Is Panda really applied sitewide?

[danijelzi]

Is Panda really applied sitewide?

I assume that all of us think Panda degrades a pandalized site rankings site-wide, but is it really the truth?

I'm asking this because on both February and April updates, I was loosing Google organic traffic (70%), but 9 out of around 2000 pages of my site still rank very well. I some cases they lost a position or 2, but they're well ranked on 1st page.

Five of these pages are wordpress categories with sitewide internal links, another three are regular posts with a little bit more content and different writing style than the most of the posts, and remaining one is a standard post.

These pages rank don't rank for some weird queries, but for competitive ones. Regarding inbound external links, they are not special at all. In fact, pages with a lot of natural inbound external links from both high and low quality sites are somewhere deep in SERPs, below page 2.

What's your experience?

[tedster]

When Panda 2.0 rolled out, Google spokespeople said that they had tweaked so that even on a site with mostly shallow content, an exceptionally good page could be given a boost. Sounds like your experience is in line with this.

[ken_b]

danijelzi;

My experience seems similar to yours. The main section of my site got nailed hard, meaning pages that were on the first page dropped to the 50 - 150 spots.

In a another section, my average spot went from 6 to 25, but a few of those pages are still are on the first page and did not drop in the rankings at all.

Hard to sort it all out.

[walkman]

I have a few top raking pages too, but Panda, IMHO, makes a huge difference in 'similar to others pages,' and that kills most sites. So a really, really good page will be #1 even with Panda 'holding you back' but most of your pages might not if you have competitors on those pages. And almost all of us do.

So, If your page is 120 compared to your competitors 100 and panda takes away 15, you can still be #1. But that 15 will kill your other pages where at best you may have a slight edge. That's my theory anyway, but Panda clearly thinks that sites are either 'low quality' or 'high quality' so any people they send to your site, they send it reluctantly.

[danijelzi]

@ken_b

"my average spot went from 6 to 25, but a few of those pages are still are on the first page and did not drop in the rankings at all."

Ken, is there something specific about these pages that still rank well, when compared to dropped pages?

In meantime, I've checked another one pandalized site and again I have a couple of pages with more content and more uniqueness and their positions are well, regardless of Panda.

Both are news sites about new products, which are similar by their nature, and posts are written with emphasis on facts, not on a personal opinion, and all are written in "inverted pyramid" way. So, all of the Panda-affected posts look similar one to another in both content and simplistic and clear style, which I assume is good for visitors. Probably, that similarity is the reason for their pandalization, although my post very often contain product-related info that is really hard to find anywhere else.

[freejung]

even on a site with mostly shallow content, an exceptionally good page could be given a boost

That's in line with what I've experienced. I was pandalized in Panda 2.0 -- all except one page. That happens to be the most popular page on my site by a fairly wide margin (as measured by facebook likes, content downloads, and spontaneous links). Apparently this one page is so awesome that it got a free pass, even though the rest of the site was fairly uniformly demoted.

[ken_b]

Ken, is there something specific about these pages that still rank well, when compared to dropped pages?

It's really odd, in my opinion. In that section of my site these category index pages are mostly very similar, the number of links leading off the page are the only difference. When Panda first hit, ALL the links on these pages led to other pages on my site. Not counting the 7 or 8 main navigation links on the pages the other 0 - 40 links on each page all lead to pages one level down.

These links change as time goes on, so a page might have 5 of these links this week and 25 next week and 10 next month, the links lead to pages with time sensitive info (event info).

So when a couple pages with NOTHING but the basic page template, NO ads ,NO actual info/content or links to pages with info/content stayed in place on page one, it seems hard for me to understand.

The other pages that stayed on page one were exactly like the pages that dropped off. Probably 5 - 30 links to pages one level down, one ad in the left column, 160x600 and one ad in the right column, 120x600, links to event info page in the center column.

[potentialgeek]

I remember a while back somebody was suggesting the clue to understanding Panda was to compare the individual pages which were hit the hardest with the rest of the site. So it seems reasonable to do the opposite, too.

My pages which got hit the worst seem to be the thickest, not the thinnest. I still haven't found any which escaped Panda.

My main site is a review site. This type could be the most difficult to get freed from the Panda's claws. It's extremely difficult for a lot of text not to be similar.

Say you have a site about cars. Each valid review should address the same key issues. How do you do that without Panda problems - without using very archaic words to make it "unique"? It seems you'd have to get very strange or unusually creative.

Panda 3.0 may need to learn which industries/sectors/types of sites it works for, and which not so much. eCommerce sites shouldn't have to rewrite the manufacturer details for every product, for example. That's just silly!