PANDA International - Data on Winners & Losers

[tedster]

This afternoon the SearchMetrics blog released their data on the international wave of the Panda Update - affecting English Language search. The article includes data for 100 losers and 20 winners, along with some dramatic graphs.

The data was collated between the 5th & 12th of April 2011 and we can definitely confirm that the update has hit the UK – in a big way.

Surprising is that ehow.co.uk and ehow.com has lost more than 50% in visibility and the alarm bells are probably going off at Qype.co.uk who’ve lost a whopping 96%! A lot of price comparison sites like ciao.co.uk (in a lawsuite with Google) and dooyoo.co.uk also lost nearly 90% of visibility. [blog.searchmetrics.com...]

This thread is for discussing the data - if you wish to share editorial opinion, positive or critical, please post in our other thread: Google PANDA rolls out WorldWide [webmasterworld.com]

[potentialgeek]

Price comparison sites were long overdue for devaluation, but the numbers are still quite staggering.

[edited by: potentialgeek at 2:16 am (utc) on Apr 13, 2011]

[tedster]

There also is evidence that a second layer of changes rolled through the google.com results, too. I'm working to get some hard data on that, too - but if anyone has something about google.com changes it would be welcome here.

[potentialgeek]

> There also is evidence that a second layer of changes rolled through the google.com results, too.

Yeah, I think so, too. My main site got hit at the same time yesterday for US and non-US traffic.

[Whitey]

Standouts to me are as expected - price comparison, affiliates and content farms.

[potentialgeek]

Did the US price comparison sites get hit when Panda 1.0 first rolled out?

[realmaverick]

*picks jaw up from flaw*

I've had dealings in the past with several of the owners of some of the big droppers. I cannot even fathom losing 90%+ of my traffic.

It's sad though, how these changes have hit quite so hard. I imagine many peoples lives are gonna be destroyed.

[realmaverick]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether this update wasn't partially to make a big bold statement to webmasters, letting us know exactly who's in charge.

[Leosghost]

I took a quick look at the article earlier this evening ..does anyone know where the list of the keywords they used is ..or did I miss it ..or have they not released it ?..IMO the data is not data as such without it ..we cannot verify their methodology and as such have to take their findings on trust ..and statistics can be interpreted in many ways ..and can show something and also it's contraire ( opposite ) and all positions in between.

I see less price comparison sites ..but then I have trained myself to be blind to /avoid them ( even though I actually have a small one ..mine didn't get hit ..yes ..pot , kettle etc.. I know ;-)..like adsense ;-)

[edited by: Leosghost at 3:09 am (utc) on Apr 13, 2011]

[dazzlindonna]

What confused me was seeing ehow in that loser list. What? You mean, all those ehow listings in the serps is a reduction? How is that even possible? Color me confused.

[tedster]

Their technology depends on maintaining a database of many 100,000's of high value keywords - something they do as an ongoing part of their core business. They are not publishing their full and proprietary list.

[potentialgeek]

Here are some of the more well-known sites besides those already mentioned that the metrics firm says got demoted:

about.com -28.58%

brothersoft.com -69.37%

answers.com -54.17%

hubpages.com -85.72%

mahalo.com -81.05%

techradar.com -57.41%

wisegeek.com -74.06%

shopping.com -74.16%

buzzle.com -84.97%

squidoo.com -35.89%

Article sites were a direct hit:

associatedcontent.com -94.93%

ezinearticles.com -93.69%

suite101.com -95.39%

articlesbase.com -88.68%

ehow.com -53.46%

[brinked]

what puzzles me is that most of these sites strive on high quality unique content. I think all of them make sure that any submitted article is 100% unique. So how is google deciding that these articles are not high quality? They are unique, but what makes google determine they are not up to a specific standard? Especially if these articles are being outranked by low quality, non article related sites. Just doesn't make any sense.

[tedster]

It's a baby algorithm and hasn't learned to speak very well yet ;)

[realmaverick]

I still think some have been manually hit for no reason other than to cause a stink and show us children who are in charge :op

[Dan01]

I noticed that YouTube and Blogger were among the big winners. Both Google properties. The good news is that users can use both sites to make money.

Wordpress.com was a big winner too.

[OldIrish]

Google is macro-managing their search results for improved profit margins [i.e. more ad clicks], that's it. They probably have a certain profit percentage increase quota to fulfill. Want proof, just look at the search results. Quality? Yeah sure...

[indyank]

brinked, you are an amazing exception to only see "high quality", "originality" and "uniqueness" in those sites.

Their technology depends on maintaining a database of many 100,000's of high value keywords

Tedster, what you say is obvious in some sites like brothersoft that potentialgeek has listed.But there are several others like softonic.com which doesn't seem to have been affected.

But I am not sure about the correctness of this report compared to the sistrix list. Sistrix report was far better than this one.

[indyank]

What is amazing is the spammers paradise - blogspot.com seen as good quality by this algo.

Exceptional.

[tedster]

There is a comment on Google's blog that reinforces the idea of further changes for google.com

In addition, this change also goes deeper into the "long tail" of low-quality websites to return higher-quality results where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before. The impact of these new signals is smaller in scope than the original change: about 2% of U.S. queries are affected by a reasonable amount, compared with almost 12% of U.S. queries for the original change.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

@indyank - you wrote "But I am not sure about the correctness of this report compared to the sistrix list. Sistrix report was far better than this one." As far as I know, Sistrix hasn't released any data for this new update. Have you seen it somewhere?

[onepointone]

Penalize
And
Never
Divulge
Answers

[thedonald123]

There also is evidence that a second layer of changes rolled through the google.com results, too.

My website (6 years old, established website, 10,000 pages, no new changes, slowly growing every month) had an 10% increase in traffic on Feb 24. from Google.com and an additional 10% increase gradually throughout March and through yesterday. Yesterday I lost about 10% of my total traffic from Google.com. This is US traffic.

I don't know how to read it. It looks like some of the websites who were hit a little, say -10 back in February have come back to even better then they were originally ...

Frankly it's too painful to analyze right now. I'm not even in the top 100 for widgets, and for blue widgets, pink widgets etc. I was really enjoying the number 1 spot for the month that I had it, now I'm back all the way to number 10 or 15, I haven't been that far back in years. Thank goodness for the long tail.

Has anybody else seen anything like this?

I spent the day moving my ad units down below the fold, ensuring the content is above the fold on all pages.

I can't improve the content it is already clean, unique quality content. All of it UGC but it's all heavily proofed and edited, All comments are moderated and cleaned before being posted.

[indyank]

Tedster, I haven't seen one for this update but I am waiting for their report.I was more convinced with the correctness of their report..

[indyank]

thedonald123, I noticed that sites using adsense are more easilypicked out by this algo than those using other ad networks.In-fact i doubt whther this algo considers ads from other networks at all.one reason could be that they know to easily identify a google ad than others.

"Google Adsense" are a factor in this algo. I have removed adsense in one of the sites and it did improve.

[koan]

but if anyone has something about google.com changes it would be welcome here

My one web site affected by Panda (initially -40% or so traffic from Google US) seems to have lost an additional -10% this week with Google US, more so with Google worldwide in english. All effort in the past month to fix whatever issues I might have (mainly, blocking thin sections of site with robots.txt and removing links to it, some DMCAs, fixed duplicate titles as suggested in GWT, etc) had obviously no effect. The site is (was) unfortunately my main earner, with 99.9% original content (mostly UGC, but also includes articles) and completely white hat.

[Dan01]

Google is macro-managing their search results for improved profit margins [i.e. more ad clicks], that's it. They probably have a certain profit percentage increase quota to fulfill. Want proof, just look at the search results. Quality? Yeah sure...

Interesting comment. When eBay went public (or any company for that matter), profits became king. It was all about the profits. Then they bought Paypal, and that was a great investment. The company thrived. But the investors needed more. Every year, they need more. So what did eBay do? Raise their fees. Many sellers moved on to other sites over time. And then eBay profits leveled out.

Going corporate does change things.

[potentialgeek]

Are we calling the new Panda update for the US, Panda 2.0? I seem to have survived 1.0 but not 2.0. Google announcing the Panda International but not US Panda 2.0 even though it seems to have been launched at the same time brought confusion.

> "Google Adsense" are a factor in this algo. I have removed adsense in one of the sites and it did improve.

Some of my sites that just got hit have Adsense, but my main one that got hit the worst doesn't have any Adsense.

However, if I am not mistaken, didn't somebody at Google say or suggest the number of ads per page can influence the search ranking?

Weeks ago there was comparison between the sites that were hit badly, and I seem to recall the suggestion the one hit the worst had ad location issues (users easily misled because the ad placement was at the top, on the left, where you'd hope to see nav links).

I wish we could have a thread on changes to sites which were hit specifically about ads: the total number and their placement.

[CainIV]

I still don't understand how Google evaluates quality overall.

For many searches, especially long tail searches, many of those websites did offer the best results.

Some people really do search 'how to change a tire'.

And some people are really looking for a 5 step process.

Just not understanding the logic behind the change in some cases

[brotherhood of LAN]

IMO the data is not data as such without it

I'd have to agree, and yes they probably won't be keen to release their raw data.

Seeing the national lottery have an "OPI" of 292053 from 209357 makes me wonder whether the national lottery is suddenly one of the most important benefactors of the algo change, they've expanded beyond providing a national lottery or whether the test involved lots of lottery keywords

[indyank]

Some of my sites that just got hit have Adsense, but my main one that got hit the worst doesn't have any Adsense.

I am saying adsense is one among several other factors.If you site with no adsense had been hit, it could be the other reasons.But a site with adsense ads at inappropriate positions do get hit. Since i wasn't sure of where to position them, i removed them completely and it worked.

Yes, both number and position of adsense ads do attract pandsa.But they are not the only ones and for sites who got affected by this, it will help if you could remove them or position them correctly.I felt removing them was better.

But i haven't experienced this problem with other ad networks, as the site does use ads from buysellads network and it wasn't affected.