Panda 2.2 Update Part 2

[PPC_Chris]

The following was continued from http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4326253.htm [webmasterworld.com]
According to Search Engine Land [searchengineland.com...]

Google has given us confirmation that they have ran an update to the Panda filter recently.

We have been expecting the Panda 2.2 update based on news coming out of the SMX Advanced conference. Matt Cutts told SMX attendees that Panda 2.2 has been approved, hasn’t been rolled out yet, but that should happen soon.

The update hit sometime late last week. I believe Google manually pushed out the Panda 2.2 update around June 16th.

Bad news for all of us still Pandalized waiting to have the penalty lifted.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 11:34 pm (utc) on Jun 21, 2011]
[edit reason] split from previous thread last week [/edit]

[suggy]

Main Index Ratio of all sites that are affected (3 sites affected of 12) is less than 10%

My Pandalized (substantial, established, commerce) site: 7.5%
Competitor A (similar in size/age to mine, main beneficiary!): 31.4%
Competitor B (most similar business to mine, holding): 9.1%
Competitor C (large site, from out of nowhere, now falling): 5.4%
Competitor D (affiliate minnow, from out of nowhere): 75.4%
Competitor E (minnow, from out of nowhere): 32.3%
Competitor F (one of biggest players, holding): 25.7%
Competitor G (one of biggest players, holding): 17.9%
Competitor H (established but new to big terms): 53.1%
Competitor I (big established player, modest boost) 54.1%
Competitor J (substantial, established modest boost) 41.4%
Competitor K (substantial, established, back after hiatus) 40.8%
Competitor L (one of biggest players, brand, slipping slightly): 21.3%

So, only Competitor C is lower than my site and all but one are significantly higher!

Of course, these numbers are but a symptom of the real problem, but is that:

a) Shallow (however that's figured out) content?
b) A weight of poorly linked (internally) content?
c) Something else about the make-up of the pages that get excluded?

[freejung]

I just had a look at some of my competitors' Main Index Ratios, and they're all over the place.

It appears to me that it correlates more closely with site size than with ranking. My site is small (~2000 pages total indexed, ~1000 in main index). A competitor with 120,000 pages is at about 10%. I don't know whether he was pandalized, but his rankings for the keywords I track seem to have gone down somewhat. Others with only a few thousand pages are at or above 50%, whereas others with hundreds of thousands of pages are way down, usually below 10%.

I bet the closest correlation you would find with this metric would be homepage-PR/#-of-pages, which is quite consistent with the way indexing seemed to work pre-Panda.

No offense, but I think it's a red herring.

[walkman]

This main index ration is not reliable as far as I can tell. Just search for CNN .

All the competitors that are ranking have much lower ones than me, and that's becuase I removed all by the main pages. Yet, I have lost with each panda update and today even Yahoo has brought more referrals than Google.

[maximillianos]

I know of a site that has 60% of their pages in the main index and still got hit by Panda.

[dickbaker]

Suggy, maybe I'm particularly slow today, but I don't understand what those numbers (or "main index") mean.

Could you please explain?

[crobb305]

I have found a couple of sites linking to me (using keyphrases that I seem to be penalized for) from 15,000+ pages. Clearly contacting them doesn't help. For me, this is more evidence that competitors CAN do harm. I wish Google would add a "don't count this link" button to Webmastertools. I'm getting to where I hate being in this business. Ten years ago it was fun.

[Whitey]

I wish Google would add a "don't count this link" button

Good idea

[ken_b]

60% of their pages in the main index

I forget, how do we find out how many of our pages are in the main index?

[tedster]

Errioxa posted one of the queries that some people have depended on for that number:

Pages in the Main Index = site:www.yoursite.com -inallurl:www.yoursite.com

I can't really see why that would work. Another one some people use is:

site:www.yoursite.com -site:www.yoursite.com/*

However, I've never been convinced about this either. It's a hack of some kind, and yes, it returns some kind of subset of all your indexed URL. But it was never documented by Google.

Recently Matt Cutts talked about it and reinforced my sense that this hack isn't exactly what people think. Essentially it's a query that starts Google processing an answer, but then at some [unpredictable] point a correction routine kicks in and aborts the process - and there's no guarantee when that abort instruction will happen.

I much prefer use the site: operator on AOL and seeing how many URLs Google chooses to export to their partner's search engine.

[walkman]

5/8th of may pages are in the 'main index' if this is it but traffic certainly doesn't reflect it. I also try site:domain.com/*

On another note: I noticed that for some domains the index page is not #1. see [google.com...] . Used to be a penalty but the site ranks for its name and keywords.

[tedster]

but traffic certainly doesn't reflect it

And there's the metric that makes the most sense to me - the number of pages getting search traffic.

[docbird]

Just seen an article on How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever appear in "Spotlight" articles on Google News page.
Quick look, seems interesting; also interesting to me something like this appears on the page (or maybe as I'm logged in; if so, hadn't appreciated Spotlight aimed at being customised too!)

[freejung]

And there's the metric that makes the most sense to me - the number of pages getting search traffic.

~35% pandalized
~42% non-pandalized

[freejung]

Oh, and ~58% pre-Panda for the pandalized site. I agree, that metric makes much more sense.

[tuga]

walkman say

On another note: I noticed that for some domains the index page is not #1. see [google.com...] . Used to be a penalty but the site ranks for its name and keywords.

Walkman could not be more right...
I have found exactly that. I can confirm. When I search site:mysite.com the main page does not appear in first position. But if I search for the main keywords on the homepage as first appears. Is this a penalty? Or just a sign of Panda?

[suggy]

Ditto

"site:www.mydomain.co.uk" has index/home outside top 100 results

"site:www.mydomain.co.uk [typical keywords]" has it at no.1

?

Penalty?

[potentialgeek]

One of my sites was hit by Panda 2.0, but has recovered at the Panda 2.2 update. (Held steady since June 16.) That's the good news. The bad news is I have no idea why, because I didn't touch the site, and didn't do any link development. (I was on vacation.)

Panda 2.2, according Matt Cutts, was designed to tackle the issue of sites that republish content being placed higher in search results than the original source. However, none of the sites which are now lower than mine in rankings copied my content. (I appeared on the scene much later than they did.)

I don't see any new links from other sites (checking Yahoo Site Explorer) that could explain the recovery.

Meanwhile my main business site is still in the tank. The main difference between the sites is the one that recovered has some much longer pages. But I don't know if that is what led to the recovery.

Did I get +1 love?

[walkman]

Ok, I searched a few known panadalized sites and some do some don't have the site:domain.com (index first)

[leeds1]

One thing I tried that was mentioned before on WebmasterWorld was to check into WMT under the HTML suggestions.

For one site I found I had quite a few duplicate meta descriptions and titles which was a problem in the coding of the site that I had done.

I cleaned these up and the home page of the site has now gone from #10 to #3 (where it was many many months ago)

It may be worth checking these out.

[Forbin001]

Google appears to be shuffling things a bit....anyone else seeing this? I hope its temporary....my rankings are all over the place :>\

[freejung]

Ditto

Yeah, me too. In fact, all of my top 100 results for site:www.domain.com are individual item pages, not the homepage or any of the main category pages. Category pages only start to slip in around page 10. Interesting.

[walkman]

One thing I tried that was mentioned before on WebmasterWorld was to check into WMT under the HTML suggestions.

For one site I found I had quite a few duplicate meta descriptions and titles which was a problem in the coding of the site that I had done.

Good catch, first thing I visited on 2/24 was the WebmasterCentral, to delete my tags and do the above.

[johnhh]

@leeds1

check into WMT under the HTML suggestions.

done the same - no Panda improvement here. Just noticed that if another site linking to you adds a bit to a query string you get another duplicate ... and of course WMT is so behind what is happening on our site

[Karma]

If you

site:mysite.tld

should your root appear at #1? Seems like it does for most sites (just checked quite a few) but not mine.

[hippypink]

are a bunch of spam sites coming back from the grave too? I have seen a lot in various verticals