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.

[koan]

@synthese Yeah, seems like all those changes I did since Feb 24 to improve my pandalyzed site actually made it worse. I'm nowhere to be seen on my main keyword now (used to fluctuate around position #5-#15).

To think I was always proud to play by the rules and make my site for users because I didn't want to take any chances, I was in it for the long term.

[rooo]

I've got to admit, I'm really worried about this, and quite down about this update.

I just see really thin, duplicate, and irrelevat stuff ranking above mine (and others) good content. What is worrying is that this change has had a good test in the US so it is unlikely to get altered much now.

The number of websites that are using boiler plate product descriptions appearing above us is amazing. I've never even heard of some of these stores - at least two of them aren't even selling the item online - they are that small they have no e-commerce set up. One of them only has a single bricks and mortar store. Useful for me 100 miles away? Hardly.

I always thought that by adhering to Google guidelines, things would come good in the end and I'll be honest that I always felt a bit of smugness when I saw others who were being a little suspect, lose their rankings, especially as mine continued to creep up.

But this has hit me for six - everything has got worse than when I first started. I feel like I've been caught in the cross fire here. 4 years of genuine white hat honesty for nothing.

[crobb305]

For those of you hit by international Panda, I am curious to know if you had done any prep work (based on what you were hearing about Panda in the U.S.)?

I am still seeing my pandalized site return to near-normal positions when doing English searches on international Google. This tells me that IF the searches are accurate, and Panda is fully deployed internationally, then site changes can and will help (over time). We just have to wait for SERPS to be re-ranked in the U.S.

[edited by: crobb305 at 11:05 pm (utc) on Apr 11, 2011]

[johnhh]

rooo - stick with it - lots of people here have been in the same situation over the years and recovered.

OK - this time may be different but its too early to say.

Just waiting for googleguy to come on and say "use this email address and/or subject" and we will have a look - just like the "old days"

If Google think they have a problem we all hope they will ask for help.

Unless they are so confident they don't care - unless you have a "special relationship" - which do exist

[Freedom]

Congratulations to all the keyword domains out there. I see your $12 strategy paid off handsomely with this roll out. Now, if I could only figure out what you did to get in the top 10, nahhh, not seeing it.

Complicated...complicated...can't quite put my finger on it...

Wow, Cutt's really put his 800 PhD's to work on this one.

Hmmmm, keyword domain + English as 2nd language writing skills good not so + Amazon affiliation + Wikipedia "borrowed" pictures + Content that nevers, evers, gets tos points + Typepad borrowed design + last updated 2 years ago + ....

I still can't quite figure out what they did. If only I could copy it, like, if there was a formula or something.

[thedonald123]

I gained about 20% US traffic with first Panda update, now it looks like I lost every thing I gained and potentially much worse.


However I am now seeing sites which were listed in the top 50 losers from the first Panda update now are showing in the 1st result for some queries. I am trying to use Internet Archive Wayback machine to see what changes they have made.

Has any other US publishers been untouched from the first Panda update but destroyed by the second?

[crobb305]

Congratulations to all the keyword domains out there.

I thought I had read a comment from Matt Cutts about keyword-domains getting less weight (either with Panda or upcoming updates), so we should start to see less of an influence.

[supercyberbob]

Don't make changes to your site just cause Google suggested it.

There are way too many reports (again) of nonsense ranking after this update.

Launch 10,000 domains and scrape eHow. Google wants spam in the serps, give it spam in the serps.

[Swanson]

Ha ha what a classic update!

I have several branded sites with all unique content - thousands of pages - some down 80%.

I have three thousand keyword domains with scraped or data feed content - all (and I mean all) up 200% on average.

Goes to show you need plan B.

[Swanson]

supercyberbob, amen to that - been doing it as my plan B for the past year.

Works like a charm more than ever - my revenue is up huge. My quality is down huge.

Google has a bunch of engineers messing about with it - and they (although clever) don't understand anything about language etc. and an algo can't ever do it.

It is now allowed to be run by these guys making massive algo changes without having a clue about the basics of language. That is shocking but at the same time a wake up call - stop trying to please Google and start heavily manipulating it if you want to earn money from them.

[edited by: Swanson at 11:23 pm (utc) on Apr 11, 2011]

[OldIrish]

@Swanson So you're one of the people scraping content and outranking the original author for it? Congrats!

[crobb305]

I have three thousand keyword domains with scraped or data feed content - all (and I mean all) up 200% on average.

LOL. You need to be studied. Seriously, this is crazy! Scrapers win in this update, and Google is PROUD of it. I'm sure the Google engineers had a nice endorphin/adrenaline rush with they hit the "Pandalize" button this morning and the forums lit up. They love the drama.

Congratulations on your win. I hope it wasn't my content you scraped because I'll find it ;)

[edited by: crobb305 at 11:24 pm (utc) on Apr 11, 2011]

[Asia_Expat]

My heart sank this evening when I saw many of my major keywords sink down to the second, third, etc pages... however, traffic appears normal...

... then I signed out of my Google account, switched browser, cleared the cache completely, VPNd into one of my servers in order to change location... and everything was back to normal rankwise... Go figure! <shrugs/>

[Swanson]

OldIrish, no I am not.

I take datafeeds as an affiliate - given by the merchant. I scrape content that I am authorised to scrape by merchant sites to supplement my meta search price comparison sites.

When you get to my scale you don't need to do crap stuff to earn pennies.

[crobb305]

To everyone here who finds their content on auto-scraped montage pages (collections of scraped content from all over the web that form nonsense pages) and they are running Adsense: Fill out an Adsense violation report. The Adsense team will disable within 12 hours. This worked for me a few weeks ago. I am finding all scrapers with my content and doing this. It must be clear-cut for it to be successful. If it is just scraped articles that make sense when reading, then you will probably have to go the DMCA route. The type of gibberish I am talking about can have a paragraph that starts out with mortgage rates and ends with pet hygiene.

[edited by: crobb305 at 11:30 pm (utc) on Apr 11, 2011]

[Swanson]

crobb305, again - it is not scraped unauthorised.

You guys are so flipping negative and have no concept of how us bigger affiliate site work and are allowed to get content from our merchants by scraping or datafeeds.

I am not one of those bottom feeders - I was making a point about the content that I get from my merchants that is identical to their content ranks just fine.

The stuff I had written had been penalised.

And you lot should get some bloody domains and learn from people like me instead of criticising.

[Swanson]

To re-iterate - I am not scraping sites, I am scraping my merchant sites who I have affiliate deals with that can not provide a datafeed.

[crobb305]

To re-iterate - I am not scraping sites, I am scraping my merchant sites who I have affiliate deals with that can not provide a datafeed.

This is how you phrased it the first time:

"I have three thousand keyword domains with scraped or data feed content - all (and I mean all) up 200% on average."

Well you're only "reiterating" a follow-up clarification that you provided moments later. If your merchants or affiliate networks allow you to scrape their content...good for them. I don't know many merchants who allow this.

[edited by: crobb305 at 12:23 am (utc) on Apr 12, 2011]

[dataguy]

"That's mister big fat panda to you." With apologies to Dreamworks Kung Fu Panda.

^*@( &*(, Google. You've really screwed things up this time. I predict that Spring of 2011 will forever be regarded as the beginning of the end of Google.

[Swanson]

crobb305, hold on are you saying I am a youngser messing about.

Fair enough I should have clarified the "scraping" word when I mentioned it - however I was simply trying to illustrate the issues in relation to the original post. I wasn't aware at the time that this would be the thing that picked on.

crobb305, don't be high and mighty - in my past life I did SEO for 500 clients for ten years.

I decided that the best SEOs do it for themselves and set up my own business with own sites and I created branded sites and keyword rich domains - I get 2 million visitors to my sites every month, and now it will probably be more than 4 million.

So fair enough call me an SEO kiddie but I am nearly 40 years old and I would love to be a teenager out of college and have this amount of traffic.

[Shatner]

>>>> @thedonald124 said: I am now seeing sites which were listed in the top 50 losers from the first Panda update now are showing in the 1st result for some queries.


As one of those 50 sites I can tell you we have seen no change.

Out of curiosity, are the ones you're seeing back at the top more big brand name sites like Demand Media, etc. ?

[Swanson]

crobb305, because you don't know any merchant that allow this shows that you don't know what happens when you get lots of traffic and shows how ignorant you are because of what you haven't been exposed to.

I work in competitive areas such as travel and finance - for example most travel agents allow you to scrape their site and give you a special url to do that.

But you wouldn't know that because you are small time and think that is how it works for everyone and judge accordingly without knowing. I would expect 11+ years you would have got an idea.

[crobb305]

I decided that the best SEOs do it for themselves and set up my own business with own sites and I created branded sites and keyword rich domains - I get 2 million visitors to my sites every month, and now it will probably be more than 4 million.

Yep. :)

[edited by: crobb305 at 12:33 am (utc) on Apr 12, 2011]

[Reno]

I keep vacillating between anger and self-pity, and I don't see much value in either.

Why? Because I've been on the web since '95, have played by the rules, had value in my pages, and was crushed.

When I get my focus back, I may very well abandon any remaining sense of morality, as I feel like a real chump for not grabbing the candy while I was in the store.

Unless something happens very soon to change my opinion, Google no longer deserves respect. And for every site they knock down, we'll come back with 2 more. We'll build 'em quick & dirty.

It's all about survival now ~ the war is on.

........................

[Swanson]

crobb305, I noted you edited your post and removed "SEO kiddie".

At least thats something.

And about it not lasting - that is the point I was trying to make. I was not trying to take these datafeeds and make it work - I was filling out the domains that I had bought.

I have spent a small fortune in my branded sites with content etc.

And that is what I was saying - have 2 plans, maybe one of them pays off.

I am surprised that the crap plan is currently paying off.

That is all.

[edited by: Swanson at 11:57 pm (utc) on Apr 11, 2011]

[dataguy]

When I get my focus back, I may very well abandon any remaining sense of morality, as I feel like a real chump for not grabbing the candy while I was in the store.

Unless something happens very soon to change my opinion, Google no longer deserves respect. And for every site they knock down, we'll come back with 2 more. We'll build 'em quick & dirty.

It's all about survival now ~ the war is on.

Agree, exactly. Of my own sites, I see quality being penalized and low-quality being rewarded. This has done nothing to convince me that Google rewards quality. If only I had realized this sooner.

[crobb305]

Edited out my useless statement...

[edited by: crobb305 at 12:24 am (utc) on Apr 12, 2011]

[OldIrish]

@Reno Yep, I'm going out with guns blazing as well. I've never worn the black hat, but at this point why not. I've got 1,200 domain names, going to start setting up some cross linking schemes straight away. If quality content and pure white hat SEO get's me a 50% traffic loss, then let's see what gaming the system will bring.

[Swanson]

crobb305, are you serious - are you just trying to be nasty to make a point.

How can I steal your backlinks when I am scraping a travel agent site for the holiday description for my site.

Do you understand what I mean when I say scraping?

I am not scraping content from other sites - I am scraping merchant sites such as major travel agents or dynamic packing sites where I am an affiliate to supplement our comparison engine.

How could that steal your backlinks?

Are you a child?

[Leosghost]

Swanson, crobb305..guys ..keep it civil ..Huh..
if the mods and admins have to come in and do loads of work editing, they may just shut the thread and then lots of you would lose out on info as to what the others are seeing.