Did a Google dial get turned 09/22? Rankings pre-Panda plus...

[Terabytes]

Just wondering if anyone has experienced any "amazing" ranking recovery in the last 48 hours?

I normally don't have knee-jerk reactions to ranking shifts (ever in the last 13 years), and did lose about 6-8 spots post-Panda. (minor by some of the post I read here)

Over the last 48 hours, my main site, and "several" customer sites have returned to the top of the serps. I was totally amazed...


Note: I did nothing, absolutely NOTHING to my main site post panda or anytime in the last "several" months to warrent the change. (no link building other than whatever came naturally)

Just wondering...
thanks for your time!
Tera

[Robert Charlton]

Terabytes - I took a very quick look, and yes, I'm also seeing several big changes.

Most significantly... I notice, eg, that one page, which had apparently vanished for dupe issues because it had been scraped to death, now returned to its previous #2 spot, beneath the home page, for a competitive single word search... suggesting that perhaps some dupe filters have been adjusted. There's also now a + box, for displaying additional results on the query for that domain.

(This may simply mean, though, another round of testing, as often those extra results are what Google is using to test searcher intent).

On the same site... I'm also seeing some pages that I knew had weak content with iffy linking drop even lower... and pages on which we'd put in some work rise slightly, say from #6 to #4.

Other pages, which had dropped far enough down that I didn't monitor them, are now returned to the top 10. It's unusual to see this much change in a brief period.

This is a site that had for the most part retained its core rankings and had not been hit by any kind of sitewide Panda filter. Most of my other client sites had been pretty stable through all this, and these are the only effects I can report immediately.

[Terabytes]

Ok! Thanks for the reply.. I'll have to check out a few site results to see if it holds true across the board.

I actually had to check the results on several computers to be sure it wasn't something that was being manipulated by personal settings.

(saw some of my competitors that were ranking above me take a nose dive at the same time) :)

[dsoneil]

I'm seeing my stats returing to their normal numbers (gains of 40% on visitors).

[Terabytes]

The more I look around the more excited I get (hope it lasts)

I did notice that several and I do mean "several" terms that I have held for years now return the sites main page in the serps instead of the actual page that was ranking for that term..

Seems a bit backwards, now the user has to "find" the correct page that they were searching for (via page link)instead of being delivered to the actual page...

not all the pages are doing this, however for me a large percent are...

[walkman]

@dsoneil
what time were you hit?

Checked my Panda site - not much of a change, or minor but better Bounce Rate.
The same for my sites that gained during Panda, almost no change I can notice. They served almost as a proxy, my Pandalized site would lose and they'd gain, even though they are in totally unrelated categories. My guess would be that if Panda released many sites, I'd lose some on my non-Panda sites, or part of what they gained.

That said, we're overdue.

[dsoneil]

@walkman seems to have hit late Wednesday and has been going strong since. My traffic loss stems from an unknown change back in July that took my traffic down by half. Yesterday was the best day since then and no single page was responsible (nicely spread out).

[Simsi]

I have a news section on a site that got hit about 2 months ago. Didn't attribute it to Panda but it's news that is purchased from a legitimate and quality news agency. About 20 sites use it and we publish quickly and used to rank 1st/2nd consistently on stories. Then it tanked - just the news section that is. Today it's back.

[gehrlekrona]

Nothing for me. If anything, it's worse.
I have noticed in the past that usually when things happen, both bad and good, with Google then it is happening in clusters. They take like widget sites and do whatever they are doing to them and then they go over to another taxonomy and fiddle with that for a while so even if someone is seeing something, it might not mean that is is happening all over the board, so, there is still hope, right?

[gehrlekrona]

What I have seen is auto-generated sites are ranking higher today than usual. :(

[dazzlindonna]

So far, I'm not seeing anything different, but I'll keep my eyes peeled in case something is happening in waves or clusters.

[ascensions]

I'm seeing verticals drop on all sites simultaneously, by huge margins.

[ibmethatswhoib2]

yup on the 22nd I had a big drop for 3 of my sites.

[robzilla]

Two-page drop for a 3-month old site in the SERPs for its trophy/vanity keyword, without any drastic changes. Used to be on a slow climb.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Massive drop (50%) on the 22nd. My site is 50% informational pages (guides, how to, etc) and 50% transactional pages (mix of affiliate and my product) and ONLY the transactional pags got nuked. eBay has jumped to top 3 on almost all major transactional (product) keywords related to my niche followed by mostly big brand stores.

Prior to the change smaller stores and informational sites did rank for transactional queries.... but not anymore.

BIG change imo. Google is indeed favoring known big brands since the 22nd, unfortunately I can't match their ad spend or pr department budgets so... thanks Google.

[sebastianzinke]

Is this all with regards to rankings in the US or also other regions?

[Terabytes]

Well my meteoric recovery was short lived.. Most of the high ranking I enjoyed for 48 hours is now back to what it was earlier in the week.. Sorry to get everyones hopes up..

I used to feel that SEO was the worlds greatest video game.. But it seems the game is really "whack-a-mole" what a shame.. Been in "the game" for a long, long time and I'm beginning to have my doubts about retaining my "contender" status as time goes by...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Question - if your site sells product or has affiliate offers do you see big brand stores atop the rankings again?

I too did nothing to my top site in the past several years besides add new content and articles as warranted. The hit on my site was sudden and very page type specific.

[robzilla]

Is this all with regards to rankings in the US or also other regions?

Europe for me, but I was wondering the same thing.

[gehrlekrona]

@terabytes... A couple of years ago I predicted that SEO for Google would be "worthless". I could see changes already backthen that would make it really hard figure out how to optimize when you have their algo that takes every little minute thing into account plus you have all the user information they have collected over the years about us searchers.
It would be interesting to see if we all made the same query and compare what we got. It should be run in intervalls since I think a result of a query now is not the same as it will be in the near future. I think Google re-index all the time according to the user, the query and what time of day and country.

[madsuh]

I am very very worried as my organic traffic suddenly came to pretty much a halt last Friday. We have been working very hard on content in the last 2 years and have 0 duplicated content with many thousand travel guides, tips and other travel related info. We are also publishing a successful blog which gets quite a bit off traffic.
Everything stalled last Friday and since we are operating in the travel industry which is very competitive, this will be very hard on us, in fact, I fear that we will not survive this drop for more than 2-3 months.

How do we find out about what happened and what can we do to get our SERPs back?

Can someone describe the steps? To my knowledgde we are 100% white-hat SEOs and have not changed anything in terms of structure or coding on the site. Google always liked our structure and we have indexed really well sometimes within less than an hour of new content being posted.

I have to pay my employees and really need the emergency hotline which Google does not provide.

Can anyone help in here?

Thanks!

[walkman]

I have to pay my employees and really need the emergency hotline which Google does not provide.

Can anyone help in here?

many here have been like this for 7 months, did whatever we thought Google told us and kept losing even more traffic. No recourse. You may want to try the Google support forums, maybe a Googler sees it, assuming your site is really good. Either way be prepared for insults from Gogle's unpaid 'bionic posters.'

[Terabytes]

ok, so Monday morning and the high rankings have returned. Actually some of the terms return my site as the top 3 results (the main page, the actual page that refers to the search term, and a page of examples of that term)

and Adsense revenue is actually thru the roof already this morning.. Hope it sticks...

[indyank]

Terabytes, what is your traffic like (per day)? How many pages on your site drive 90% of that traffic?

[ErnestHemingway]

Serious change in SERPS. Likewise I have gotten my old rankings for most of my sites but one got pushed to 2nd position. But I see a lot of shakings.

[Robert Charlton]

I'm thinking that Google is in testing mode. Today, I'm seeing changes in titles used in Sitelinks and mini-Sitelinks, and it appears that some different pages are being evaluated in the Sitelinks spots.

The page which had emerged from duplication limbo is now also ranking for a multi-word phrase that matches a title for the page that Google had previously returned in Sitelinks. During the time that the title had been suggested in Sitelinks, though, the page did not rank on a search for that phrase.

Now, the Sitelinks title has changed, but the page is ranking for the previously suggested title phrase if you enter the phrase as a query. Hope that's clear. ;)

Other results more or less unchanged.

[walkman]

I'm thinking that Google is in testing mode.

I agree, they are cooking something again, I just see some shuffling and a very high bounce rate.

[gyppo]

Exact same thing happened to me, rankings tanked on the 22nd then returned again this morning (not to pre-panda levels, probably about 10% total recovery).

[gehrlekrona]

and mine is like non-existent once again... I just wish they would make up their mind one way or another so you know what to expect, not this stupid back and forth and back again, all within 24 hours.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

It was a test to gather downstream traffic data, if you send too many visitors to a downline store (ie:affiliate, your store on another site, etc) your traffic is reduced from those pages and Google hands the traffic directly to the store.