Why Haven't Sites Come Back from Panda? Matt Cutts Tries to Explain

[walkman]

This is a rush(?) transcript from Dany Sullivan's blog so probably not everything is 100% correct. The italics and bolding are mine.
[searchengineland.com...]

DS: Talking about Panda, says that he’s getting a ton of emails from people who say that scraper sites are now outranking them after Panda.

MC: A guy on my team working on that issue. A change has been approved that should help with that issue. We’re continuing to iterate on Panda. The algorithm change originated in search quality, not the web spam team.
....
DS: Has it changed enough that some people have recovered? Or is it too soon?

MC: The general rule is to push stuff out and then find additional signals to help differentiate on the spectrum. We haven’t done any pushes that would directly pull things back. We have recomputed data that might have impacted some sites. There’s one change that might affect sites and pull things back.

DS: You guys made this post with 22 questions, but it sounds like you’re saying even if you’ve done that, it wouldn’t have helped yet?

MC: It could help as we recompute data. Matt goes on to say that Panda 2.2 has been approved but hasn’t rolled out yet.

DS: Reads an audience question – is site usability being considered as more of a factor?

MC: Panda isn’t directly targeted at usability, but it’s a key part of making a site that people like. Pay attention to it because it’s a good practice, not because Google says so.

Matt mentions 'pull back' but that's nonsense and very disingenuous of him. Pull back to me means letting a previously labeled bad content rank. We're talking about improved sites and content, no need to pull back, just reanalyze it.

So it's clear to me that this is a penalty. Maybe if you got links from every newspaper in the Northern Hemisphere you might escape but for the rest it looks like it depends on Google engineers. It took them 3+ months to admit it.

[leadegroot]

Lisa Barone blogged the conversation too:
[outspokenmedia.com...]

[Shaddows]

Matt mentions 'pull back' but that's nonsense and very disingenuous of him

"Pull back" in this context appears to mean "reduce the scope" of Panda. It looks like they are improving the specificity [en.wikipedia.org] of the algo.

In other words, 2.2 will include a change that might return SOME sites to previous rankings. This is NOT a reversal of a penalty, it is a redefinition of the scope of competence of the algo.

So it's clear to me that this is a penalty

Gah! Nothing MC says indicates its a penalty. Its an algo that is "competent" in a specific set of conditions, which (when competence-approved) can result in a range of SERP-modification outcomes.

[ErnestHemingway]

What a joke, you made us mess up our 500k indexed page website and now we are getting this BS.

Serious MC spam team and quality team and Adsense team need to SIT DOWN TOGETHER AND TALK.

Spam team is in mars
Search Quality team is on Saturn
Adsense Team is on earth

None of you guys are working together to make something work.

At least can you tell Amit to drop an email to head of Adsense team to stop SPAMMING US with emails telling us to monetize our site with Adsense.

Can't make you all happy my man Matt Cutts, make up your minds, you want us to place Adsense or not. Hopefully Amit and his co will overkill Google no doubt why investors are freaking out.

[nickreynolds]

Panda 2.2 - not sure if I'm looking forward to it or fearing it!

[scooterdude]

The bit highlighted below says that they have not done a pull back yet
That is, from the first application of PANDA, no one has quite,recovered no matter what they might think, interesting hey

MC: The general rule is to push stuff out and then find additional signals to help differentiate on the spectrum. We haven’t done any pushes that would directly pull things back. We have recomputed data that might have impacted some sites. There’s one change that might affect sites and pull things back.

[edited by: scooterdude at 2:05 pm (utc) on Jun 8, 2011]

[Reno]

It took them 3+ months to admit it.

MC may be a fine fellow, but his job is to spin, and he's very good at it, so when he and other Google engineers came out immediately after the Panda release with their self congratulatory PR, it was clearly formulated to create the impression that this was the "latest & greatest" from Mt Olympus. They had not even gotten in widespread worldwide data when those positive pronouncements were in the press. They understand, as governments understand, that you must get out early & often to create the first impression, whether it's true or not.

I feel for people who have devoted dozens or even hundreds of hours in an effort to restore their websites after the Panda slaughter. It looks like some or even much of that may have been in vain. Many of the veterans at this venue gave very good advice right from the git-go ~ "sit tight, let it play out, and don't over react". I've not recovered, but on the other hand, I haven't wasted days/weeks of my life either. Glad I listened to them.

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

[walkman]

"Pull back" in this context appears to mean "reduce the scope" of Panda. It looks like they are improving the specificity [en.wikipedia.org] of the algo.

In other words, 2.2 will include a change that might return SOME sites to previous rankings. This is NOT a reversal of a penalty, it is a redefinition of the scope of competence of the algo.

You are missing the point, they have not taken in considerations the content changes. Just re-run the 'data,' whatever that means. So until they do that, it's a PENALTY. If a site was penalized for, say, too many tag pages and they removed them, they are not getting credit for it.

I feel for people who have devoted dozens or even hundreds of hours in an effort to restore their websites after the Panda slaughter. It looks like some or even much of that may have been in vain. Many of the veterans at this venue gave very good advice right from the git-go ~ "sit tight, let it play out, and don't over react". I've not recovered, but on the other hand, I haven't wasted days/weeks of my life either. Glad I listened to them.

My rule from now on: if Google makes Matt Cutts say it, it's a lie.

[ascensions]

Without being to derogatory, what continues to surprise me is the slowness in response to what appears to be an obvious problem.

If it was just WebmasterWorld, I might say it's relativism, but I've read articles in NYT, and Washington Post indicating Google's problems with the Panda roll-out. That's what bothers me with "new" Google... The corporatism, and typical American business like failure to recognize and react to problems.

If Google engineers were NASA employees and Panda was Apollo 13, then Kevin Bacon would have died in space.

Please Google... don't kill Kevin Bacon.

[WebFusion]

I can honestly say that after being in "business" with Google since 2003 (when an Adssense rep contacted me to add their ads to my site), and seeing lots of ups and downs, very little has changed. Create good, high-quality, unique content - promote it well, and eventually things even out.

I lost about 2/3 of our adsense income on April 11th, and our traffic took a significant dip as well, but the cream always rises to the top, and just as in prior years I'm confident our site will rise again. Sure, this is the biggest dip we've ever seen, but we're also not foolish enough to base our entire financial well-being on something (i.e. google traffic) that is completely out of our control. I learned the hard way (when a similar thing happened a few years ago) to bank 60-70% of our after-tax adsense income as a cushion for these eventualities.

We can ride this out. Hopefully, a few people suffering from Panda will take it as one to grow on and change their business model to do the same. When I read about people/companies talking about layoffs just days after Panda hit, I was actually somewhat surprised they would build their business on a house of cards like that.

My advice - keep doing what you're doing. If you create your own content, spend more time on it to make it truly stellar in quality. If you pay for content, don't go the lowball route (I pay roughly $180 for a 2000 word article these days - you get what you pay for).

As far as my SEO experience - I stick to the basics. Good quality pages that validate. I let the links come on their own.

[falsepositive]

I feel for people who have devoted dozens or even hundreds of hours in an effort to restore their websites after the Panda slaughter. It looks like some or even much of that may have been in vain.

I've done a lot of work and still am in the midst of what may be a very long revamp. We never know what the future will bring. Any of these search engines can introduce a new formula that scores user metrics in the future. Or bring in social indicators. Who knows. I have changed my perspective to stop chasing money and start chasing users. The jaded among us will say it's a waste of time. I'm doing it for insurance and because I realized I was actually doing some things the wrong way...

As far as my SEO experience - I stick to the basics. Good quality pages that validate. I let the links come on their own.

I did a lot of proactive link building before, but am now more and more of the mind to just let things be. I prefer to work on my site anyway, rather than run after links. After Panda, I wondered how much of my link building efforts did in fact help me? Most of the links I got from huge quality sites were natural. The links I got by my own efforts were from smaller sites (peers in the niche).

[walkman]

If it was just WebmasterWorld, I might say it's relativism, but I've read articles in NYT, and Washington Post indicating Google's problems with the Panda roll-out. That's what bothers me with "new" Google... The corporatism, and typical American business like failure to recognize and react to problems.

@ascensions,
The delay is deliberate and it's mean spirited. There's no way a content farm could have fixed all their pages in a few months but a small store might have tightened descriptions, removed any duplicate but now they are suffering from Google's capricious attitude.

Google does this because it's not effecting their bottom line (at least not in a bad way.) Do you think the upper echelon would let them do this is revenue was down because of Panda? So they don't see a problem, we do but it's our problem.

[netmeg]

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[PPC_Chris]

My guess is that Google could run this new Panda algorithm at any time, which would effectively lift penalties (or the penalty-like element of Panda) for sites that have been hit. But they are choosing to wait a few months. This gives webmasters enough to time figure out what Google doesn't like about their site and to fix it.

Also, Google wants to stop sites from doing similar things in the future and laying the smackdown to sites for a few months sends a clear message to clean it up and keep it clean. If a site was doing something that Google considers an intentional effort to manipulate their search results, the best way to stop this behavior is to penalize the sites. If all a webmaster needed to do to get their penalty lifted was get rid of the manipulative behavior and they instantly would be back, what is the incentive to not try something similar in the future? Its like SEO moral hazard.

[falsepositive]

There’s one change that might affect sites and pull things back.

Operative word here is "might". They aren't promising that you'll be pulled back. They are assuming some sites will, but who knows what those sites are and why they are chosen? Would be interesting to analyze this new set when it happens.... Without improvements on a site you think that deserves fixing, then even Panda 2.2 may not make a difference.

I'm not holding my breath.

On another note, I've been sending a slew of spam complaints/reports to Google for keywords I find in my niche almost daily, complaining about scraping I find against my site and other sites I follow. I am hoping that some of these reports are actually making their way to actual eyeballs in the Google Spam team. I would encourage everyone to keep sending out spam reports where they see fit.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Awesome. And when you get paid to swing that hammer you're always looking for another nail to hit, even when the job is done.

I'm seeing Panda going after duplicate content more strongly. I now have two less competitors to deal with and they both had great sites. What they also had was a small section of their pages that showed "content from around the web" in plain text. I feel pretty strongly that the duplicated paragraphs smelled like garbage to the Panda.

The wording being used by Matt and others has me feeling it's a borderline spam issue being dealt with by the ranking team instead of the spam team. To me that suggests a broader approach against paid links. Sites that sell links tend to "play nice" until they garner some initial PR and when they get it they copy articles in bulk to drive up their "offering" on link buying/selling sites. Panda might be trying to close that effect with making it harder to rank, more trust signals required, harsher penalties on dupe content etc. 12% of the internet was affected so this was no minor tweak, I can't think of anything else being as big a reason.

[edited by: Sgt_Kickaxe at 4:06 pm (utc) on Jun 8, 2011]

[walkman]

PPC_Chris, you are assuming that everything was an attempt to game Google. Something as simple as a bad search script that produces empty pages could have hurt many innocent pages. Even in game Google scenarios, Overstock.com was back after just 60 days. JC Penney in 90 days.

[TheMadScientist]

Serious MC spam team and quality team and Adsense team need to SIT DOWN TOGETHER AND TALK.

I'm sure they talk all the time, but think there's a language barrier:

The Quality Team Says: 'Good, good, good'
The Web Spam Team Says: 'Bad, bad, bad'
The AdSense Team Says: 'Money, money, money'

Personally, I think the languages they each speak present difficulties in cohesion, which ultimately hinders webmaster understanding of 'the rules' through to the non-uniformity of advice given by each team and it's specific agenda...

[deadsea]

What is the difference in responsibility between the webspam teams and the quality teams? Maybe the webspam team can only penalize sites and the quality team can only promote sites. Seems like an odd divide to me.

[Atomic]

@WebFusion

Thanks for that post. I could not agree more.