Going to Noindex 6000 Pages - Trying For Panda Recovery

[c41lum]

Im a long sufferer of Panda.

I have tried adding content (1000 word + articles), deleting content (410). Now Im at the point where Im about to noindex 6000 product pages, these pages are short 200 word product specific pages with affiliate links. They don't use any scraped content or manufactures descriptions, where we don't have content which is about 30% of the time we show a small spec sheet which we display in a unique way.

The site has been online for about 9 years now and has grown and adapted over time (no adwords), traffic is down about 80%, 60% because of panda, and 20% because of the changes and pages we removed for panda (we 410 about 10,000 thin pages back in april.

Once these pages are gone we expect to have only 1000 pages in the index. If we don't see a recovery in in these 1000 pages it would be turn the lights off time.

Has anybody else tried 'noindexing' this many pages and did it help?

[wiseapple]

Is it okay to "noindex" temporarily to see if it helps? Sounds drastic. I am worried with the Panda that timeline may be months to recover or see changes. Therefore, you have the issue of identifying if any of your changes have worked. They may of, but it might not Googlebot may not have crawled and incorporated all the changes.

Have you checked all the cache dates on your pages? Has Google picked up all of your changes?

[walkman]

c41lum,
IMO that site (and mine and other pandalized sites) has a stigma, a Scarlett letter attached to it by Panda. If Google has no better pages, certain pages might rank, but overall the site is marked and all pages are dragged down a certain amount. Most pages will easily sink, some may swim against all odds.

Will that change? Some say it might eventually if you change your content, others it will change IF you change the content AND IF Google presses a switch.

Looks like we are in uncharted territory.

[mslina2002]

My site is not as large as yours but I have deindexed about 3000 pages (80% of my site) of affiliate product pages and seen a rebound of traffic in Panda 2.2 (86% of prePanda). Before doing this however, I was able to identify prePanda that these pages were not drawing in hardly any traffic, were dupe or were blank - from WMT.

Often with large datafeed sites I look at:
(1) Dupe content due to parameter handling, search or query. Look at WMT parameter handling to solve this. Noindex search queries.

(2) Often times these dynamically created queries produce lots of blank pages. Identify and no index these.

(3) Look in WMT to identify pages that have been penalized. I have found many to be these datafeed pages. I looked at pages prePanda and postPanda.

I am working on adding back some product feed pages selectively and content to get back the prePanda level traffic since I am left with only 20% of the site.

[Shatner]

Won't help. Did that 3 months ago. Zero effect.

[Whitey]

My site is not as large as yours but I have deindexed about 3000 pages (80% of my site) of affiliate product pages and seen a rebound of traffic in Panda 2.2 (86% of prePanda).

I am working on adding back some product feed pages selectively and content to get back the prePanda level traffic since I am left with only 20% of the site.

@mslina2002 - Can you clarify the no's / approx. :

3750 pages
3000 pages deindexed
750 pages left

With these 750 pages you have returned to 86% of what you did pre Panda.

- is this 86% of traffic from only what the 750 pages produced, which is now 20% of the site, or
- is it 86% of the original pre Panda traffic for the entire site

Sorry - just wanted to get my head around these no's.

[c41lum]

Shatner- did you take out all of you thin/advertising/affiliate pages leave only big information packed pages left for Google to index.

[balibones]

I'm not making anymore big changes like that. We've already done it for several sites and it had zero effect. We've added tons of great new content, noindexed pages, deleted pages, redirected pages, removed ads... you name it. If it was prescribed to fix Panda we've done it on one or more sites. Piss-all has happened.

Just wait and see. I know it sucks, but that's all I'm doing now. We'll keep writing good content, building links and working social media like always, but we're not going to know how to get out of Panda until some sites REALLY start to come out.

Why noindex thousands of product pages that don't have any duplicate content if you don't have to? Just wait awhile longer and polish your resume just in case.

[c41lum]

The reason behind be removing the product pages would be lose the pages that are the thinnest on our site.

[mslina2002]

3750 pages
3000 pages deindexed
750 pages left

With these 750 pages you have returned to 86% of what you did pre Panda.

- is this 86% of traffic from only what the 750 pages produced, which is now 20% of the site, or
- is it 86% of the original pre Panda traffic for the entire site

Close. Here are the accurate numbers:

3660 pages
3099 pages deindexed
561 pages left

With these 561 pages I have returned to 86% of what I did pre Panda.

- This is 86% of the original pre Panda traffic for the entire site

So if PrePanda was 100%, now I am at 86% of the PrePanda traffic. This level is produced by the 561 pages that are left. Hope that makes sense.

I agree that you don't just simply have to noindex your datafeed pages. Do take a look at what type of pages they are duped, blanks, thin, or even if not thin do they add value, etc. Also, in addition to noindex, follow many pages, these were not the only actions I took to fix the site but the OP addressed noindexing pages. I might also add, what is left, are the main pages that have content. I am now slowly adding the datafeed pages in being careful with what is added.

[vphoner]

(2) Often times these dynamically created queries produce lots of blank pages. Identify and no index these.

(3) Look in WMT to identify pages that have been penalized. I have found many to be these datafeed pages. I looked at pages prePanda and postPanda.

I have some dynamic PHP pages. These pages help track outgoing links, and are empty otherwise, but google has indexed hundreds of them. Will these empty pages hurt, and if so, how can you noindex them? And should you or will that hurt your site more? I know that you cannot noindex a php script (I have tried), and I am not sure its wise to block a directory where you have the link www.mysite.com/getlink?s=244
as google may not like that either. Any suggestions on the best way to handle dynamic PHP scripts?

Where in WMT can you see penalized pages? I see a section that says pages blocked by robots.txt. Does google frown on pages blocked by robots.txt? It says on one of my sites that over 800 pages are blocked which is incorrect, as no pages are blocked currently. Maybe I should see if they can correct this.

[tedster]

Does google frown on pages blocked by robots.txt?

No - they just report it to you in case it's not what you intended.

[Whitey]

@mslina2002 - good result well done.

If this example is widespread, it just goes to show what a few pages can do, versus a whole heap of low quality pages. How did your conversion rates behave with that improvement?

[Onders]

Is a large scale "no-index" not likely to throw up some flags - especially if it doesn't follow the normal behaviour of your site?

Just a thought, but what about phasing this in by removing the links and letting them drop out of the serps over time? (assuming they don't have any inbound links of course - but then you can just do 301's top protect the juice)

[mslina2002]

Where in WMT can you see penalized pages?

When Panda 1 hit, VF wrote a great article on it. She gives examples on how to find these pages. Lots of good info and ideas there on where to look. [searchengineland.com...]

How did your conversion rates behave with that improvement?

Conversion rates have dropped because the datafeed pages are my money keyword pages. The 20% of the site that is left is the "informational" content part that draws in the traffic but many visitors are not in the buying phase yet. The site targets two main type of visitors in the buying life cycle. So the plan is to add those pages back in by allowing only selective indexing, updated content, meta tags, descriptions, etc.

Is a large scale "no-index" not likely to throw up some flags - especially if it doesn't follow the normal behaviour of your site?

Don't think so. It took months before G crawled all those pages and it's still not done yet. Especially since I experienced a major crawl right before Panda1 hit. Many of those pages were from pagination so the first page is index,follow while the other subsequent were noindex,follow. Google can still crawl, see them, and pass link juice.

[Whitey]

@mslina2002 - Do you suspect anything in your metrics and analytics that added to your revival, and why others who may done what you have done have not come back.

There's something that hits me. In the last week the conversion rate has doubled on traffic that has plunged 60% on a site with a Panda hit. I wonder, (if this signal holds given other factors may be in play as Google knows the metrics ) the site will come back with substantial quality improvements. There is a suggestion go around that the reiteration of the Panda update is taking around 30-40 days between refresh', but clearly recoveries are very limited.

[edited by: tedster at 5:38 am (utc) on Jun 25, 2011]

[scooterdude]

To me these percentages give me little pespective

if possible can you say what level of Uniques you are describing?

75% of 100, 1000, 10000 per day, per month

can mean very different things

[indyank]

To anyone adding noindex to pages, do it for just googlebot alone.Never do it for others and just because google has gone mad,it doesn't mean others are.

[c41lum]

@indyrank is there a way to just noindex for google, last time I looked it didnt work properly.

Before I make the jump I would like to see more evidence of other sites recovering. I think I am going to re-plan my section pages before I do the noindex. So that the "Time on Page"increases.

[indyank]

This should help - [google.com...]

[tangor]

noindex 6000 product pages, these pages are short 200 word product specific pages

Product you still sell? If so, keep it... that's your biz, else cut your nose off to spite your face. Panda is what it is and there are no magic ways to get back... but your product is what it is and requires page(s) to describe it.

PANIC is what is driving these conversations...which is understandable. But as a seller of product(s) G is not my only avenue...just the largest. There are other methods and SEs providing traffic and if product is desired by consumers can be sold.

KILLING 6,000 product pages, and a willingness to do so, indicates...to me...those 6,000 product pages are not 6,000 products.

Something ELSE is the Panda... and that's what needs to be discovered (which we can't, G is not giving out that info) and addressed.