The true panda recovery - not in traffic, but income

[whatson]

Well I am going to give it a little bit longer, maybe see what comes up at Pubcon, but after that I think I eventually give up. But I still have bills to pay, mortgages, and a baby and wife to feed.

So instead of trying to get my traffic back, by offering such a good service to my visitors, I may just cover it in ads, and sell links from all the pages. It may not get back quite to my original income, but I am sure it will make a difference.
Doesn't seem to be much to lose anyway.

Maybe if that's not enough perhaps delve into some black hat.

How does that sound Google? Think Panda is going to be better for your users now?

[walkman]

Google has moved whatson. Called it an improvement, let some that made a big noise out by rolling it back and that's it. Use Adwords.

[gadget26]

>> let some that made a big noise out by rolling it back and that's it,

Parse error. I keep reading it but it just makes my brain hurt.

[SEOPTI]

Whatson, give Bing a try, you won't regret it.

[whatson]

I have information site that makes money from adsense, adwords aint gonna help. And I hate Google now. It's Elitist BS, protecting the other elitist brands, stopping hard working entrepreneurs make anything.

I had a list of 10 travel web sites that I followed and wanted to look into purchasing later in the year. Of the 10, every single one was hit by panda, except one owned by Conde Naste, and another which is part of an offline travel book. i.e. the ones that are established brands.

[Reno]

All I can say is that for a while after Panda, Google was actually diminishing the quality of my life, not just because of the income drop, which was bad enough, but because for a short while I came to despise them. I still have not recovered the income, but I refuse to let this group of doublespeak elitists ruin my daily existence by granting them any more thought than they deserve, so I follow a bit of advice given here way back when ~ now I sleep at night, and I feel much better:

DO NOTHING FOR GOOGLE'S BENEFIT.

...........................

[whatson]

Think about it, you have to do something seriously @#$&ing bad to get people rooting for MICROSOFT! What a twist of fate.

Well maybe the government can do something about their new censorship algorithm and not leaving the hard working entrepreneur homeless on the streets.

[mrguy]

Think about it, you have to do something seriously @#$&ing bad to get people rooting for MICROSOFT! What a twist of fate.

That statement says a log. 5 years ago, it was blasphemy to speak ill of Google. Today, the majority of hard working webmasters can't stand them and the sad thing is Google could care less. They used us for what they wanted and now are moving on.

I suggest we all do the same. I know I have...

[whatson]

ADWORDS! - if you don't have a business that can benefit from and Adwords model, then it's all over. Besides the barriers to entry are just enormous for any new sites to rank in a profitable niche.

Well done Google, you got us all. Even after what we did for you.

Maybe we just all invest in call options for GOOG, and double up when they announce their next quarterly financials.

[walkman]

but I refuse to let this group of doublespeak elitists

...but I refuse to let this group of doublespeak looters... They will be known for what they are, unimaginative, shady, and unscrupulous looters. They are killing the The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs. Their sun is setting little by little, but they will try to burn as many as they can on their way down.

CHEATERS:
“You run the racetrack, own the racetrack, you didn’t have horses for a while but now you do and your horses seem to be winning.”

COMEDIANS:
"I'm not sure Google is a rational business trying to maximize its own profits, Senator. As we addressing in the IPO, founder's letter, Google is run under a set of principles quite profound within the company..."

[whatson]

They are killing the Geese that gave them the golden eggs too.
"Screw you we have plenty of money now, and don't need you."

[Hissingsid]

This sounds like November 2003 all over again. For a while all of us that were adversely affected hated Google with a vengeance then slowly we all started to try to understand what happened and what we needed to do to survive in the changed environment.

People advise stuff that boils down to "you were stupid to rely on one search engine now find other ways to communicate with your market". But it isn't easy to do that quickly enough to survive.

It seems to me that the only solution is to try to understand why those sites that are doing well out of the change are doing well. What mix of luck, serendipity, content, back links etc etc has caused the result. Then start to plan your reaction. Plus change your mental attitude to income generated by free traffic from Google, don't rely on it, work hard to get other income you can rely on and make hay while the Google sun shines on you because one day a "Google perfect storm" might well hit you and if you rely on that income you will be sitting in the middle of a disaster.

If you are sitting in the middle of a Google generated disaster now I recon all you can do is what you would do if you were hit by a real world disaster. Try and secure what you can and start building again by changing to suit the new environment.

Get over the Google hatred and start trying to understand.

Best wishes

Sid

[whatson]

I agree, somewhat, but 2003 was mainly to get rid of doorway pages and link exchanges, and some major link buyers, as to improve their index. This is a different game, now they want to improve their bottom line.

By that platitude people are stupid to rely on anything, a job, a 401k, social security, whatever. It is what it is.

I agree, I am not just sitting on my ass complaining, I am proactively doing all I can to analyze sites, and improve my own, but there is only so much that can be done, until you have to cut your loses.

I agree hating is not productive, but they have not played nicely, even when we have.

[chrisv1963]

Panda = Google censorship

If Google doesn't like certain pages of your website, then they should simply not include them in the index. Since Panda; an entire website, including the very good high quality pages, gets penalized because Google thinks that certain other pages are of low quality.

Google is FORCING us to remove pages that, according to their algo (not a real human being's opinion!) are of lower quality. What is the difference between this and censorship? If you refuse to remove those pages, then Google will happily continue the destruction of your business.

[koan]

What is the difference between this and censorship?

It's not the same. Censorship is not being able to express your opinions because an organization is suppressing it. Your pages are still online and available to all, Google just doesn't rank it highly in its own index. Now if the government or some corporation forced you to remove your offending pages, that would be censorship.

[whatson]

"Your web site won't be seen if you aren't on the first page of Google" - every SEO company

[chrisv1963]

Your pages are still online and available to all, Google just doesn't rank it highly in its own index.

I agree, your pages are still online. However, if you don't remove them the rest of your website (the "good" pages) won't rank and nobody will find it.

[walkman]

This sounds like November 2003 all over again. For a while all of us that were adversely affected hated Google with a vengeance then slowly we all started to try to understand what happened and what we needed to do to survive in the changed environment.

Kinda different, it has nothing to do with having a good site or not cheating. Here we have a the owner of the largest ad agency telling us that if you want to rank, become a brand. Or open your wallets, it's pay to play time.

[Hissingsid]

Kinda different, it has nothing to do with having a good site or not cheating. Here we have a the owner of the largest ad agency telling us that if you want to rank, become a brand. Or open your wallets, it's pay to play time.

I was meaning the expression of feelings from people who are affected sounding the same as the early days after November 2003. To be honest I'm not entirely sure that I understand what has happened in these panda changes but I sure want to find out.

[walkman]

I was meaning the expression of feelings from people who are affected sounding the same as the early days after November 2003. To be honest I'm not entirely sure that I understand what has happened in these panda changes but I sure want to find out.

In a nutshell: brands were excluded from penalties and what was left was analyzed by this algo. Seven months later it's hard to tell if any site has come out by doing changes, some came out but when Google made changes to the algo.

The other difference is that now Google hates sending clicks to other sites in e-commerce, they have given up on relevancy in exchange for a lot money for them. Call them a MFA junk site.

[MrSavage]

You can change your site, fix this fix that. You ain't going to change philosophy which means good luck with creating that masterpiece that might someday be worthy for organic traffic in a subject that people actually care about. Clever SEO vs. Google new philosophy? Good luck with your SEO plans.

[ronalds8]

Really depressing thread. I´m still reading, thinking and working on my site. Not going to give up anytime soon.

[Hissingsid]

In a nutshell: brands were excluded from penalties and what was left was analyzed by this algo. Seven months later it's hard to tell if any site has come out by doing changes, some came out but when Google made changes to the algo.

In my little niche that isn't at all apparent. There's been a shuffle in the top 10 for the big $ terms but nothing dramatic. The other main thing I've noticed is huge bounce rates in new long tail terms that shouldn't provide me with traffic in the first place.

In terms of recovery there must be factors that have resulted in those sites that have shuffled upwards moving in that direction. Surely if you can identify those you have a chance of moving back up the rankings.

[walkman]

In terms of recovery there must be factors that have resulted in those sites that have shuffled upwards moving in that direction. Surely if you can identify those you have a chance of moving back up the rankings.

Sure we can and don't even need to identify anything.
[bing.com...]

Been reading and doing things for 7 months. You had people saying we did x and moved back up, other did x and got a worse traffic drop. Others did nothing and still were moved back up.

Yes, Panda has screwed bounce rates for many sites as well.

[conroy]

It's not a bad idea. You can sell a lot of links etc. and make up a lot of income. There's just that 1% hope that holds you back and makes you think Google will come to its senses.

[tangor]

They are killing the The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs.

Not that anyone will do it... but the way to kill King Midas is to remove the goose. Imagine the value Google will have if EVERY WEBMASTER ON THE PLANET BLOCKS THEIR BOT WITH A NO ARCHIVE NO CACHE or NO INDEX. If there are no results... well... as I said, I doubt anyone will do this... but that's how you get THEIR attention.

[seoskunk]

I don't think your regain your income through ads as your traffic is down so no one to click the adverts. For me its the same problem. However I am doing ok on bing/yahoo

[Planet13]

I had a list of 10 travel web sites that I followed and wanted to look into purchasing later in the year. Of the 10, every single one was hit by panda, except one owned by Conde Naste, and another which is part of an offline travel book. i.e. the ones that are established brands.

Just a random thought here...

Maybe it isn't so much that the main google algorithm is rewarding brands, so much as being a brand is an antidote to Panda...

[seoskunk]

Maybe it isn't so much that the main google algorithm is rewarding brands, so much as being a brand is an antidote to Panda...

I am off to change my whois to Amazon...........:)

[whatson]

Sure, but it essentially the same result in the end, isn't it. I am just lucky I didn't take a big mortgage on my house and buy one of these sites. But if I work out how to get out of Panda, I can make some serious money.