffic (touch wood). I've just seen a number of my cornerstone pages get hit hard (i.e. the ones that really count, and the ones that are the best)... the rest seems to have survived and I've only seen a marginal reduction in overall traffic...
But I sure sympathise with the white-hats here that have been stung hard.

[edited by: Asia_Expat at 12:10 am (utc) on Apr 13, 2011]

[syed]

I'm pretty sure Google will get around to doing something about eHow. It might not be on our timetable, but they make Google look stupid, and Google doesn't like it when you make them look stupid. I doubt they'll completely tank, but will probably be quietly told to clean up their act (behind the scenes, where we don't see it) and eHow will make a big splash with balloons and press releases about their "new commitment to quality" and maybe take it down to only one page about nose picking.

More often than not, its a variety of stuff that that their algo looks at as a whole that leads to fall in rankings. If eHow just had pure thin quality content, they probably would have already been affected really bad, but the other side of the content - its presentation/readability and its social reach could be what saved them?

[nethead]

@ErnestHemingway - We have seen 3 exactdomain sites drop from #1 spot to #4 so they did have a second look and to our disadvantage, didn't look good for us.

I was also keeping an eye on over 5 other keywords and noticed the prior # 1 & 2 spots which were taken by exactdomain for years, now have been overtaken by thin layered pages.

I for one like exactdomains and find most niche oriented sites extremely helpful. I guess google doesn't see it that way for some.

Not to say that's the case for every single exactdomain out there but that is our story.

[julinho]

I started a thread in a "gray hat forum" about this new Panda deployment.

The engagement of other members was zero.

It seems that people devoted to building mininets, link wheels, content spinning, etc seem to be unaffected by Panda.

[crobb305]

ehow lost 50% only in UK( hub pages lost more than 80% in UK), they are doing great herein US. It tells me that eHow is whitelisted here in US as both algos are same now.

How is this possible (other than the possibility that E-How might be "white-listed" here in the U.S.)? How can "quality" vary this much from country to country? E-how rules the roost in the U.S., but drops 50% in the UK? What occurs to me right off the bat is that E-how is now allowing some of their "Reference" links to be followable (as mentioned above, to .gov sites). I can't imagine there being any real variance of quality from country to country, but I wonder if their backend PageRank has been altered (as of the moment of Panda deployment internationally) due to their link changes? This could feed back to their overall score? Just a wild guess. I have seen my site take wild dips after sweeping link overhauls.

[Asia_Expat]

I've been brainstorming and examining which pages have been hit... it's becoming apparent that all of my forum directory has been unaffected... but some of the static content directories have been hit very hard indeed...

The static content is obviously a very different design. The forum is off the shelf Invision Power Board software (well optimised (white-hat))... the static content pages are my own design, very, very lightweight W3C xhtml. I'm just dumbfounded that static content has been hit, some directories appear to have been totally nuked...

I think this might be something to do with ads. I've not been following all these algo threads over the last few years because they haven't interested me, obviously I'm interested now... so I'm inexperienced in diagnosing the problem. Having said that, all of the rubbish that now outranks me is far more advert heavy than my content, so I just don't know...

Even so... what a sin, that I should want to make some money out of my content writing. What a crime I should want to make money to pay for my daughter's school trip by developing a website that my members find very useful. What a crime I should want to put up a leaderboard and a 300x250 so I can make a living online and live with my family in the far east. What a crime I should waste my time all these years developing a family friendly, decent, wholesome, clean, useful, content rich website and then allow people to advertise on it and pay my bills...

F#$% it... I'm done with white-hat. Screw it. I've had a few beers, so I'll regret this post in the morning, but hey, I turned 40 two hours ago. I don't need this, after so much work. Come on Bing, save us.

[incrediBILL]

There are still some Google sites running pre-Panda English results such as Google Israel, Google Hong Kong, Google Egypt, basically any site that doesn't primarily use the western alphabet seems to be still running the old stuff.

The bad news is that if you're still getting long tails from those sites, it probably won't last long, brace for the 3rd wave.

[crobb305]

Even so... what a sin, that I should want to make some money out of my content writing. What a crime I should want to make money to pay for my daughter's school trip by developing a website that my members find very useful. What a crime I should want to put up a leaderboard and a 300x250 so I can make a living online and live with my family in the far east. What a crime I should waste my time all these years developing a family friendly, decent, wholesome, clean, useful, content rich website and then allow people to advertise on it and pay my bills...

Well said. I'm worried about their share prices which have been dropping since February 22nd (esp when JCPenney and Overstock were in the news). I hope there are no longer-term impacts as publishers remove Adsense units. No knee-jerk reactions here, just a little worried. I don't think everyone understands what they want when they give the ambiguous ad/content ratio tidbits. No one is seeing improvement from content changes, so what's the only other resort? Remove ads.

[edited by: crobb305 at 1:46 am (utc) on Apr 13, 2011]