Google Updates and SERP Changes - Sep 2011

[indyank]

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

There were declines for hubpages after the initial traffic improvements. But 23 aug seem to have reversed the downward trend and they are almost back to pre-panda levels. Sub-domain strategy is proving to be fruitful for this large content farm. This might help the other larger content farms to recover as well.But it might not help the mid and small sized sites and they will remain hurt. Here is why I feel that way.

Hubpages are creating sub domains at the user level and not at the topic level. I am noticing several of their current top ranking pages are from users who post on a variety of topics. This beats the theory that panda is favoring topic focused sites.But what surprises me is the upward movement of some low quality pages from poor quality writers. I have examples of such sub domains which I cannot share here.

So what is really helping them? As I understand it, the move to sub domains are helping them beat the panda's sitewide penalty. This suggests that the sitewide drag enforced by the google panda algorithm is very strong.

But why will this subdomain strategy help only the large content farms and not the smaller ones?

The relatively smaller and mid sized sites can branch off to only a fewer sub domains, in comparison to what the bigger content farms could. Hubpages have now created a large number of subdomains. I am guessing that the panda algo isn't applied to several of them. The smaller sizes of these new sub domains are probably helping them keep a distance from the panda evaluation.

If other bigger content farms intend trying the sub domain strategy, they should follow the hubpages model as it is and create sub domains based on useror any other unitthat will lower the number of pages per sub domain.

I guess that this will be relatively difficult for mid and smaller sized sites, as the number of authors will be less and hence pages per author will be high enough to be trapped by the panda net.

[edited by: tedster at 9:55 pm (utc) on Sep 2, 2011]

[ohno]

Urm, has anyone been onto GMT's today? Mine looks slightly odd!I have home at the top and some large icons which when clicked say nothing to report! These seem to link to the non www versions of our domains! Edited to add, I've now added the www versions and the site appears as a preview in the list, is there a way to post a picture on here? I was on there yesterday and we 100% had the www versions in the account! What on earth is going on?!

[tigger]

@azn romeo 4u

I know a site thats ranking for a very competitive term and only came back in last week, the webmaster died 3 years ago so has not been touched and the wife just renews the hosting to make a bit of cash ! - Thats the reward G makes to webmasters that work hard at getting fresh new content into sites

[Hissingsid]

@Minnapple "A few were hit with Panda, and others were pushed down by big brand sites."

What do big brand sites have that others don't?

I don't think it is the fact that they are big brand sites but something else that big brand sites have by chance. If we can find what "it" is then we might stand a chance.

[ohno]

Money! Sorry but I have never seen a big site get hammered like the small players do. I see now eBay feature in ads with thumbnails of products to draw the eye even more from organic results.

[Whitey]

There has to be a branding bias ,or the site's I watch are so well optimized nobody can beat them.

On one popular search phrase I'm seeing 4 results in the top 10 for the same site. Hardly necessary.

[tabish]

Google gone mad.. I have same IP and everytime I search something it says "Looks like you moved, want to use Google.com instead?" Looks like their local algorithm is not working. Something big is going on..

[ohno]

Traffic quality looking much better today for us & we've actually made some £££ which is a bonus!

[Freedom]

If you want to rank well in Google, have a 10 year old site that you haven't touched in 1 or more years. That's what I've learned from since Panda 1.0.

Don't get any links to it, don't redesign it, don't add or subtract content, don't change the meta title - don't do anything, and Google thinks you are a good webmaster.

[tabish]

@Freedom I have not touched my website for more than a year and now for past 3 days my traffic is 90% dropped. And also my site is 9 years old. What you have to say about it?

[ohno]

Not what we see, the site IS 10 years old but products & content are always being updated. Traffic sstill way up & sales keep coming in. Yesterday not a bean now today this?!

[Freedom]

What you have to say about it?

That nothing is ever black and white with Google. What applies to one webmaster, may never apply to another, and that sooner or later, google will trash your site, and when you have given up on it, it will probably come back...for awhile, only to be trashed again in a year or two. Google has a bipolar, love-hate view towards websites & webmasters.

That's what 10+ years of doing this has taught me.

If you want to be safe from Google's bipolar algo changes, you should probably have about 20 well-written, original, high quality websites that are +5 years old in order to be diversified. It will probably take as much work and time as 10 years of medical school and pay a lot less in the end.

If you are doing it for the money, you will go crazy and bitter in the end, but if you are in a niche you love, it might, eventually, be kind of personally rewarding and you might make a little bit of money.

If you are young, you should probably find another career path that is more stable.

That's my honest viewpoint.

[ohno]

TBH it was all very stable for us on two seperate sites until May Day. That was when the stress started.......

[HuskyPup]

If you want to rank well in Google, have a 10 year old site that you haven't touched in 1 or more years.

Maybe, maybe not, I have a new widget site I started constructing in May with some 200+ pages so far and nearly every page ranks on Google.com first page and nearly all images are above the fold.

This site is now beating most of the sites that were promoted by Panda 2.1, in my case generally Chinese Alibaba type of sites, and in quite a few widget searches also outranking my own 17 year old site!

And yes, the new site is superior in every respect to the original site. Insofar as my widgets are concerned it is probably the best reference site, or book, or anything else ever produced however completing an extra 10 pages a week is a real PITA with all the research involved but definitely worthwhile.

Caveat...I am not an ecommerce transactional site!

[Freedom]

I started a new site in May, it was on the first and second page after a few months, I did everything that is safe and well accepted to promote it, and it got slammed on the 22nd with the -50 penality. My gut feeling is that if I leave it alone, it'll probably slowly start to come back.

[Freedom]

Sorry, I meant 26th.

[nettulf]

Daniweb is hit again with 50% less trafic. Something is really going on... Just saw it on the google webmaster forum.

[dazzlindonna]

Yep was just reading about daniweb. According to an article about it, a google rep admitted that an iteration of Panda was implemented this week.

< moderator note: here's a link to that article an confirmation from Google:
DaniWeb Loses Over Half of Traffic: The Panda is Back [webpronews.com] >

[edited by: tedster at 6:12 pm (utc) on Sep 30, 2011]

[Shatner]

That's interesting. Sounds like Daniweb and I are on the same track.

We were both hit in the first round of Panda. Both started to see recovery in the past few months, both slapped with another 50% loss by this current Panda run.

Awful.

[Shatner]

Honestly right now I almost wish we had never recovered at all.

To spend 6 months working 14 hours a day to recover, recover for three months, and then be shoved back into the Panda bin is just about the most soul crushing thing ever.

I imagine Dani from Daniweb is feeling just about the same right now. I should get hold of her and form some sort of support group. Ugh.

[chrism]

I think we've been hit pretty badly this time around. What I can conclusively say is the sites hit for us all have a significant number of articles from one of our writers that we got rid of for gradually deteriorating spelling and grammar. The sites she wasn't involved with at all haven't been affected. Could be coincidence of course!

We had scheduled time in to go through those articles, it's just been assigned a higher priority!

[dazzlindonna]

Shatner, you might want to see if you can find any similarities between your site and daniweb's. Perhaps the similar fall/rise/fall will show some clues.

[ScubaAddict]

Honestly right now I almost wish we had never recovered at all.

@Shatner - I agree. In Feb Google flushed 13 years of work down the drain. After doing everything possible these last months to recover (and gaining some ground) we got flushed again. Now there is nowhere left to look for improvement - It's already been done to the best of my ability. And now the last 7 months have been wasted - and for what? I know my product is much better then what my competitors offer, and always has been.

Google is a sham, and I hate them.

[Shatner]

@dazzlindonna My site couldn't be more completely different from Daniweb if it tried. Completely different in every way.

[walkman]

@Shatner - I agree. In Feb Google flushed 13 years of work down the drain. After doing everything possible these last months to recover (and gaining some ground) we got flushed again. Now there is nowhere left to look for improvement - It's already been done to the best of my ability. And now the last 7 months have been wasted - and for what? I know my product is much better then what my competitors offer, and always has been.

Google is a sham, and I hate them.

To spend 6 months working 14 hours a day to recover, recover for three months, and then be shoved back into the Panda bin is just about the most soul crushing thing ever.

I don't want to say bad things about Google because I was asked not to in different ways, but I feel your pain, month seven for me too. Time to consider all options, especially regarding a future profession, things are being consolidated and we weren't invited.

We should, however, put aside the non-sense that Google analyses text and pandalizes sites because of it. It's obvious that sites like Daniweb didn't change enough of their pages within a month to go from high quality to low quality. It's myth spread by some so people assume that Panda is just and rational.

[edited by: walkman at 7:31 pm (utc) on Sep 30, 2011]

[Panthro]

Maybe Daniweb should add ads this time.

[dataguy]

I'm with walkman, I don't think Panda has anything to do with text analysis, ads or even link structure.

Personally I think Google has a list of domain names that they want suppressed in their SERPs, and improving our sites may improve rankings just because they are good changes, but our sites are still on their list and eventually they will be suppressed again.

And I'm on the same track as Daniweb and Shatner. I'm sure there are thousands of us.

[ScubaAddict]

You know what? I've spent over 100K in adwords, I've made a lot in adsense, I've attended Google developer conferences, I've attended their webinars, I've integrated their maps and other technologies into my websites, I've promoted their enterpise services and hardware to my own employers and our school district, who have ALL adopted their services! I've been interviewed for case studies by the adsense team. I've been their champion in many verticals for many, many years.

They have now flushed my site down the toilet 2 times. And I can't get ONE - JUST ONE F***ING googler to give me a clue as to WHY they are doing this to me?

Just like on February 24th, I think I have again been classified incorrectly by Google. But now I know 2 things about Panda that I didn't know in February: 1. There is no reason & 2. There is no hope.

[walkman]

They have now flushed my site down the toilet 2 times. And I can't get ONE - JUST ONE F***ING googler to give me a clue as to WHY they are doing this to me?

Just like on February 24th, I think I have again been classified incorrectly by Google. But now I know 2 things about Panda that I didn't know in February: 1. There is no reason & 2. There is no hope.

That's the worst, lack of knowing what to know and absolute randomness. it would be funny if people's livelihoods weren't at stake. Their 'guidance' is one big joke for me and niche. Did you check it out? [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...] maybe it applies to yours but then why did the site come back to disappear again?

[tedster]

I agree - it's extremely painful and extremely mysterious why some sites (and I'm sure it is in the thousands) have been nailed by Panda. There are many pandalyzed sites I've seen that don't seem to show the kind of low quality signs that Google has described as being Panda's target.

Now that we have another confirmed Panda iteration, I hope more revealing data can be accumulated by SEOs so we can dig out of this mystery - and it is definitely a mystery to me and many others. There are sites that didn't get demoted and still seem to be in the various profiles that many assume is at work.

We don't see Panda clearly - and that's about all I have to share right now. The easy answers just don't work.

[Dave_Hybrid]

Agreed, ive done everything they asked. No ads, not one. Page speed in WMT down from 9 to 2sec. Running a premium DNS and CDN service.

The site cannot get any better code wise using todays tech. Improved user experience, new features, better navigation... Improved design look.

Added +1 and Facebook like and all get used well. Reduced bounce and increased time on site/page views per user.

My 1,000's of forum members love the site even more that they did. Posts and threads are through the roof but after THREE months still Google hates me.

Im not a scraper, im not ehow or answers.c0m. Im a informational site among the top 5 in a competitive niche. I rank no 1 for the money keyword that all sites in my niche chase, so isnt that some kind of verification. Yet long tail is in the mud.

I just dont get it. It makes no sense.