Analyze Panda Losers That Don't Fit The Mold

[Shatner]

So we've had two iterations of Panda now, and with each iteration has come a publish list of the biggest losers. We all know, if we're honest, that a lot of the losers on those lists deserved to lose and lost for obvious reasons.

The point of this thread is to pick out the sites from those lists which DO NOT fit that mold, sites which it's not obvious why they lost, and figure out why they were hit.

In doing so, maybe we'll understand why Panda has hit so many here who don't seem to deserve it either. Here's the list of sites to discuss, I suggest we take them one at a time and simply go down the list one at a time and each list reasons we think each site might have been Pandalized. Once we think we've come up for an explanation for that site, we check it off and move on to the next one:

prnewswire.com
blogcritics.org
cinemablend.com
digitaltrends.com
technorati.com
daniweb.com
popcrunch.com
techradar.com
reghardware.com
pcadvisor.co.uk
techwatch.co.uk
just-food.com
computerweekly.com

[ianbell330]

He mentions it in the video here too (along with how traffic dropped after the redesign)

[paidcontent.org...]

A lot of legit sites were hit and just not coming forward.

[Shatner]

Maybe it's about time they did come forward, because right now the public message is that Google is only hurting the bad guys.

There's probably a lot of fear that if you do come forward, you'll be labeled a bad guy too, even if you're not.

Even just examining the sites discussed in this thread, which are pretty clearly all NOT bad guys, a lot of people's reaction when we started it was to dismiss them all as evil content farms, even though they're not.

[Nano]

@incrediBILL - You're looking at the Google News. That will disappear soon..

Also, an update.. This thread here actually ranks higher than DigitalTrends when searching for "Uncharted 3 wants you to love its multiplayer modes" (A digitaltrend article)

Laughed when I saw that...

[google.com...]

This thread is #19

[edited by: Nano at 10:47 pm (utc) on Apr 19, 2011]

[ianbell330]

@Nano - Nice! Glad to see our PR7 hard at work ;)

[walkman]

@Nano - Nice! Glad to see our PR7 hard at work wink

Just buy some adwords to get your "low quality site" at #1 :)

[graeme_p]

How on earth can a small operation afford to pay lawyers to go after that many scrapers probably not even located in the US?

You do not need to afford to pay lawyers, you just need to send Google 350 DMCA notices. In fact you only need bother with DMCA notices to cover the site that might out-rank you.

[incrediBILL]

Here's a spot on read from SEOMoz:
[seomoz.org...]

[jecasc]

Here's a spot on read from SEOMoz:
[seomoz.org...]

So it comes down to this:
- Don't give away content.
- Handle copyright infringement yourself and don't wait until Google figures things out for you.

[wheel]

Spot on? He's talking about the results being counter to the stated goal of search quality and attribution.

If there are 10 copies of an article on the web, why would a reader or Google care which one they serve first? They don't care. See the serps for emperical evidence of this.

If someone's outranking you in Google, the solution has been apparent for 10 years. Do better onpage and offpage optimization. Remove the 'someone else is ranking for my content' from the complaint and you'll see that there is nothing new here. Ranking above you on a search term with unique content or with your content, there's no difference. The community is fired up about 'who published first' as being some new ranking signal that needs to be factored. I published first, so that increases my rankings.

Newsflash: First to publish does not affect your rankings. It didn't before, and it doesn't now. The reason you rank below other copies of your content has nothing to do with it being the same content - it's simply that Google sees another site as being a better result. Again, this isn't new, neither is the solution.

If someone's outranking you for your content, protect your content. If you think syndicating your content is a good idea, go nuts. Just don't expect Google to care about your business model.

[incrediBILL]

Yup. Spot on. The article stated basically the same points I was posting above, same thing you're stating as well. Thanks for driving the point home.

If someone's outranking you in Google, the solution has been apparent for 10 years. Do better onpage and offpage optimization.

Sorry, that's the game changer here. A lot of sites currently in Panda penalties have done better SEO than the rest for 10 years, now it's upside down with many weaker sites suddenly taking home the prize.

[wheel]

The huffington post outranking wonderhowto.com for identical content on the same search query?

Life is working as it should if you ask me.

I've never heard of wonderhowto.com, but when I go there, it doesn't scream high quality. not with netflix popups and diaper banner ads. COnversely, everyone's heard of the huffington post. And their front page had a news story shoved in my face, not an ad.

I admittedly haven't followed the technical intricacies of panda, but it sure looks like a lot of hysteria. A reminder of the definition of spam seems like a good idea -sites positioned above mine.

Either the other sites have better SEO, or the 'better' SEO'ed sites got penalized. If they got penalized, well, I guess they weren't doing 'better seo for 10 years'. I bet there's a good possiblity there was too much SEO going on. SEOMoz is a clear leader in the SEO industry, it doesn't surprise me that they may have overoptimzized or overmonetized a site, pushing the line just a wee bit to far. I'm speculating, but how far can that be from the truth?

I haven't done this work myself - but I'd bet that if one looks at the backlinks of huffingtonpost you're going to see backlinks from some real hardcore authority sites. And I bet if you look at the backlinks of a site run by an SEO forerunner, that you're going to find a pile of backlinks that were perhaps 'encouraged' a bit more. Not saying this is the result of backlinks - but the same principle applies to other things like ad space and white space, and all the other attributes Google. The line got shifted and I speculate it's hitting people that were on the edge of where the line was before.

Frankly, until and if someone finally figures out some technical answer to this, I think the best and fastest way to start digging out of this is to return to basic SEO onpage and offpage optimization. Not current strategies, *basic* strategies.

[wheel]

And we're probably going off topic, so let me summarize:

In doing so, maybe we'll understand why Panda has hit so many here who don't seem to deserve it either.

1) Quit thinking the site 'doesn't seem to deserve it'. It probably did.
2) back to basics. While you're trying to figure out how much whitespace might be an issue, someone else is building trophy backlinks.

[rlange]

wheel wrote:
The huffington post outranking wonderhowto.com for identical content on the same search query?

That's relatively minor, in my opinion. What you're ignoring are the other sites that are ranking higher than wonderhowto.com.

I'd, in all seriousness, like to see your opinion about the sites that the article classifies as scrapers compared to wonderhowto.com. What are those sites doing better than wonderhowto.com? Or, if negativity is your thing, what is wonderhowto.com doing worse than those sites classified as scrapers?

--
Ryan

[indyank]

i think there are a lot of issues with that site.Duplicate content is one and panda appears to be very severe on internal links.This particular site has many related links on each page.This has been reported to be another big panda factor, though google isn't justified in penalizing sites that have internal links. But it is their rules and they will keep changing it for ever.

PANDA = ALGORITHMIC PENALTY.

Google tries to not link the term "Penalty" to Panda for reasons of their own.

[indyank]

Wheel is right.I would bet more on off site optimization than on site, as panda has just killed the later folks.

But Google will never do a Panda on off site optimization and authority links can trump anything.

that is the biggest differentiator of sites like Huff. Post and others.

if you can get authority links, you can get social references as they both are related.

[edited by: indyank at 3:24 pm (utc) on Apr 20, 2011]

[crobb305]

It's definitely good to make a mental note of pages that you see ranking well (probably because it's a major brand) but seem to have all the characteristics we've mentioned here. For instance, I wanted to look up information about the last time Easter occurred as late as it does this year. The top result is a site that gained after Panda (according to Alexa). The page is LOADED with ads, enormous whitespace, the article text is one small column down the middle with ads on each side and scrolling whitepace at the bottom. It's Time.com. If you want to see, just search for "time latest Easter". This site has everything we've mentioned here, including slow load time and a top navigation.

Oh, and it's also an article written in 1943. I wonder how many people will read this article and think it applies to this Easter?

I know Shatner wants to stay focused, so I don't mean to jump off track, but I think it's a good idea to make a mental note of pages that rank well when you are doing your normal/everyday searches. I know I tend to forget about SEO when I am just doing my normal searches, but today it occurred to me that this site "fits the mold" in my opinion. BUT, it's a major brand. Just a thought...

[edited by: crobb305 at 3:52 pm (utc) on Apr 20, 2011]

[wheel]

That's relatively minor, in my opinion. What you're ignoring are the other sites that are ranking higher than wonderhowto.com.

I'd, in all seriousness, like to see your opinion about the sites that the article classifies as scrapers compared to wonderhowto.com. What are those sites doing better than wonderhowto.com? Or, if negativity is your thing, what is wonderhowto.com doing worse than those sites classified as scrapers?

If you're going to sit there and analyze exceptions and technicalities, I'm not your guy. I still use Yahoo to check backlinks because I haven't quite got around to signing up for something decent. My backlink development starts with 'who can I call'.

I wrote a whole pile of stuff then retracted it - I won't be a part of trashing someone's site. But here's the outline. Go have a look at the site and look at:
- the ads
- the content
- the backlinks.

You don't need an algo to see the hand of an SEO overlord at work on that site.

[indyank]

The site has low quality articles. 20 snacks to make you sleepy? That's clearly the product of someone sitting in a cube with a formula driven article to write. Don't pass that crap off to me as something I'm going to read.

wheel, that is exactly what the author is trying to say.

Panda is Judging an entire site based on some "undefined low quality" articles.

I haven't gone through their articles and I neither know the percentage of HQ content nor to distinguish the HQC wearing Google's glasses.

But the author is calling how the "site wide implications" of panda could be evil.

What is crap to you may not be crap to others or for the bots.There are several how to sites with all kinds of "how tos" and you will find many of them to be crap.

BUT, if panda had the same site wide effect on all sites without discrimination, it is is the Huff Post (which is syndicating such content), ehow, wikihow, youtube and the likes that should have been killed.

I agree with the ads and the backlinks part but not the "content" as panda had damaged this more than anything else.

[edited by: indyank at 4:19 pm (utc) on Apr 20, 2011]

[walkman]

I'd, in all seriousness, like to see your opinion about the sites that the article classifies as scrapers compared to wonderhowto.com. What are those sites doing better than wonderhowto.com? Or, if negativity is your thing, what is wonderhowto.com doing worse than those sites classified as scrapers?

No, it's more like a (false) feeling of superiority. It happens sometimes when a site doesn't get hit their owners feel the need to let everyone else know how other sites suck. Life is long, I wish we could block certain users that weren't hugged as children, but we'll manage.

[rlange]

Again, wheel, all you're doing is bashing an alleged victim. That's not at all constructive.

For God's sake, this [gbooza.com] is one of the pages that ranked higher than wonderhowto.com for the particular article. The entire gbooza.com site is infinitely worse in every respect: ads everywhere, extremely slow load times; it's downright broken.

Can you find any reason why that site should rank above wonderhowto.com? Do you expect them to have amazingly high quality backlinks?

No. There's definitely something wrong with the Panda update. As I've said elsewhere, I doubt it's extremely widespread, but it exists.

--
Ryan

[wheel]

BUT, if panda had the same site wide effect on all sites without discrimination, it is is the Huff Post (which is syndicating such content), ehow, wikihow, youtube and the likes that should have been killed.

Well, there you go. I 100% disagree.

The same content, the same search term, I'll take the huffington post every time over the other site.

I don't see anything wrong with the demand that the entire site should be top quality. That's a nice shirt you're wearing, but holy cow, the 80's called and they want their pants back. You know what you've got? not a nice shirt - you've got a terrible outfit.

Anyway, I don't know what we're arguing about here. It seems like you're saying something doesn't stink that bad, and I'm saying yeah, well if it stinks at all there's a problem. Quit worrying about who stinks more, and clean up the act completely.

[indyank]

I don't find the Huff. Post outfit to be brilliant.But it is just me and I don't go by brand names.

I felt like scrolling down for ever to read a few lines on what Eric is getting for his contribution.

[huffingtonpost.com...]

[Leosghost]

The guy writing at SEOmoz about his wonderhowto.com kept say that they "curate" and "curated"..and that they "look for content",
to me that sounds like "we use other folks stuff that we find" ( scrape from multiple sources )..that they may contact a few of the original authors of what the find ..but certainly not all ( ie scrape without permission ) and then they syndicate the total of what they have respun ..onwards to HuffPo etc ..and now he is whining ..
He isn't the originator of the stuff anyway he's just the repackager of "found"..
Why shouldn't Huffpo out rank him for it.

Tend to agree with wheel here ..a lot of what was on the original list does fit the mold exactly ..just the OP doesn't seem to see that ( or has badly understood what the mold is,or might be and won't allow any disagreement with that flawed definition ) and many ( but not all ) others just want to bash Google and are doing so in every thread here.

Constructive debate is not about agreeing with everything the OP on any thread says is the case..and seeing posters be told "that isn't the point of the thread" .."go start another one"..that isn't the way it has ever been done / worked here in the past.:(

Focused is one thing ..imposing a point of view is another entirely..which is why most of us who haven't had a problem with panda are now staying out of a lot of threads here ..the way this is going is IMO not doing WebmasterWorld any good at all...

Long time posters, experienced webmasters who have helped out here for years, find they get beat on by people who only joined post panda,( and have only posted about panda and how it has hit them, and how terrible Google is for launching panda, or who posted less than a 100 times in many years and hardly ever to help ).. isn't the way to deal with panda ..nor keep this forum alive and interesting ..and demanding "proof" of everything ? ..

Sometimes its so obvious it just takes years to understand/explain ..you either "grok it" or you don't, and life is too short to try to explain the why to someone who is asking the wrong questions anyway.

Some people like incrediBILL, to name just one get paid for explaining, and passing on what they know ..( like at pubcon, as he has said )..why would they give it away in an open thread here ,to someone who joined post panda looking for a quick fix to what was probably their own fault for being complacent as long as the adsense money rolled in..

The atmosphere has changed here post panda..more tense ..less welcoming ..less debate ..loads more griping ..and some good people are staying quiet ..rather than get beat on, as TMS said just the other day.

[crobb305]

Long time posters, experienced webmasters who have helped out here for years, find they get beat on by people who only joined post panda

Very true. Inexperience will often choose to ignore experience. They will demand that the experienced "back up their claims," while the experienced have been doing just that for years and years. It comes down to the fact that the inexperienced need to do their homework, and locate the previous works of the experienced (in this forum and elsewhere). It's like demanding that your college professor "back up their claims," but in reality, the burden is on the student to delve into the literature and find the contributions of that professor throughout his/her career. The experienced can't keep repeating themselves over and over and over.

Not singling anyone out here (can't think of anyone in particular and I haven't read every post in this thread as of yet), but this has been the general mood for over a month in some of our other threads.

[falsepositive]

From an admitted inexperienced SEOer, I, for one, would be highly interested in what the experienced folks have to say. I hope the mood does not discourage you from sharing your ideas. Understandably, we're all looking for answers and they can't come to us soon enough.

[wheel]

.and now he is whining ..

I don't think they're whining. They post about this stuff for a living.

In fact, pick any signal or SEO attribute you want. Then go measure it on the article and site for 20 foods that make you sleepy, with the very article that iBill linked to. Same folks. Not the same stuff though.

[Leosghost]

Yep ..one of his other sites is a multi source scraper ..who syndicates onward the end result "site" "content" of what they do/make with what they scrape ..his site now gets out ranked by the guys he syndicates to ..and he posts about how G has it wrong ..and makes a living doing it ..

So, like bank robbers writing about getting paid for books they write about the money they took from banks complaining that the bookshops that have their books in the windows are getting more publicity about the books than the bankrobbers are ..

Sounds to me like G in his case has got it nearly right ..now if they could make his scraper site disappear eventually and then HuffPo would no longer be fed it to syndicate ..the original authors of what he "curates" might start getting the credit and the traffic that they should ..

and yes ..the analysis of the site on other attributes IMO too, makes his wonderhowto.com site fit exactly the "mold" of "surplus to requirements in quality serps"..

aside ..amazes me how SEO bloggers all blog about the incredibly obvious ..and all as if they alone discovered it ..and all link to others or cite others blogging about the same things..and none of them seem to really get "it"..but they each declare the others to be also "experts" just like they themselves "are" ..reminds me of ponzi..or witch doctors ..or mutual admiration so^^^^cams..designed to suck in the naive ready to pay for "expert advice"

[Shatner]

Well thread seems completely off the rails now.

It was useful while it lasted.

I'm not sure why people think it's ok for scrapers to rank above original content sources. That stance just doesn't make sense to me.

Clearly what's happening to this site, and all of these sites, is not right.

[johnhh]

Well thread seems completely off the rails now.

Agree - until some new data comes available it is just going to focus on posts rather than investigating sites that have been identified as "losers" ( or alleged losers - doug ) and I don't think anyone here has that data.

[wheel]

I'm not sure why people think it's ok for scrapers to rank above original content sources. That stance just doesn't make sense to me.

Nobody said it was wrong or right. What we said was that nobody CARES. Particularly Google. that's why you're seeing these kind of rankings.

There's a difference. In one world, you get to be 'right'. In the other world, Google could give a rats butt if you live or die. Which world are you living in?