Panda fix - is this a time penalty / trust thing ?

[Whitey]

I may have missed something but I haven't read one report of a sustained return from the "Panda Slap" . Presumably, folks have been busy writing new content , taking down "thin" pages , boosting links ... etc etc ...

... and Google doesn't comment on penalties.

I think this is more than a slap. Is there a time / trust element in the release from the Panda's grip?

[tedster]

Walkman, that would be a useful link for us all to see. Please - share

[brinked]

I believe this is the link to the story he was referring to: [internetretailer.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

brinked - In the internetretailer story, the store owner is quoted as saying....

Nearly three months after the Panda update, traffic isn't back to where it was before the update, but Lieberman says the site is slowly climbing back up in search result rankings. "It’s been extremely challenging, but exciting, too," Lieberman says. "Even in a downturn like this, it is exciting to see the effects of what you are doing to get you back to where you were."

Walkman's comment refers to another story (my emphasis added)...

In a site that was discussing this story, the owner, Mitch, said that he was misquoted, the traffic hasn't budged at all. Apparently all the links he's got so far from WSJ, NPR and blogs discussing them didn't help him.

I do note from this, btw, that the owner, who has been aggressively publicizing his new SEO efforts, is apparently expecting the links he's gotten from the coverage to boost his rankings. I think that's an unrealistic expectation.

[Whitey]

So Pandalized pages are immune to junk link boosts, perhaps. At least instantly. Can anyone else confirm their experience.

[edited by: Whitey at 10:14 pm (utc) on May 29, 2011]

[Whitey]

@superclown2
[webmasterworld.com ]
"Poor" quality pages were taken out. More links were asked for and received to badly affected pages, which promptly fell further. Pages were re-written wholesale, and new pages added to make the whole site more relevant to the targeted search terms. At no stage did any page actually rise in the SERPs for the targetted terms and the sites as a whole continue to receive fewer and fewer clicks.

Further anecdotal evidence that things don't happen straight away. I wonder what would happen if the entire site had it's content rewritten - my guess is it would have to wait before it was revived.

[shallow]

Like others I am investing $$$$$s in developing new and better content. I am losing income from ads that I have taken down. But I feel I don't have a choice until I can past Panda, and I am likely to keep trying for sometime.

Unless I'm missing something , I don't know what ya'all are trying that works. Is it a guessing game, or can some offer really concrete suggestions to improve traffic that work?

Like you, I've invested in the five figures that last 3.5 years to improve my site; ya know, hired "experts" and all.

My traffic and income is so pitiful since the Panda updates that I've all but give up. I've owned and built up several successful brick-and-mortar small businesses before. None ever near-ended precipitously like my site from Panda.

I'll be D@M#d if I put another penny in my site until, and IF, things improve on their own.

[johnhh]

five figures

I have re-invested mid-high 6 figures - should have stashed the cash ...

last time we got caught was in 2005 re-wrote the whole site..

back to topic - is this a time penalty .. it could be as Google re-values each page. I specifically say each page. Also look at the way that page is linked to in your site.

Is it related to Chrome users - look at the market share - 84% don't use Chrome browsers.

Also it is possible they may roll-back or turn the knob down a bit. Who would want to be a Google employee called Panda.

A Google employee walks into a pub - add your own ending ..

Do I have a solution - no - but working on a theory that I still have not fully worked through.

[Whitey]

hired "experts"

Right now there are no known Panda cure experts - at all. They didn't see this one coming. Keep your eyes peeled for the first one - could be a long wait.

[johnhh]

could be a long wait

go with that - however I have noticed a few odd good SERP results from an error on our site internal linking - still looking into this - may take some time...

[Whitey]

@johnhh - just be mindful that on page improvements can still occur on Pandalized pages or sites, but it's unlikely anyone's broken the Panda's grip, at least until we wait 'til Google flicks the manual update switch to see what/if anything happens.

Could be another 40% of sites go down the toilet for all we know.

[whatson]

I think it is possible that actual Pagerank and Pandarank are interlaced. Panda is the anti-PR, if you have Panda Rank it will be subtracted from your Pagerank. Although it may only be the offending pages that receive such a rank, it would inevitably reduce the whole site, as there is less Pagerank circulating through the rest of the site.
There maybe more severe Pandarank penalties in addition to this, depending on what Panda crime you have committed.

[Whitey]

but it's unlikely anyone's broken the Panda's grip,

btw - I don't want to discourage anyone from trying. If you don't try things, then certainly nothing will happen. The upside outweighs the downside. The obvious things I see are to block pages that Panda has effected , and write original and compelling content.

Smaller sites may find it easier than large sites .

But still time is the factor that's bugging folks to see what the results of their efforts are.

[koan]

Is it related to Chrome users - look at the market share - 84% don't use Chrome browsers.

The thing is Chrome users probably have a geek (technologically literate) bias, they don't represent the everyday person. They may not respond as well to a site about knitting as with a site about the latest Apple "this changes everything" product.

[SEOPTI]

I don't think something like a "Panda Rank" is substracted from your PR, I think it is a completely different layer.

Just an example: you can have two penalties a -950 and a -50 at the same time and both of them are completely different layers and algorithms. If you get around a -950 you still are left with a -50 in this case.

[walkman]

one way furniture has been taking the wrong direction. They believe (like many others) that the reason behind there lost rankings is because there descrptions are not unique. They have resorted to rewriting all of there product descriptions. It is a shame that it is a complete waste of time. one way furniture looks like it was penalized more than it was pandalized. Some very obvious factors that they were penalized are: ....
2. There homepage does not come up #1 for a search of onewayfurniture.com likely meaning there homepage was penalized.

I am 99% sure the penalty was added later. I remember searching to see their pages indexed and seeing their home page #1, which is normal. As for changing descriptions, can you blame him? That's what Google said and desperation makes people do a lot of things. But going public with plans to pay $1 each = FAIL.

He made the 'traffic is still the same' comment on a thread about SEO, where someone used his site and Danniweb as examples of escaping Panda. Neither are btw: The furniture store owner said traffic is at a standstill and someone with 'inside knowledge' from Daniweb said that traffic is about about 5% up, but from post-Panda and it needs over 110% increase to be even with panda. The graph Danni posted when she first wrote seemed to confirm a very tiny increase btw.

I am summarizing the convo. Links are tricky and the mods are already overworked.

Panda 2.0 and 2.1 ignores content changes unless that something else is there. Period.

The thing is Chrome users probably have a geek (technologically literate) bias, they don't represent the everyday person. They may not respond as well to a site about knitting as with a site about the latest Apple "this changes everything" product.

That's fine for Google. They want a techie perspective to judging web and Matt Cutts even said so. I don;t think it's fair but they make the rules, iPad looking sites and all. Remember they don't have to care about your site or mine.

[whatson]

@ SEOPTI
I understand what you mean, but I think whether it subtracts from PR or not is moot. Say there is some sort of combined rank of importance, from all the factors that rank your site, then Panda will take away from it.

Say if you have an arbitrary score of 1000, then Panda might take you down to 750. Alternatively, it might be that it now adds up to 500, depending on how well you are pand-optimized. So you may only get 100 of that 500, taking you to only 1100, whilst your competitors are getting 400 or so.

The -50 or -950 or whatever penalties, I agree are separate to your ranking score.

[shallow]

hired "experts"

Right now there are no known Panda cure experts - at all. They didn't see this one coming. Keep your eyes peeled for the first one - could be a long wait.

Yes, I know there are no known Panda cure experts. I am not knocking the experts at all, they helped improve my site. What I'm saying, there seems to be no known fixes right now that would bring a site back to pre-panda, so there is no need to hire an expert even if I could afford to do so.

[AlyssaS]

That internetretailer story linked to above had the following passage, which made me shake my head:

Lieberman fired the firm he was using to acquire inbound links, and replaced it with another one, though he declines to name either company. He also hired four copywriters to write original product descriptions that are friendly to search engines. For example, a bar stool that previously used a manufacturer-supplied bullet list of details as its product description now has a five-sentence description that details how it can complement a bar set-up, links to bar accessories and sets the tone by mentioning alcoholic beverages, all of which makes it more SEO-friendly, Lieberman says.

If people think re-writing is adding five sentences, they've got another think coming.

If you are re-writing, don't just rearrange the words. G is a bot, and once they take out the stop words and count your unique words, if they also occur in another more authoritative site, you arn't going to get anywhere.

Also, five sentences isn't enough, especially on a site with as heavy a structure as that.

My top tip for re-writing: look at your pre-panda stats, by page (use your google analytics data rather than WMT data, as you should be able to narrow it down page by page). Then look at all the long tails - chances are that most of these are desperation searches - people looking for info and G desperately returning any page with the words, because they haven't got anything that really answers the question. If your page doesn't answer the searchers question, do some research to find the answers, add the info to your page, and you automatically have stuff that no one else has, and you've added value. It takes longer, but just rearranging sentence structure, and fluffing things out and calling it re-writing gets you no where.

[dickbaker]

AlyssaS, I certainly agree with you. In looking at my niche, the top-ranking sites are the manufacturers (of course), then the large internet retailers, and then frequently small sites where the owner (usually someone who's made a name for himself in the niche) writes about a particular model of widget.

These are 500-1000 word articles that are very good, and can't be out-ranked simply by rearranging words on a thin page. For me to outrank this type of site, I have to offer something more, although I haven't figured out what that is yet.

If an online retailer is bumped from the first page, the remaining retailers must be doing something that Google likes, and the bumped retailer needs to do what Google likes, only better (in Google's eyes) than the now-page-one retail sites.

[walkman]

AlyssaS, I agree, a tiny paragraph is going to get lost, especially when you have 400 links and maybe 1000 identical words as menus. I disagree on 'rearranging' though, if you do that then pretty much every news story about, like Bin Laden's death, will be considered a dupe. They all contain more or less the same words if you strip the sentence structure.

What Google can do in theory doesn't mean that they can implement it across all the websites.

[Whitey]

On signals of "Trust" :

"So yeah, this Panda update is about the role good content plays in your search results but it’s more about the links it takes to make that content sing."

From where I sit, you can write the most spectacular content and upload it to your site but at the end of the day, if you don’t promote it, no one will see it. And if no one sees it, no one will:

click it (bounce-back/click through data)
bookmark it (links)
tweet it (links, signals)
feature it in the media (links, signals)
blog about it (links, signals)
add it to credible sources like Wikipedia (clicks/exposure)
[linkspiel.com ]

Seems highly plausable IMO .

Have members found pages hit that were well linked to?

[balibones]

Whitey I've found a LOT of pages with a LOT of links that went down with Panda 2.0. Whatever it is, user-feedback, social, or quality rater feedback (or anything else) it completely overrides the other signals. I had a page get linked to from CNN, ABC and WIRED that didn't budge a single spot for any major keyword that it was once on the first page for.

They call it an algorithm change, but it sure acts like a penalty.

[Whitey]

In short, 85% of those who were allegedly hit by the Panda update has seen zero improvement since they have been hit. 5% of those who were allegedly hit said they had a total recovery. 9% of those who were allegedly hit said they had a partial recovery.

Like I said before, I really think no one has recovered fully from this Google update - not yet at least.
[seroundtable.com ]

and why Matt Cutts says nobody has returned from Panda yet [webmasterworld.com ]

I think there are people out there claiming recovery who are seeing improvements as a consequence of reacting. Truly, no one has recovered from the pure Panda slap.

So when are we going to see improved sites return ?

[DirigoDev]

First move was last Monday 5/16. Moved up 15% after many changes.

Whitey, if you're counting me in the partial recovery column, don't. Since 5/16 I've lost half of the 15% gain. And the gain does look more Panda 2.1 related. I'm still very much Panda 2'd. I've been importing my GWT daily page SERPs ranks into SQL since pre-Panda and I'm following trends on my top 200 phrases. It is striking how much volatility there is in average position in this post-Panda world. Things were much less volatile before.

My team is hard at work replacing our entire Web site - the whole thing is being retooled at a cost of > 2,500 hours. Look on the bright side. My CEO/investors/clients will give me anything I want. Just got a kick butt server. Just hired more employees in the middle of a recession. Have unlimited funds. And if I turn it around I get a huge bonus. Not so bad if, and I say IF, I turn it around. If not, RIP.

[Whitey]

My team is hard at work replacing our entire Web site - the whole thing is being retooled at a cost of > 2,500 hours. Look on the bright side.

You deserve a medal for your efforts and anyone else who is pulling out all stops to get themselves on the Google restoration list by investing time and dollars. What could be more thorough than completely overhauling your site the way you have described.

It would be nice for Google to say when you and others will be rewarded, and how this will occur and not veil it in secrecy.

Me thinks the commercial division/s will give clearance to the search teams when they think revenues won't be effected. Google surely improved their results in the last 2 quarters because of this.

But I'm a permanent conspiracy theorist, and what would i know ... just what I'm told and don't believe. All i believe in is that "money talks" and the powerful walk where it goes :)

If not, RIP.

Let's look forward to the bright side - some champagne instead and a "we're back" party for all your staff.