Panda Recovery: Gone

[Shatner]

Starting on Wednesday this week it looked like I was starting to recovery.

Where my Google traffic had been down 70% post Panda it was now at only 45%, and one day was even nearly 40%.

A tracked a couple of keywords where I was now ranking on the first page.

Saturday that was all taken away again.

Everything reverted right back to post-Panda form. 70% of Google traffic gone. All the keywords which had moved to page 1, were not only bumped off page 1 but can no longer bef found ranked for that keyword at all, or any other keyword.

Right back to square one.

Any of the others who thought they might be recovering see this?

[tedster]

In this thread [webmasterworld.com...] walkman just reported this disappearance of some recovered rankings.

[crobb305]

And I just reported very wild fluctuations in my WMT data [webmasterworld.com...]

...In the past 72 hours, a couple more pages have dropped 300 to 400 spots. This worries me that it will bleed back to the whole site. My upward trend in traffic continues (for now), I am still up about 70%; but, one of my main trophy phrases (a single word) just fell from page 5 to page 13. That is not a good sign. However, I continue to gain some longtails to the number 1 spot with sitelinks.

[JamesB]

I have had partial recovery - 1 KW for sure and a second KW seems to be jumping around between position 2-4.

I need to get over 70K pages de-indexed and its not proving easy at all. G is crawling but not taking into consideration the "noindex" tags and i have left a few pages to 404 in hope these will deindex. For me its a waiting game and as pages are removed from the public index I am hoping that this will improve the quality of my site.

[Reno]

Shatner, I appreciate your immediate feedback because it tells me that things remain very unstable, so if I see some improvement in my own SERPs (have not yet), I must not allow myself even momentarily to think that the tide has turned. At this point I'm expecting nothing from Google because that kind of fluctuation in emotion ~ down up down up ~ is simply too exhausting.

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

[walkman]

Those reporting higher number of 'improvement' I think depend on a few pages for a large share of their traffic so you get a couple of keywords ranking (again)and via! The same when you lose them though.

I'm killed when I get a site-wide effect. I am only comparing them to total traffic patterns, Bing and Yahoo referrals and by scanning the referrals. Most good referrals are gone, some not but traffic wise it's a joke. Total traffic from post Panda1 is down by 20-30%, but since a nice share may account from one particular page /section I don't mind it as much provided I get those other referrals.

None of the changes seem to matter to Google, smacks of xx day penalty and then we'll see if you changed what we want you to change. Things are very unstable though, I get spurts of amazing referrals for 5 minutes and then...

[koan]

G is crawling but not taking into consideration the "noindex" tags

I've block thousands of pages in robots.txt two months ago (and removed all links to it) and Google has just unindexed 50% of it so far. I switched from blocking in robots.txt to adding the noindex tag, this is taking way too long.

[dataguy]

I've seen the same thing, @Shatner. I got my hopes up Wednesday because for the first time since Panda1 it appeared that something I had done was working. By Friday all gains had been undone.

I do sense a disturbance in the force right now, though. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. (Which is exactly as effective as anything else I've done over the past 2 months.)

[johnhh]

Recovery - what recovery. Slight uplift last weekend all gone.

We have pages that are still in the top 10, even #1 - we have massive movements on other pages with the same basic design.

Traffic still down 50% after a slight uplift last weekend.

Sales are down 70% - all staff but one laid off - all sub-contactors cancelled.

Steps taken:

All short descriptions errors in WMT ( if you actually believe any figures from there ) fixed - any server problems fixed, any obvious dead links fixed, content found elsewhere ( via datafeeds ) noindexed.

All adsense taken off - all adwords campaigns cancelled.

Trial pages with slight changes A:B tested no conclusive results.

Well I guess unless we make a fantastic recovery next week thats it for us - after 12-14 years aprox., starting with AOL homepages as we couldn't afford our own servers !

Direct competition all hit as well - which begs the question are .com's doing better than country level domains.

All original content and page designs that must have cost us £ hundred and thousands to £ low millions over the years and many, many, late nights and weekends.

So its a joke when you see boiler-plate pages ranking higher that say "do you have information on 'green widgets' let us know ?" - value to user zero - value to google greater.

Unless you have massive backing it may be all over for small independant companies like us.

I'm not going to the argument that google doesn't owe you a living without companies like us ( and you !) google would have nothing to show

If there is any improvement I'll post back - otherwise - many thanks to all here for their assistance over the years , and of course....

Thanks for all the fish.

<rant> rant over </rant>

[zehrila]

I am now scared after seeing all the posts regarding lost serps, my traffic is static top notch ranks so far, i just hope it stays.

[Shatner]

>>Those reporting higher number of 'improvement' I think depend on a few pages for a large share of their traffic so you get a couple of keywords ranking (again)and via! The same when you lose them though.

Agree that this is the case with many people reporting recovery, but not the case with me.

[ErnestHemingway]

Google is driving me insane, they are going nuts with Social idea.

They are showing AMAZINGLY RIDICULOUS titles for my sites, and description.

Further rankings and earnings have gone down the hill once again and more junk spam sites are dominating. I have not recovered anything lol.

[Whitey]

Shatner - Have you changed anything to warrant a recovery?

[suggy]

Chaps, I think that with so many of us making such dramatic changes (I have banned and no indexed 30k pages myself), the SERPS are going to be highly unstable for a while. When has there ever been such simultaneous massive removal of pages from the index and link graph?!

[crobb305]

I am still seeing an upward traffic trend for now. A few more of my pages have a new cache (about 50% of my pages), and my traffic is up about 72%. Traffic is increasing in very close correlation with the the appearance of new cache and they are appearing very, very slowly. I am able to tell because it was a sitewide change I made about 2 weeks ago. As of now, about half of my pages are cached with that tweak.

[danijelzi]

I am able to tell because it was a sitewide change I made about 2 weeks ago. As of now, about half of my pages are cached with that tweak.

Can you please tell what the tweak was? Thanks.

[Shatner]

@crobb So you've been completely steady through this entire thing? No up and down at all? Just slowly up?

That's really weird because the way I rose and then was immediately cut off suggests they tested something and then turned it off, which should have made at least some small amount of waves for nearly everyone.

Is your site a larger one or a smaller one with just a few pages?

[crobb305]

Shatner, my site is about 100 pages. I have been seeing traffic increase in a very phrase-specific manner. Traffic began increasing last Monday, when I noted a 10% increase. By Wednesday, it was about 50%. Then about 70% by the weekend. I'm still trickling upwards. I am popping into the #1 spot on more and more phrases (with sitelinks -- which I think is a crucial sign). I don't mind the gradual increase, but I do wish the spidering/caching would occur at a faster pace.

I have observed the testing that you mentioned, in the weeks prior to the big improvement last week. I would show up #1 for a phrase, for a day or two, then it would revert. That was happening for about a month it seemed.

[Shatner]

@crobb To me it seems like different things are happening with Panda depending on site size. I almost feel like if you have 1000 pages or less your site exists in a different universe than sites with tens of thousands of pages.

Probably it's because you can do more detailed optimization on your pages one at a time maybe.

[crobb305]

crobb, To me it seems like different things are happening with Panda depending on site size. I almost feel like if you have 1000 pages or less your site exists in a different universe than sites with tens of thousands of pages

At the very slow pace I am seeing my pages getting re-cached and regaining rankings (one phrase at a time), I imagine it will take very large sites much, much longer. I said a week or two ago that I feel like the probability of recovery may increase with decreasing site size. Smaller sites are easier to "clean up".

[walkman]

I see third tier phrases for my referrals. Some are accurate some aren't. Like "Bob came wearing a t-shirt and Nike shoes" is in my site and google is sending me one that is looking to find out more about Nike shoes in 4-6 words. Bing for example send me much more accurate ones, like Google used to a while back./

Something has changed on Google this weekend though. And EVERYDAY 50+% of my pages are taken by Google. I am well linked and each page is also linked quite well (2 steps from from homepage Home > cat > page ). Not sure what to make.

[conroy]

Okay Google. Panda was a good joke, haha, we all had a good laugh. April fools is over. Now give me my traffic back, thanks!

On a more serious note, I lost a lot of sites in Panda II US, I've made changes on half of them and left the other half alone. I haven't seen any change at all in traffic, just a steady -60% across the board. (doing OK because 1 site went up 120% with Panda 2) I still can't figure out what's wrong.

[Reno]

Like "Bob came wearing a t-shirt and Nike shoes" is in my site and google is sending me one that is looking to find out more about Nike shoes in 4-6 words.

Google is on record saying they intend to know what we want even before we know we want it (or words to that effect), so I wonder if that is what is happening with your example? Instead of giving you what you actually want, they are serving you what they "think" you want. If that's the case, huge mistake, IMO ~ it will drive people nuts.

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

[crobb305]

Google is on record saying they intend to know what we want even before we know we want it (or words to that effect), so I wonder if that is what is happening with your example? Instead of giving you what you actually want, they are serving you what they "think" you want. If that's the case, huge mistake, IMO ~ it will drive people nuts

I see this happening on my searches. When you invent or write about a new term/brand, it won't show up for queries in the serps as you intend for them to. When someone searches for the new term, Google is correcting the spelling, irrespective of your desire for them to. You have to append a "+" to the beginning of the word or phrase (in quotes) to force Google to display the exact term. For example, +example or +"this new phrase". Unfortunately, most searchers don't know to do this. If I want a search result that actually returns pages that contain those words, as I spelled them, I pretty much have to search on Bing.

[Whitey]

Shatner - Have you changed anything to warrant a recovery?

Sorry everyone, i got ignored so took that as a queue to dig into some earlier posts and threads , and see that indeed a lot of efforts have been made by contributers including Shatner to resurrect results in different ways. My bad.

But my interpretation is that sites will take some time to recover from this. But what interests me is the difference it will take for smaller and larger sites to respond.

I'd be watching for blips in traffic as signals of hope ... but the crux is a much more concerted effort over time IMO.

Depending on the signals that Google is looking for, and the things webmasters are doing, there will be a time element in the algorthmn for some of those signals. We already suspect that Twitter activity contributes on a time basis. Facebook would be the same. Historically increased link activity was considered to be mapped partly on a time basis.

So you may have a burst of improvements, but Google is likely looking for a lot more than a singular burst. And this algorithmn is likely much more than replacing thin or low quality content. Surely it a combination of factors that take time to mature in.

I'm seeing sites with thin content holding well, and i suspect that their existing social signals have just held them above the cusp of a demotion. They are very much living life on the edge.

So for thos that haven't fallen , now is the time to act in earnest.

[walkman]

Whitey,
I can absolutely, positively tell you that sites that barely any (or none at all) social 'buzz' are ranking and in quite competitive niches.

I think we are giving Google way too much credit. Not everything that makes sense can be calculated reliably by Google and not everything applies to all sites.

For now, I stand by my fixed month /days penalty for Panda sites. That's the only reasonable explanation I see. Google is ignoring changes, and is in fact lowering traffic even when more top content is added and way less pages are on the site. It makes no sense otherwise.

[CenSin]

I have a small site (around 150 pages), and recently after visited this forum become aware of this panda things.

From stats/log, my site is not affected by this panda update, traffics actually growth from Jan 2011 until now.

My site don't have feed, and I also noarchive all pages so it won't be any duplicate in search engine cache.

[mromero]

"For now, I stand by my fixed month /days penalty for Panda sites. That's the only reasonable explanation I see. Google is ignoring changes, and is in fact lowering traffic even when more top content is added and way less pages are on the site. It makes no sense otherwise. "

I tend to agree with this assessment. It would be useful to generally point to what type of web presence we are referring to and whether the panadalization has any bias. For e.g. it appears to me most of the folks posting here are into ecommerce and almost totally at the mercy or lack thereof of G.

Other evergreen sites with 100% original content and direct traffic, say 30% or more can more easily withstand the panda storm. But even these sites are affected by that silly auto complete type in thing.

Most times I am typing in my term and get distracted or tricked into going somewhere else by the search engine as it pushes terms it wants me to use.

Is there an updated, sure-fire way to turn off auto complete or auto suggest or whatever it is now called?

[walkman]

I tend to agree with this assessment. It would be useful to generally point to what type of web presence we are referring to and whether the panadalization has any bias. For e.g. it appears to me most of the folks posting here are into ecommerce and almost totally at the mercy or lack thereof of G.

Other evergreen sites with 100% original content and direct traffic, say 30% or more can more easily withstand the panda storm. But even these sites are affected by that silly auto complete type in thing.

Depends on what "withstand" means, this caught me in a bad time and many others have to lay off staff. Panda has hit hard many sites. A year from now I would have been able to manage with it, but now it's tough.

But the surest bet is that Google will try left and right to send less traffic to other sites. And they have way to much power and act arrogantly and arbitrarily. So let's hope and work on minimizing their share to 30% and support other engines.

[crobb305]

I can absolutely, positively tell you that sites that barely any (or none at all) social 'buzz' are ranking and in quite competitive niches.

I have some pages that have been tweeted in the past month, some by tweeters with thousands of followers. Those tweets have not been indexed and there is no sign that they have had any effect on ranking.