Google Updates and SERP Changes - Aug 2011

[zeus]

< continued from: [webmasterworld.com...] >

any news on Panda update, I know a lot of us are still stuck and haven't seen any real movement in serps even with changes made to sites.

Have we seen a roll back yet?
Is Panda update done?
Is it time to dump the sites and just let them flow on the net and make new once.?
will I shoot a goal at soccer today?

[edited by: tedster at 1:47 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2011]

[tedster]

SEOArnold: I dont think this is to do with the backlinks being created so I wondering if its due to a Google update or there is an issue with my sites.

First, welcome to the forums.

If all your rankings dropped about the same amount that almost screams "backlink penalty". Why do you feel that's not the case - especially if you are "creating" backlinks?

[trakkerguy]

@SEOArnold - I had a similar experience. On july 28th, 5 of my sites in the same niche were all hit with a -50 penalty. They were all ranking top 10 for similar keywords before they were hit.

I had a webmastertools account and received notice that they were perceived as doorway pages. The notice said to file a reconsideration request once the issues were addressed. I have to yet got around to it.

They were origionally very different sites, but had recently been converted to use the same wordpress theme, with links and banners pointing to the same online store.

I believe it is the common themes and links that did not pass a manual review.

Perhaps you should signup for a webmastertools (if not already) account and check for such a message.

[AG4Life]

The slight recovery first seen on 4th August disappeared yesterday, it lasted exactly two weeks. Haven't done anything before or after to warrant any changes, so who knows. Just seen one of my tutorials drop down a few places for a common search phrase - this tutorial is fairly recent, completely original, well researched, well linked to, well liked (on Facebook), and it's now ranking below a Yahoo answers post from 4 years ago that only had 1 positive vote.

Oh well, at least it's still the first result on Bing.

[bl4nket]

panda keeps bouncing my site around for my particular keywords every week.

[zoltan]

Just search for this phrase: "sale of insecticides in [city]". The top 3 results point to 3 property websites advertising [city= properties! How relevant is this for me when I am looking for insecticides? What does google tell me? "Hey, we can't show you insecticides in [city], why don't you buy some houses instead?"

[edited by: tedster at 2:17 pm (utc) on Aug 20, 2011]
[edit reason] obscure the full search phrase [/edit]

[SEOArnold]

Hi trakkerguy


I think you are spot on with this. This would make a lot of sense. Can I ask you if you were able to recover from this problem, what you needed to do and how long it took.

I have 3 weeks to recover rankings, so the pressure is on.

Once again, thanks for your response.... I owe you one :)

We have a form which when filled in, redirects to our main

[SEOArnold]

trakkerguy

I added my sites to webmsters tools and there the message is! Great tip friend. Thank you very much

[danijelzi]

Checked SERPs today and for a widget x search term and there's five "widget x price in india" sites ranking on the first page.

Checked these pages and:
-all have shallow content
- large 728x and 336x ad units, pushing that thin content below the fold
- all these price in India pages have almost the same text and the same images

Maybe their success key is diversity of content on their sites, although it shallow. They have multiple sections about various products, whereas for example sites focused only on widgets and with high quality pages about them are de-ranked.

Another interesting thing is high number of Facebook likes on one of these awful price in india pages.

[trakkerguy]

@SEOArnold - Glad to help with a clue.

I haven't bothered revising the sites and applying for reconsideration yet. Too busy with new projects, but hoping to try a couple of the most important ones this coming week.

Good luck with your reconsideration - please keep us posted.

[SEOArnold]

Hi trakkerguy

The tip was very good!

I have resubmitted 1 site and waiting for Google to give the verdict. Will post back here the results.

[Ludacris]

Some websites have gone from rankings , it's quite depressing for me , but yaa . i m sure it will be better soon

[Martin Ice Web]

@Ludacris,

it will not be better, cause most of the webpages will disappear only scrappers will survive.
And if i take a look at the serps today, this day will not be far away. Itīs another day to make a cross in calendar for realy bad google search results. Google turn of the "i think i know what u are searching for" high misleaded engine..... Tha would help a lot.

[dataguy]

I'm seeing a huge increase in google referrals, starting early evening, yesterday. I'm not seeing anyone else talking about it. Maybe it's just me.

Anyone?

[ohno]

We had a massive traffice spike yesterday and really good sales to match. Today has been dead though? GA has been green for weeks now though! Traffic on one domain well down today but well up on another.

[bl4nket]

shake for my keyword in australia.

[SEOPTI]

Something changed today. Rankings on long tails still the same but -30% traffic reduction on all sites.

[Tallon]

My traffic is holding fairly steady the past few weeks but a few keyword test searches last night struck terror, my site was stripped from the results (even the pages that are true authority pages in that niche, links and links rolling in for years). Results were different on my iPad (normal).

Today it's back to normal, but who knows what that meant. The sites that I compete with were gone too, it was all replaced by brands or small blogs and websites coming from who knows where.

I was hit with panda 2.0 (about 20%-30% loss), but have been able to hold on with all the tweaks since. I'm afraid something wicked might be coming.

[YieldBuild]

On the evening of the 23rd, just about six months to the day since Panda we started seeing increase in traffic - largely across the board.

[dataguy]

I'm with YieldBuild, 6 months to the day after Panda we're seeing an increase in traffic that can't be explained by changes we've made. (We've recovered about 30% of our traffic that we lost since Panda, but this is on top of that.

[Vrian_Sinth]

I was hit by Panda 2.3 resulting in about 25-30% traffic loss. I made it through 1.0, 2.0. 2.1 and 2.2. Slowly, over the past 2 weeks, traffic has increased by about 10%. I'm still hurting on important keywords, but thankful I am at least seeing a slight increase. I'm hoping that changes I have made (mostly improved content) will reap some benefits when 2.4 rolls around.

[Lapizuli]

Dataguy & YieldBuild: Might they have re-run something specifically on sites that converted to subdomains?

[dataguy]

Ah, didn't realize that YieldBuild was associated with Hubpages. I assume that means that what our sites have in common is our recent conversion to subdomains. Interesting.

[jmorgan]

Noticed a slight drop in traffic starting from about the 26/27 of August. Anyone else notice anything around these dates?

[dazzlindonna]

jmorgan, quite possibly Hurricane Irene caused the drop in traffic.

[jmorgan]

Quite possibly. Thanks dazzlindonna.

[MrSavage]

Just curious, is this the fewest posts ever in a Updates and SERP Changes thread? Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. If you want to read into it, the lack of posting here says to me about the mindset out there in the world of webmasters. Perhaps it's the summer effect?

[tedster]

I think the lower number of posts in this general thread is due to the fact that we have several other threads dedicated to one specific change. Often we end up moving those into this one thread, but this month the dedicated threads seemed important enough to keep them as stand-alone.

[Zivush]

Using Sub-domains or Not: Can It Help You Out of Google Panda Penalty?
Please specify.
Haven't heard of any recoveries - seems that articlebase is also start using this strategy. Any thoughts?

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[edited by: tedster at 9:52 pm (utc) on Sep 2, 2011]