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.

[george_1]

"Suppose two blocks of ads caused your site to tip the scale to PandaLand"
I was at the Oxford Adsense road show and on the question about adds and the Panda update, the answer was that add placement has nothing to do with the recent update as long as the page is user friendly and has original content, not just a few words and a bunch of adds.

[Shaddows]

Not many ecoms were caught in Panda- the big movement was October 2010.

The only ecoms really caught were those who were clearly on an ecom free ride in SERPs. Ecoms get placed higher than an info site would, given the same offsite profile. Some crappy ecoms (with dodgy onsite practices) were benefiting from this boost. Panda took those out- along with some price comparison sites.

Affected ecoms were more keyword stuffers and Hx Abusers, not feed republishers. However, we rewrite, and we got a significant boost.

Added 1) - ecoms and comparison sites with technical problems were also hit.

Added 2) - republishing ecoms might get adversely affected in 2.2 when the anti-scraper componant<--- You know, that thing they screwed up BEFORE Panda gets folded in.

[walkman]

"Suppose two blocks of ads caused your site to tip the scale to PandaLand"
I was at the Oxford Adsense road show and on the question about adds and the Panda update, the answer was that add placement has nothing to do with the recent update as long as the page is user friendly and has original content, not just a few words and a bunch of adds.

First, I used that as an example to see if Goog responded to changes. But ads can make a site non-user friendly so I would ignore the above advice. What one person said once, might not no longer be valid.

[HuskyPup]

@suggy

Time for some folks to come back down to earth...

I was merely posting EU law, not my opinions, and under EU law anything could happen, we've had many an example of that and, IMHO, if Brussels really wanted to have a go at Google they easily could do so but it wouldn't be as easy as the MS browser situation.

You may believe you work in a free market however the reality is far from that, much of it is an illusion to keep many people from complaining.

[suggy]

HuskyPup

I'll pass on the tin foil hat stuff today.

[dazzlindonna]

Google's ads are discreet ..they are not "in your face"..they are not the first thing that hits you or "users" when you or "users" go to Google search page ( there are no ads on it ) ..and they are not the thing that hits you or "users" most about the serps returned for any search..

In my post above, I replied to this with "Which is why I made the point that website owners need to compromise. I agree that in your face ads need to be pulled back."

I should have added, however, that indeed, Google's ads at the very top of the SERPs before any of the listings are in fact in your face. They place their ads above the fold, above the content. So really...I can't imagine anything more in your face than that, short of a popup.

[Freedom]

Donna is right and I've said that myself before.

Look at Google's page, and then look at your own page.

More often than not, Google's ads are up in your face more than webmasters' ads.

[tedster]

The past few days I'm hearing more reports of recovery and near recovery from sites that put in a lot of work. So what's been the delay in processing the changes?

I really don't think it was anything malicious at all. I think that, out of the chute, Panda was such a monster of a program that it required a whole lot of special treatment, and was kept off in its own corral of servers.

I look for that integration issue to be addressed more and more in coming weeks and months, until a full and workable dynamic cooperation integration with the rest of the algo is achieved. Not inside info - just an educated guess.

But I don't expect that full fluidity to show up next week or next month. Anyone building a new site should definitely take care not to tease this beast, or you may dragged into its cage for an unhealthy period of time.

The Panda point of view is that some sites might be "not-quite-spam" but they still don't exist to serve their visitors. That means Panda is hunting for business plans that are essentially parasitic and feeding off the Google SERPs in some fashion or other. It's important to bump any "cleverness" up against that reality check.

[AlyssaS]

The past few days I'm hearing more reports of recovery and near recovery from sites that put in a lot of work. So what's been the delay in processing the changes?

There seems to be some sort of testing and rolling back going on. There's an interesting thread on the Warrior Forum [warriorforum.com], which sort of backs up what's being said on the UK thread [webmasterworld.com] here, except they seem to have nailed the dates better.

One person calling themselves Lares posted the following on June 11th:

Site 1: Came back from penalty June 6. Disappeared next day. Came back today.
Site 2 and 3: Came back from penalty June 7. Disappeared today.
Site 4: Never came back

Then today (June 14th) they updated with:

Site 1: Disappeared today
Site 2 and 3: Came back today
Site 4: Still nowhere to be found

which prompted other people to report

my site bombed on the 6th of june...
came back on the 11th and got the most traffic I've ever had for 2 days...
and then bombed back out the top 500 again today

G is obviously testing different versions of their new algo, perhaps to see which one is "best" - it seems to be a real rollercoaster.

They key dates that people are mentioning are June 6th, June 7th, June 11th and June 14th

[Leosghost]

=A/B/C cycling testing ..as mentioned previously, many times..

ps ..note to self
"if ($show+$horses+$water!=$drink)
then $horses == $stay+$panda.

btw

Yes, publishers should not overdo it. But yes, users should compromise as well

is not ==

Which is why I made the point that website owners need to compromise.

even if repeated

I replied to this with "Which is why I made the point that website owners need to compromise.

my bold..people often don't post what they think they did..which leads to confusion.
re thinking that

I should have added, however, that indeed, Google's ads at the very top of the SERPs before any of the listings are in fact in your face. They place their ads above the fold, above the content. So really...I can't imagine anything more in your face than that, short of a popup.

and

Donna is right and I've said that myself before.

Look at Google's page, and then look at your own page.

More often than not, Google's ads are up in your face more than webmasters' ads.

is not going to get you very far out of the panda' clutches..

[edited by: Leosghost at 2:09 pm (utc) on Jun 14, 2011]

[tedster]

What seems different to me is that these are widespread tests - apparently served to any access of the SERPs. In the past year or more, Google tests were run at a relatively low level of exposure.

This is again exceptional handling, in the root sense of the word.

[AlyssaS]

Leosghost - Yes.

I just thought I'd point out all the recycling that people elsewhere are documenting because some people here are thinking they've recovered or near recovered (see the UK thread) - it's too early to say.

[walkman]

More often than not, Google's ads are up in your face more than webmasters' ads.

Google will answer this way: if you design your search engine, don't index Google's serps pages :)

Something is changing especially in the UK serps.

Alyssa, some of those those sites mentioned in the Warrior Forum are the type that Google loves to outright ban or give a -50 penalty. But they have dozens and dozens of sites so they play their odds. I'd be surprised if Google let most of them out.

I still think that Google sought to hurt the sites caught in the algo. Like when they catch you buy links that penalize you for a while to send a message, even if you remove the links the next day. Makes sense if the review was manual...

[AlyssaS]

Alyssa, some of those those sites mentioned in the Warrior Forum are the type that Google loves to outright ban or give a -50 penalty. But they have dozens and dozens of sites so they play their odds. I'd be surprised if Google let most of them out.

Walkman - don't assume that just because they are posting on the Warrior Forum they are all spammers, and that if you post on Webmasterworld your site is gorgeous/beautiful/the best thing since sliced bread. Warriors are less emotional than Webmasterworld posters, but that's it.

Both forums are reporting sites dropped and both forums are reporting gains. G is just looking at the site and not the pretensions of the poster...

Someone on there posted the following:

My unique content sites are nowhere to be seen. They went from top rankings to page 100+ or no ranking at all.

My sites with scraped content? All three of them improved, one even took #1.

Which prompted someone else to reply:

a good time to run a copyscape check and see if you can weed out any duplicate content.

Very good advice.

[walkman]

AlyssaS, I just looked at some sites linked in that and a few other threads. I didn't say all, but quite a few were one to few pages targeting a single keyword.

Sites here can be even worst for all know, no one has a monopoly on that :). And people cross-post

[AlyssaS]

Walkman, the good posters on there don't link to their sites at all (they'll just get their niches nicked)! It's only the noobs who expose their sites (and because they are noobs, their sites are not very good).

I find the WF fascinating. The attitude there when they tank is "what have I done wrong" and they may indulge in a few moments of hurt, but then they get on with figuring what G changed. On here, when a site tanks (because G thinks it's the same quality as some of the WF sites!) you get long tired emotional essays about how G is evil, which took the author several hours to write. And which is not productive at all.

The other reason people should get over their snobbery and visit and read WF from time to time, is that because it is so huge, you can virtually see trends developing and predict G's next algo change. When that herd gets an idea and stampedes into a fad, you can be sure it's statistically significant and G will move to deal with it. If they are stampeding onto a patch/technique you use on your own sites, it's time to take evasive action. People should visit just to gain intelligence on an eco-system that affects us all.

[Leosghost]

Absolutely agree with you AlyssaS ..open minds..open eyes..open ears..and many respected posters from here ..are also in other places ..and reading other things..

[netmeg]

Tedster says:

That means Panda is hunting for business plans that are essentially parasitic and feeding off the Google SERPs in some fashion or other. It's important to bump any "cleverness" up against that reality check.

THIS is the element that I myself have been watching closely since Feb 24.

My own observations have shown me that in most (not all but most) cases, the business plan that is clearly serving the users and has obvious unique elements to it can get away with, well, pretty much murder. Thin content, shallow content, no content, ads in the content, ads above the content, ads inside your eyelids. This is in good part why we see such a brand preference, even when the brands aren't the big ones. I'm talking about the kind of sites where it makes Google look stupid not to have them indexed and ranking. I don't think it's enough to have a site that has an exact ratio of content to ads, ads below the fold, 1000 page "articles" whatever, if your site and/or your business plan is still pretty much identical to a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand other sites out there just like it.

[Leosghost]

Yes:)

That means Panda is hunting for business plans that are essentially parasitic and feeding off the Google SERPs in some fashion or other.

Would your site exist ..if Google didn't ?

[suggy]

Google's split testing... but it's not algo tweaks...