My attempt to Recover from Panda

[Ummon]

Hi all.

In full disclosure I am adult webmaster. Had two profitable sites get hit. I haven't recovered nearly enough but I am documenting what I have found

First site: been running for 5 years very popular among those people enjoying this umm... activity. 100% unique, runs reviews, contests as well as a one stop for updates in the industry. It is heavy with affiliate links which I am becoming convinced is why it got hit in Farmer.

Solution: I found some java script code to encrypt the links. Google sees a random string being passed in the on click even. Short of being able to execute it it won't see the link.

Result: Tested it on the home page on the text links. Saw some very nominal recovery (could be noise). Began the first posting under this method today and will test for a couple of more days to make sure everything is fine with the click though. Then roll it out slowly to the rest of the site.

Site #2. Niche site has been 1-3 in its main keyword (competitive one) for 3 to 4 years. New posts every day, 100% unique written by me. Lost 60% of its traffic when panda rolled out. For its main keyword it dropped from position 2 to around the 5th page.

Solution: did an analysis of the pages hardest hit. One I thought was interesting I did a parody on the made for tv commercials. Where "widget" was mentioned multiple times in almost all the paragraphs. More interesting I was not trying to sell said "widget" (It appeared in the picture set). So apparently Panda doesn't enjoy sarcasm, any human reader would have thought it was funny. In any case I rewrote the page and it recovered OK

Second page: admittedly thin content. added one paragraph. It recovered.

A number of my pages had duplicate titles and metatags that got hit. I have been cleaning them up as I go (or deleting them). so far no change but Google has not yet seen them (as confirmed in the webmaster tools).

Also no changes for the main keyword. If anything it has gotten worse. I will probably also try the link encryption since I am convinced it has something to do with affiliate links

Anyone else have any ideas or findings they want to share?

[helpnow]

@ lty83 - If you are not getting credit from google for the content, it is as good as not yours anymore. Take every sentence of content, sentence by sentence, and search them in quotes at google. If you come up #1, its yours. If you are not #1, its not yours, and you need to change it. Some content may have been scraped in snippets, so you may find, for example, that the first 4 sentences are lost, but the rest of the article is still "yours". So, you just need to change the first 4 sentences, and the rest is OK to leave as you are getting credit for it. Bloody brutal process, but there is no fail-safe substitute. I don't believe in using WMT data, as my experience has been that it is FUD and incomplete and deliberately misleading and out-of-date. The data in WMT simply does not match up to the SERPs, in my experience - your experience may differ. So depending on WMT data to find pages that dropped the most is a red herring in my opinion. Go to the source - go to the actual content, and check it.

[helpnow]

P.S. The one WMT data that is ok is HTML suggestions. If you have any issues there, FIX THEM FIRST! That is real-time data and a 1:1 relationship to reality. Google has no reason to engage in FUD in those stats.

[lty83]

@helpnow - this is insane..... i'm 100% positive that my content is unique - i have a system in place that VERIFIES this... it would be unrealistic to do this as i literally have thousands of articles across all my sites

if this is the only way i'm screwd

[onepointone]

If g can't or won't care about who put up the original article, I don't think rewriting content will matter over time.

Scraper A somehow grabs your content. Scrapers B, C, D copy Scraper A. (maybe giving them backlinks too). Scrapers E,F,G,H copy them, etc.

[Leosghost]

i'm 100% positive that my content is unique - i have a system in place that VERIFIES this

The only way to be 100% certain is to create it yourself, all these people saying "I pay quality writers X", cannot know if what they are getting is original. Even experts, can and do sell plagiarised , spun, retranslated, other peoples content to any webmaster who doesn't know enough about the subject to catch them out.

And all those who say "But I can't write it all myself , I'd be out of business" ..and all the "I have 100K pages, I can't revise all of them" ..almost certainly didnt write them all themselves ..and probably have thousands of pages, on subjects that they know absolutely nothing about !.

Some one said, in a thread a while back, that you don't have to be an expert guitar player to write a site about guitar playing ..

Sorry to burst the bubble of many here..but .. yes you do !..

Other wise, it will be uninformed junk, whose sole function is to pull clicks to ads, around "content", to get an income for the site, and its owner, on subjects that the site doesn't know what it is talking about...

In exactly the same way you cant write sites on PHP coding if you can't do it, or watercolour painting if you cant paint, or French literature if you can't read French .

If your "content" is not about what you know, what you are an expert on , what you have a unique voice and insight on.

Then maybe your business ..which is in reality then just "content farming to display ads" ..is one that should not exist..and Google and the internet will be better off when it has gone.

And the advertisers money that was driving it, will be better spent, and some of their money will be available for creating real jobs, and not just easy income lifestyles for parasitic fake expert site owners.

Looking for recovery is one thing, if the site merits it ..but very very many of the "doesn't fit the mold list" did merit the hit from panda ..and some sites never should have existed in the first place ..like those complaining about being hit ..who are actually using other peoples work without permission..

It was only a matter of time before they got hit, should have happened sooner, and some got so far away from the good sites they had once been, ( EFV ) that they got cleaned out along with the trash. Others got hit because people let the junk accumulate in the corners , and the new algo thought they were all junk.

The latter are probably worth saving , and they are the ones whose owners appear to be working on fixing,and are genuinely posting positively about the experience, because they actually have a good solid core that merely needs a brush up, fix up, and some stuff clearing out.

The others who are just dissing the new algo, and posting about layoffs, and calling for the fall of Google, or how Matt is so terrible for not giving warning ..they are the ones who probably can't fix any thing up, because the whole ethos of their site(s) was only about attracting traffic to sites that were not "quality" in anyones book or definition ,( even in the eyes of their protesting owners if they told the real hard truth, keyword farms, designed to rank well in serps but not to inform , just to be "adsense click stations"..and if adsense had never existed the owners would have never made the sites ) ..fake information palaces made from papier maché, and built on sand , and Panda has just washed over them and they are dissolving and drifting away.

And being built on sand there is nothing their owners can do except try to get sympathy from those who built on rock, and made something solid and who only need to fix some of the cement work and clear some junk that got left around the edges,maybe those who built quick, shoddy, junk with stolen materials, will get some misguided sympathy from those who can recover with a little work, as they blame Google ..but do scrapers really deserve sympathy ?..

IMO ..no , not at all...nor do content thieves, not ever..

[walkman]

The others who are just dissing the new algo, and posting about layoffs, and calling for the fall of Google, or how Matt is so terrible for not giving warning ..they are the ones who probablycan't fix any thing up, because the whole ethos of their site(s) was only about attracting traffic to sites that were not "quality" in anyones book or definition ,( even in the eyes of their protesting owners if they told the real hard truth, keyword farms, designed to rank well in serps but not to inform , just to be "adsense click stations"..and if adsense had never existed the owners would have never made the sites ) ..fake information palaces made from papier maché, and built on sand , and Panda has just washed over them and they are dissolving and drifting away.

Good thing you said probably. My extra pages were deleted on February 25th, a day after panda and more no-indexed as weeks passed by. And I have added way more content than those ranking.
My site is useful
Serves a purpose
Has been online for 10+ years, even before Google.
It's updated every single day, dozens of times a day.
People can fix and complain, in fact they can complain while improving the site.

Any more generalizations?

[maximillianos]

In my niche the scrapers got all the sympathy. Two of the biggest offenders now outrank a number if us that have never scraped or copied a page a day in our lives.

Sad. But what can we do. I've filed dmcas before. Spent weeks compiling detailed reports citing over 6000 exact copied pages. All copied within a 24 hour window and republished that same day on the offending site. 8 years worth of content.

Google said sorry the offender denies wrong doing. You are on your own to pursue legal action.

Don't tell me this update is about knocking scrapers down. It isn't. Google doesn't care who owns it, they just try to decide who publishes in the best format for their algorithm.

[Leosghost]

People can fix and complain, in fact they can complain while improving the site.

There is fix and complain ..there is fix and blame...especially when the blame is misplaced, this reranking could be seen coming since late last year.

I've seen people here posting already that Google Panda "hit" them..on their sites with other peoples copyright material..and others post who I know have their entire sites built using other peoples copyright material which they do not have permission to use...and I'm waiting for some of the others that I know use other peoples material without permission to join in too..

The list of "doesn't fit the mold" was "misconceived and inaccurate" it contained a lot of scrapers..and thin sites ..and sites made only to display ads to get clicks...and others that were cited "wonderhowto" are all three of those things..and yet people defended them as undeserving of being hit ..Folks here go blind ? ..or did/ do many of the "defenders" have the same sort of sites..built using "curated" material from others, with "courtesy" backlinks to the original source ..but no actual permission to use it.

I was giving specifics about how too many ads , more ads than content ( especially above the fold) , the look of the site ,and intrusive distracting ads was an important factor in panda..for weeks ..and being shouted down with "no it cant be ads, they are not important" "everyone uses ads, your reasoning doesn't make sense" , "it isn't that" etc, etc ..and then adsense go and say yes ads and ad placement will and does play a large part..and suddenly everyone "discovers" that it is ads that can tip the balance..like it is news?

And then begins the complaining that "it is about ads..and that everybody uses ads , lots of ads, can't have websites without ads, and adsense" ( along with the conspiracy theories ) ..and calling for Googles stock to tank..and to use any search engine but Google ..but not saying they will block the Gbots...even saying everyone should boycott Google ( funny that ;-)..no one says to boycott their bots ..and yet robots.txt is probably the easiest thing to change on a site ;-)..Want to "recover" ? make your site obviously something of value to someone other than yourself...and fix what is broken...then maybe you'll also have to wait 3 months or 6 or a year ..so you can develop other sources of traffic ..that you should have had in place for years anyway.

Then if it doesn't start moving up , block Googles bots,or block them now , today , if you hate them so much, because if you don't like their serps, as a user you would change search engines, so as a webmaster do the same, and remember they don't owe you a living, you have no more right to rank highly on their site, than they do on yours.

And probably the only place on your site that you mention Google is in the adsense code or on a search box ..and you only do that for the money ..if you were paying Google to appear on page one at number one then you might have case for complaint..as long as no one was paying them more.

[walkman]

Aha, you're an oracle, one of the "I told you so."

And why would anyone block Google when even 1 free hit is good? You can let Google index your sites and promote its competitor. You seem angrier than those hit by Panda.

Only one site of mine lost traffic, all others (totally unrelated) gained traffic. But those that gained are much, much 'worse' sites when compared. And I know it for a fact, not guessing. So all your supposed analysis, based on generalities goes right of the window. And there's not one sentence or picture that's borrowed or taken in my site. I cannot write something and milk it for 10 years, it doesn't work that way. And I had ZERO ads that interfere with user experience, no image ads or adsense.

Matt Cutts wasn't ranking for his own article (behind three scrappers) and you are condemning everyone hit, without seeing their sites or having a clue. So chill out a bit.

[Leosghost]

it doesn't work that way.

It does..people who have been doing it just "that way" have begun posting here that they were hit by panda.
I replied here to one of them just the other day ..and I know of others here who have been doing just that for 10 years...and some of them have just started posting about their problems with adsense in the last month or how they were hit by panda.

and you are condemning everyone hit,

No I'm not saying that at all ..don't put words in my mouth ..but there have been many hit who did deserve it ..and because some who post about being hit do not deserve it does not mean that they all are innocent..and I have indeed seen the sites that I'm talking about.

Not an oracle ..but if it was obvious to some of us that a rerank was coming and what kind of site would likely be hit..why did some experienced members also rule out the obvious, or later try to deny the effect of ads, and then try to ignore that it had already been put forward ..but they had shouted it down..such a waste of time denying or analysing flawed lists instead of trying to fix their sites for what those who didnt' get hit were saying was a major difference ....and why the hostility still now that we are seen to have been correct all along.

I cannot write something and milk it for 10 years, it doesn't work that way. And I had ZERO ads that interfere with user experience

I can think of someone whose site I mentioned above who would probably say the same re ads and not intrusive..used to be the case .( .and then became very ads in your face ad heavy thin content.).and "the place" is again changing rapidly, since panda ( I've been watching over the last 6 weeks ) to get back to what was once a good resource and into Google's good graces again..

edit speeling

[edited by: Leosghost at 9:37 pm (utc) on Apr 24, 2011]

[AlyssaS]

Don't tell me this update is about knocking scrapers down. It isn't. Google doesn't care who owns it, they just try to decide who publishes in the best format for their algorithm.

Well no, this update was never about scrapers - the only reason everyone is discussing scrapers so much is that those who have been dinged are fixating on being scraped, and convinced that if only they weren't, they would rise up the SERPs.

But the old rule still applies - if there is duplicate content on the web, G will rank the site that has more authority. So you should be asking why you don't have authority in G's eyes. Because if you did, you would outrank the scrapers.

If you have an RSS feed, G will assume that you want your stuff syndicated all over the place, else why have the feed?

Amazon used to get scraped something terrible, but last November they changed their API to block customer reviews from the feed. Once they did that, G knew that if people had customer reviews identical to Amazon's, they had stolen them, and those guys got taken out in the Jan 2011 scraper update.

But before that G did nothing, reasoning that the reason Amazon got scraped was because they themselves put that stuff out in their feed - i.e. they were colluding.

If you don't give the search engines adequate clues about how you want your material treated, and you've been too lazy in the past few years to defend your material from scrapers (DMCAs, turning the feed off, banning IP addresses), you can hardly be surprised at what has happened.

[Leosghost]

Precisely AlyssaS :)

I don't want to quote your entire post ..given the overall subject these days here that would be too ironic and gauche.;-))

It makes the point nicely..the signs were there ..to those who took the trouble to look around , and even to read other forums here than just the adsense and the Google ones..or only the ones that they post in, when the replies come in.

There is more to running a site than checking the adsense stats,( or whichever network is sending the payments or writing the checks) , and for those who don't run ad driven sites, there are still a lot of other things one has to know or think about or be pro active about..watching out for what might be incoming or what might be vulnerable or sending the wrong signals is as much a part of it all as is uploading material or knowing how to open notepad or gedit.

[dickbaker]

...and others post who I know have their entire sites built using other peoples copyright material which they do not have permission to use...

Leosghost, just a little nit to pick. I don't have any of the manufacturers' product specifications or photos on my site unless I have written permission from the manufacturer to do so.

Of course, there's a thousand other sites out there with the same spec's, so it doesn't matter whether one uses those spec's with permission or not.

[Leosghost]

? the only one talking ( in this thread ) about manufacturers product specs is yourself ?

[dickbaker]

? the only one talking ( in this thread ) about manufacturers product specs is yourself ?

I was talking copyrighted material which, in my case, I sought written permission to use. No big deal, and nothing to argue about.

Seven years ago doing this was ok with Google. Today it's not so ok.

[Leosghost]

I was talking copyrighted material which, in my case, I sought written permission to use. No big deal, and nothing to argue about.

Ok ..no, you were misunderstanding me there :) I'm talking about people who use thousands of images that are not theirs and that they don't have permission to use or thousands of snippets and bits of articles '( and then remix them ) that again they don't have permission to do so..

And have been making very good money for many years by wrapping them in ads and adsense ..and posting here in WebmasterWorld ( and elsewhere ) over the years as if butter would not melt in their mouths. and sometimes even complaining about others "scraping" their sites..

Thieves saying "someone stole my bag of swag"..

[maximillianos]

But the old rule still applies - if there is duplicate content on the web, G will rank the site that has more authority. So you should be asking why you don't have authority in G's eyes. Because if you did, you would outrank the scrapers.

I guess I didn't make myself clear because I was typing on my iPhone, hence I tried to be short.

Scrapers are not out ranking me for my content. They have been scraping me for years. Some of this took place 5 years ago. Some of it still happens today.

My point is, they were not penalized during this update. They pretty much went untouched. Yet their business model is to copy content from 4-5 years past and republish it. They have figured some loophole in Google where they can simply rank for freshness or whatever for x number of hours, days, weeks. And they keep doing it. They also piece posts together by taking 2-3 older posts from their site, and create a new one. All of this I sent to Google over the years, but no action has ever been taken.

That is why I complain. My current penalty (I think) has nothing to do with scrapers. I had a mega-bug in my code that allowed a backward pagination link to go crazy into negative land and left over 100,000 empty pages in G's index. I never noticed because I thought it was a competitor creating bad links to my site to try and do just that. Since there was so many, I could never find the source. I finally found it. =)

So it has been 6 weeks since I fixed it and G is still finding and removing these bad pages. I think in the end when they get done re-indexing my site, I will get out of the penalty. But it is a waiting game. Until then I keep looking for other problems to fix, and fixing them. But that was the big one. An ugly mess.

But again, my frustrations and complaints are just that... I hate seeing injustice. And watching these scrapers go untouched (in my niche) is an injustice.

But hopefully justice will come in the long run.

[whatson]

Just to re-iterate what others have been saying, so I completely understand it in my own words:
Essentially the dupe/thin content pages are taking a Pagerank/Panda penalty, that stops them passing PR back through the site. So although it may only be the specific offending pages that have been penalized, as a result they are no longer passing the PR back through the site, therefore affecting the rest of the pages as a result.
The rest of the pages are passing their PR to the offending sites and not getting it come back around in circulation. Therefore making it appear like a site wide penalty, instead of just the offending pages. Hence the slight drop in rankings of just a few positions for some pages and 50-500 positions for others.

Is that basically it?
And then the other part of it is to define what a thin/dupe content page really is, and how to fix/improve them.

[walkman]

Well no, this update was never about scrapers - the only reason everyone is discussing scrapers so much is that those who have been dinged are fixating on being scraped, and convinced that if only they weren't, they would rise up the SERPs.

We don't really know what this is about, we're just guessing. Danny Sullivan even said it targeted content farms, until eHow rose in traffic and google got plenty of bad press because of it. Let's not forget that Google targeted only 12% or so of searches this time so many more pandas are waiting. Lots of red faces might show up here later to say they were hit too.

But the old rule still applies - if there is duplicate content on the web, G will rank the site that has more authority. So you should be asking why you don't have authority in G's eyes. Because if you did, you would outrank the scrapers.

Because some sites just have more authority. It's not easy to have more authority than Huff Post or eHow or a popular tech site. It's that simple. But an article, a webmaster with an average site wrote, should not be credited to others that copied his/her article, assuming Google sees it there first. Or at least he/she shouldn't be penalized for that, otherwise it's a vicious circle: write good articles to become popular, only to have them copied and slammed by Google. I think Google penalized entire sites for a certain % of thin pages, and not all are maliciously done. Some can be tag pages or search.php?term&23&cat4 type pages. Some are webmaster mistakes, but the tags Google pushed them not too long ago and later slammed site for that. For at least three months too, it appears.

Now we're talking about a normal functioning Google, but as I mentioned above, even Matt Cutts didn't rank above scrappers for his own article so something is clearly wrong.

[tedster]

dupe/thin content pages are taking a Pagerank/Panda penalty, that stops them passing PR back through the site

I don't think anyone has established anything about passing PR. It may have been a post of mine that muddied things with regard to PageRank. What I was trying to say is that when Panda assigns a low quality score to a page, that also demote pages on the site that link TO that page - and I then mentioned the model was something like PageRank in reverse. It's my guess at this time, based on the ranking data I've been looking at.

You may be correct that a low quality score on a page also affects the value of outbound links from that page. But I haven't tested that and I don't remember anyone here reporting that result either.

I also am pretty certain that this is a true and new part of the ranking algorithm rather than a penalty. If you think of it like a penalty, you'll get frustrated because improving your rankings won't act like getting out of a penalty.

To explain what I mean, let's think about the other long-established parts of the algorithm. What would happen if Google changed the basic PageRank formula (something they've done quite often). For instance if some rankings were supported mostly by blogroll lining and Google stopped valuing blogroll links the same as they originally did, then those rankings might drop. But the drop wouldn't be caused by a penalty, it would be caused by a change in the algorithm.

And that's how I see Panda - a whole new area of the algorithm that now scores page quality and site quality, right along side relevance, and the backlink strength, and website trust... etc, etc.

[walkman]

Tedster, this is what we have from Google though:

For this reason, if you believe you've been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.

So that the entire site is demoted it's clear. How they do it, we don't know but probably doesn't matter since you either fix the site (as Google sees it) or you don't.

[tedster]

Yes, lowered scores can affect a whole site, but Panda starts by scoring individual pages. Then, those individual scores have a contagion effect that sort of bleeds through the site. So by improving a page's quality score, then (if I'm right) other internal pages that link to that now-improved page no longer get a lowered score because of their link. Improve enough of the site's low-scoring pages and there can be a scoring rebound to the other pages.

What I think Google is doing is trying to lower the chance that their user base will be sent to a low quality page - and that includes a secondary measure of not sending people to a page that is just one click away from a low quality page.

[walkman]

tedster, I THINK google is trying to prevent relatively popular sites from adding a gazillion junk pages just because they can or used to rank.

So think twice before adding a 200,000 'Online Degrees' page directory or too many $3 articles even if your blog /site is popular.

That's my guess anyway.

[tedster]

I think that's definitely a part of the picture, walkman - if I understand you correctly, it's what I used to call "database spam".

[Ummon]

Honestly Leoghost, I think what Google did with this update was crap. Whether or not they like it Google is the law of the internet. You just can't change the rules without telling us what the rules are in the first place.

This was not about dupe content. As you said the only way you can know it 100% unique is if it was written by you and none of the scraper sites rank for ANY of it. Both of mine (one hit by farmers the other hit by panda) fit that description. So the penalty has to be on "quality" but the biggest question everyone has is what is quality? One of my sites has a huge following so its obviously useful yet google sees as a "farmer" site. Why? I have my suspicions but it has nothing to do with "quality"

[Leosghost]

tedster, I THINK google is trying to prevent relatively popular sites from adding a gazillion junk pages just because they can or used to rank.

So think twice before adding a 200,000 'Online Degrees' page directory or too many $3 articles even if your blog /site is popular.

That's my guess anyway.

Now we are nearing agreement on some things at least, some of what Panda is IMO designed/ hoping to mitigate against..and as it is machine learning it is going to make many mistakes and have to be refined and could not have been tested fully without running live..so yes it is likely to be ongoing..but I suspect the waves will be smaller and more local in their effects than the Tsunami that was Panda 1..and the backwash, that was panda 2.

I do think that Google have decided that they could / can live with the webamster "flack" and also live with Wall street's displeasure at them not chasing the short term money in fact even foregoing some of their revenue on this one. We all have to take decisions along the lines of .."if I do "this" / or continue doing "this".. "I may make fast money, but the product ( in their case their serps ) will not be as good as it could as it could be" ..or there is another way, "which will be more work, may well raise cries from those who know me of "WTH" or may be misunderstood, and will make less immediate revenue ..and for it to work , cannot be explained, for too much explanation would affect the process, and thus falsify the results..and the eventual product would have the risk of not being better than what went before it"..

IMO they thought,something along the lines of "We are being gamed,so are our customers, we need to rethink the model,it would be better if lots of things were re-weighted, we can and tweak when it's live, if we see anomalies"..and they will have known that there would be "innocent" casualties who would have to survive while the rounds of tweaking went on..but that if those "innocents" were solid enough and tenacious and really in the game for the long term ..they would still be there when eventually the waters were calm again.

The new algo Panda would have caught and drowned one site I was working on pre panda ..if I had gone ahead with it ..I mentioned it to Tedster the other day in a sticky as an example of a site that I would have "slapped" if I was a search engine ;-)..so I figured any search engine, especially Google would slap it too too..and I abandoned it earlier this year in the form that it was originally conceived..I had seen what was coming if not in the detail certainly the general idea and areas..

It would have been thin , templated and junky feeling ( even though it was my own template ..it would not have been the first time I was using it ) ..it would have been original self written ..but I would have been writing about things that I did not know enough of the subject to be talking as an expert to my intended audience honestly..it would have been basic manufacturers "specs" and images ( all used with permission ) and padded around with content for the sole purposes of monetising a domain name ( actually a group of domain names..I'd bought a load of "missed, low hanging fruit last year" ..coud n't believe they had been overlooked ;-) )..KWs in short domain names all dot coms ( although I bought the derivative domains to be safe and the non English equivalent ones ..tech product ..hottest selling tech item there is at the moment and probably in the forseeable 5 year future ( unless someone invents cheap personal rocket packs or flying cars or safe fusion penlight batteries ;-)..the sites would have looked OK ( but not great ) read OK ( but not great ) ..and informed OK but would not have been the best in class by any means ..

The more I worked on the site , the less my heart was in it , and the more I thought ..if asked to review this..I'd slap it silly for bringing nothing new to the table ..it is like so many others talking about the same subject ..

Now originally I'm an artist ( painter / sculptor ) and we all know that sometimes if your heart isn't in the sculpture ..if its going fine , impresses all the folks that don't know any better , but that really it isn't as good as it could be , and that someone talented looked at it they would say "WTH ..this isn't you ..it must just be for the money" ..that is the time to squash it and do something else ..go back to it only when you can make something that you can really say "yeah its got flaws and this and that are not quite right but overall I'm happy with it" ..and "you would actually sign it or put it in your exhibition"...and you even tend to give away the ones you like the best, because the ones where you knew you were only doing it for the money , were not the best, and it shows.

So I squashed it..never uploaded it ..good thing too ..because I might just have been distracted enough to link it to some of my other stuff, and when Panda rolled around it would have been drowned and lost in the internet serp sea for sure and might just have pulled something else under for a while with it ..or at least made them ride lower because of being linked to it.

[edited by: Leosghost at 2:30 am (utc) on Apr 25, 2011]

[Leosghost]

Ummon ..in your market ..unless you shoot/ photograph all your own material, pay your own models etc and never sell on what you have or allow it to be syndicated or sold via the pron trade sites and the wholesale sites and content producers for the adult market..then some of what you have as image content and movie portfolio etc titles has to have been bought in by you or sold on by you..or has since been scraped and reposted by others via torrents and warez and loaded into cyberlockers..

If it is all your original content and you have never sold it on or allowed it to escape or never traded it ,have taken all the precautions you can against scrapers ..but are still being out ranked for your own material ..then you have my sympathy ..but how do you honestly expect Google to know who is the originator ?

I too have many many images no longer under my control because in the early days of being on the net I did not know how to stop many of the scrapers from getting at the high def ones, it was lesson hard learned..and you cannot make imagery totally thief proof ..but with watermarking you can make it harder for them and at least the end customer knows where to go for the original if the watermark is hard coded properly ..but keeping one or two steps ahead of thieves is tiring ..

The first one of us webmasters or search engines ( and actually it isn't a priority for the search engines, so IMO it will have to come from us webmasters doing the dev work ) to bring into place a definitive means of attributing origin of content , image or text etc will be very wealthy, and earn the undying gratitude of the creators and the hatred of the parasites.

btw..I do know the adult market ..I was involved "tangentially", and have friends and contacts, and still have some sites whose content and wares fall under the adult heading at Google and online payment processors , hosts etc.

[dickbaker]

Am I the only one here who's taking the new original content I create and filing it with the US Copyright Office? Seems to me that a copyright number for a particular piece of content would be pretty strong proof, even for Google.

As for what Tedster seems to be explaining again and again about this not being a penalty, but a sitewide affect of thin or low quality pages affecting others, let me offer an example using my site.

My site got hammered. There's a couple of directories (main manufacturer pages and then the individual models) that have always been really strong. They always ranked page one for a lot of phrases.

When Panda hit, those strong pages lost ranking, but they only went to page two on Google, where other brands and the individual model pages for those other brands went to page three or five or ten or worse.

In tracking my rankings, it's clear that those strong directories/manufacturer pages are still strong. They're being pulled down, but not that far, because Google still thinks they're good quality (as did Google's users for years).

So, I'm looking at the main and subpages for each manufacturer to see which ones are the weakest. They really fall pretty neatly into categories, such as page 2, page 3 to 5, page 6 to 8, page 9 to 11, or something like that.

As I make changes to the worst pages, I'm seeing slight improvements to my strongest pages. Slight, but there's enough pages in each directory/manufacturer moving up a couple of spots consistently that I feel that the changes of the worst pages are the reason.

I guess we'll know in a few months. I say "a few months" because I'm not able to write several quality pages a day. I'm spending a full day or more on one page, trying to offer very unique content. I easily have a thousand pages that need a lot of attention.

[rlange]

walkman wrote:
Let's not forget that Google targeted only 12% or so of searches this time so many more pandas are waiting.

Careful. Google said the update impacts ~12% of searches. That's not necessarily the same as saying they intentionally targeted only ~12% of searches.

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Ryan