New Panda Update - September 27

[BrodyDodes]

Google rolled out its most recent iteration of the Panda algorithm on Wednesday 9/28/11 (or Tuesday according to who you ask). Saw the first recovery of one of my punished sites since the first iteration back in February. Anyone else see recoveries?


[webpronews.com...]

When asked if an iteration of Panda was implemented this week, a Google spokesperson told us, “yes.” She also provided the following statement:

“We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”

If you’ve followed the Google Panda update saga throughout the year, you may recall Dani Horowitz’s story. She runs an IT discussion community called Daniweb, and it was hit hard by the Panda update, but she made a lot of changes, and gradually started to build back some Google cred

[tedster]

I edited the headline to this thread for a couple reasons. First, we've been tracking this new update in the thread Google Updates and SERP Changes - September 2011 [webmasterworld.com] and the first sign showed up on September 26.

And second, for some reason that article you linked to completely missed that there was a Panda update in August [webmasterworld.com]. So if we were continuing with the numbered versions (which we're not - that's going to get silly in just a few months) this Panda update would be version 2.5

I'm happy to hear you recovered your traffic. To date, we've only heard about further losses.

[ascensions]

I could possibly have a minor recovery, though it's way to early to tell. Unfortunately I've not see adsense increase with the traffic, but traffic is considerably higher the last few days than previously.

[seoskunk]

No not really although traffic has gone up by 100% from google in last few days so maybe a part recovery, i am concentrating on bing and see a slow increase in serps there.

[gehrlekrona]

I just can't figure out what Panda is, just everybody else. I know Google has been working on "user experience" so is their take on user experience what is being implemneted now using Panda? If it is, how to they know if the user experience is good or bad?
I guess they can tell if a user goes to a site from the SERPS and then come back in a couple of seconds. The user either didn't like the site or it wasn't responsive fast enough. So I guess that's a G-. If you block the site, then they might get another G- if not more. Then we have the Google+ for people who likes your site (I see that Webmasterworld here has 0 G+ and it's not because people dislike the site but just isn't interested in G+) so if you have one click on the G+ button, you still have one G-, so is it just simple math? They most likely have a lot of other things to monitor and calculate user experience, and I think it has a lot to do with what we are seeing. The "old" way of SEO might work too but together with the Panda Math I think Panda wins...

[dickbaker]

I can't get this to format properly, so it's not going to be easy to read.

This shows the rankings I had for 300 phrases on 12/27/2010, on 6/28/2011 and on 9/28/2011. It also shows the change in ranking.

After I got hit with Panda 1.0, I tried all sorts of things to see if anything would help. I didn't notice a difference, and so I stopped tinkering with the site in late June, and started concentrating on paid ads, and possibly a new website.

Anyway, there's been some upward movement for phtases as of 9/28. The phrases that have moved up the most are very long tail, though, and my traffic hasn't been affected. I'm seeing an increase in traffic, but it's seasonal.

The first number in each row is the rank on 12/27/2010. The second number is the rank on 6/28/2011. The third number is the change from 12/27 to 6/18. The fourth number is the rank on 9/28/2011, and the fifth number is the change from 6/28 to 9/28 Where you see the #Value symbol or a "-" means that the phrase dropped out of sight.

I hope this can give a glimpse of something that might be of help.

7.4 18 -10.6 11 7
7.9 84 -76.1 34 50
9 100 -91 110 -10
7.9 40 -32.1 21 19
39 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
22 102 -80 135 -33
23 176 -153 135 41
7.7 36 -28.3 9 27
3.2 9 -5.8 14 -5
6.3 32 -25.7 3 29
6.1 15 -8.9 18 -3
7 42 -35 16 26
9.4 23 -13.6 16 7
10 56 -46 40 16
14 52 -38 28 24
1.6 11 -9.4 9 2
4.1 51 -46.9 23 28
3.3 16 -12.7 14 2
7.6 23 -15.4 10 13
5.1 31 -25.9 21 10
7.1 32 -24.9 30 2
7.5 26 -18.5 21 5
9.2 40 -30.8 29 11
10 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.8 15 -9.2 7 8
3.1 13 -9.9 9 4
15 56 -41 - #VALUE!
9.9 159 -149.1 53 106
37 - #VALUE! 93 #VALUE!
3.4 13 -9.6 22 -9
9 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
3 88 -85 196 -108
11 92 -81 - #VALUE!
6.3 15 -8.7 15 0
11 - #VALUE! 48 #VALUE!
35 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
8 43 -35 39 4
3.7 15 -11.3 19 -4
26 84 -58 124 -40
21 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9.7 - #VALUE! 36 #VALUE!
4.7 106 -101.3 13 93
5.2 14 -8.8 14 0
6.4 51 -44.6 35 16
19 - #VALUE! 50 #VALUE!
7.1 27 -19.9 25 2
9.5 23 -13.5 16 7
4.9 157 -152.1 55 102
12 16 -4 17 -1
13 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
15 132 -117 - #VALUE!
5.2 55 -49.8 17 38
16 - #VALUE! 195 #VALUE!
10 39 -29 21 18
9.9 - #VALUE! 26 #VALUE!
3.7 52 -48.3 15 37
18 192 -174 92 100
21 19 2 22 -3
5.9 50 -44.1 142 -92
1 10 -9 8 2
2.5 12 -9.5 15 -3
3.6 - #VALUE! 14 #VALUE!
11 90 -79 111 -21
7 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.8 17 -11.2 15 2
5.4 19 -13.6 22 -3
5.1 8 -2.9 18 -10
5.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9 24 -15 27 -3
5.6 179 -173.4 28 151
9.5 - #VALUE! 197 #VALUE!
32 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5 8 -3 6 2
41 104 -63 106 -2
4.7 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
2.4 8 -5.6 5 3
3.7 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9 138 -129 109 29
5.9 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9.6 34 -24.4 28 6
5.4 36 -30.6 16 20
4.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.7 18 -12.3 17 1
4 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5 15 -10 22 -7
9.4 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
14 138 -124 - #VALUE!
71 91 -20 112 -21
12 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
8.2 71 -62.8 27 44
6.2 50 -43.8 29 21
6.9 20 -13.1 8 12
22 160 -138 93 67
12 - #VALUE! 36 #VALUE!
1 2 -1 3 -1
2.4 10 -7.6 14 -4
3.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5 161 -156 16 145
3.6 8 -4.4 8 0
6.1 - #VALUE! 16 #VALUE!
6.4 13 -6.6 12 1
10 150 -140 - #VALUE!
3.3 14 -10.7 12 2
6.7 - #VALUE! 53 #VALUE!
6.9 26 -19.1 19 7
77 84 -7 - #VALUE!
5.2 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9.3 116 -106.7 48 68
7.3 27 -19.7 9 18
27 - #VALUE! 166 #VALUE!
4.1 81 -76.9 146 -65
1.8 19 -17.2 16 3
3.9 15 -11.1 13 2
4.2 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.6 181 -175.4 - #VALUE!
5.7 116 -110.3 - #VALUE!
4.9 19 -14.1 20 -1
6 19 -13 11 8
7.1 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
10 62 -52 38 24
6.2 63 -56.8 19 44
9.1 57 -47.9 60 -3
5.2 11 -5.8 6 5
10 108 -98 133 -25
7.9 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
100 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
32 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
31 178 -147 101 77
1 1 0 6 -5
1.6 16 -14.4 14 2
3.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
2.5 19 -16.5 14 5
3.6 31 -27.4 15 16
3.1 22 -18.9 15 7
3.8 - #VALUE! 21 #VALUE!
1.6 20 -18.4 14 6
4.1 13 -8.9 10 3
4.6 20 -15.4 18 2
3.3 22 -18.7 22 0
15 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.6 13 -7.4 22 -9
7.8 30 -22.2 19 11
3.2 11 -7.8 2 9
10 24 -14 19 5
8.4 65 -56.6 17 48
21 113 -92 - #VALUE!
5.2 102 -96.8 30 72
5.3 26 -20.7 14 12
5.3 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
28 58 -30 31 27
7.1 57 -49.9 12 45
6.7 21 -14.3 13 8
32 77 -45 37 40
6.8 16 -9.2 15 1
7.8 66 -58.2 45 21
46 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
8.5 57 -48.5 29 28
1 6 -5 2 4
4.7 6 -1.3 7 -1
1.4 10 -8.6 9 1
1.9 12 -10.1 10 2
2.3 16 -13.7 9 7
2.5 12 -9.5 14 -2
18 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
2 1 1 1 0
1.9 5 -3.1 7 -2
4.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
4.3 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
3.4 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
4.9 40 -35.1 20 20
2 11 -9 12 -1
2.8 9 -6.2 11 -2
7.4 - #VALUE! 13 #VALUE!
4.7 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.1 42 -36.9 19 23
18 - #VALUE! 40 #VALUE!
8.8 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
7 - #VALUE! 192 #VALUE!
6.2 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
5.3 28 -22.7 9 19
4.8 43 -38.2 24 19
8.9 111 -102.1 47 64
5.5 174 -168.5 97 77
8.4 49 -40.6 115 -66
6.3 31 -24.7 27 4
5.9 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
6.7 47 -40.3 25 22
9.2 55 -45.8 36 19
9.3 157 -147.7 92 65
3.7 44 -40.3 22 22
7.1 51 -43.9 14 37
7.4 21 -13.6 22 -1
5.8 37 -31.2 25 12
12 17 -5 15 2
8.3 37 -28.7 186 -149
50 96 -46 96 0
6.8 27 -20.2 14 13
10 36 -26 21 15
1.4 22 -20.6 16 6
1.6 6 -4.4 5 1
3 193 -190 138 55
3.3 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
2.3 9 -6.7 10 -1
5.9 19 -13.1 9 10
4.1 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
13 115 -102 38 77
8.2 22 -13.8 16 6
17 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
4.6 29 -24.4 25 4
7.5 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
8.2 79 -70.8 75 4
2.1 31 -28.9 16 15
8.9 5 3.9 3 2
1.9 3 -1.1 3 0
6.3 - #VALUE! 189 #VALUE!
4.5 - #VALUE! 31 #VALUE!
6.6 31 -24.4 38 -7
8.2 14 -5.8 14 0
8.5 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
6.3 95 -88.7 - #VALUE!
4.3 107 -102.7 39 68
6 24 -18 21 3
9.9 - #VALUE! 109 #VALUE!
10 38 -28 - #VALUE!
12 14 -2 14 0
5.4 7 -1.6 8 -1
8.5 191 -182.5 194 -3
21 179 -158 35 144
9.6 62 -52.4 37 25
6.1 18 -11.9 14 4
23 118 -95 110 8
30 133 -103 127 6
19 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
24 50 -26 196 -146
27 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
2.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
3.6 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
1.1 7 -5.9 4 3
3.3 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
1.9 11 -9.1 8 3
2.7 19 -16.3 15 4
5.3 25 -19.7 18 7
4.4 - #VALUE! 188 #VALUE!
5.9 16 -10.1 18 -2
3.5 - #VALUE! 66 #VALUE!
5.8 - #VALUE! 153 #VALUE!
3.9 130 -126.1 92 38
22 58 -36 - #VALUE!
6.6 - #VALUE! 112 #VALUE!
7.2 29 -21.8 19 10
5.4 86 -80.6 17 69
5.1 81 -75.9 83 -2
4.8 19 -14.2 8 11
2.3 27 -24.7 10 17
3.4 19 -15.6 9 10
3.8 - #VALUE! 7 #VALUE!
4.2 35 -30.8 9 26
4.3 - #VALUE! 97 #VALUE!
5.7 21 -15.3 13 8
3.3 12 -8.7 3 9
4.1 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
6.9 47 -40.1 10 37
6.7 - #VALUE! 51 #VALUE!
3.7 10 -6.3 11 -1
4.7 6 -1.3 2 4
5.9 31 -25.1 21 10
14 70 -56 124 -54
8.5 182 -173.5 103 79
9.6 34 -24.4 25 9
8.8 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
10 - #VALUE! 113 #VALUE!
8.5 - #VALUE! 189 #VALUE!
7.5 45 -37.5 24 21
3.9 9 -5.1 5 4
10 150 -140 32 118
6.7 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
33 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
11 - #VALUE! 88 #VALUE!
11 - #VALUE! 47 #VALUE!
8.9 13 -4.1 7 6
18 - #VALUE! 109 #VALUE!
7.8 59 -51.2 23 36
9.6 43 -33.4 25 18
44 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9 56 -47 40 16
90 127 -37 - #VALUE!
9.6 49 -39.4 36 13
53 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
9.5 168 -158.5 45 123
8.2 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
1.7 5 -3.3 6 -1
6.6 5 1.6 - #VALUE!
1.9 22 -20.1 11 11
2.7 10 -7.3 7 3
3.4 - #VALUE! 79 #VALUE!
5.3 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
21 - #VALUE! - #VALUE!
6.6 14 -7.4 13 1
3.7 14 -10.3 4 10

[Shatner]

Just so it's all in one place, here's a breakdown of what I've experienced as posted in other threads:

February Panda 1.0 - My site was Pandalized and lost -50% of google traffic
March Panda 2.0 - My site was Pandalized further and lost another 25% of google traffic, to make a total of -75% lost.

June/July Panda X? - My site began to recover from Panda and over the next month eventually fully recovered +75%

September 26 Panda Y - My site saw further gains in Google traffic and on that day recorded more google referrals than we've ever recorded before. +15%

September 27 Panda Z? - My site's recovery was taken away and I lost all of my recoveries. The numbers have continued to drop bit by bit over the course of this week. -75%

[edgeman]

Our site was hit by Panda 1.0. After extensive research into the similarities that exist between the sites that were hit and our own, we made significant changes immediately over the following 4 months. We recovered with Panda 2.3 (late July).

We saw a 50% reduction again in our traffic beginning Tuesday which coincides with the latest Panda release.

Yeah, it's beyond ridiculous at this point, but let's solve this. Any webmasters that are in the same boat (hit, recovered, hit), let's get together and compare the changes we made, the metrics we used to track performance, and the results over these time frames and see where we can find similarities, determine next steps, and test, with the intent to share our findings if we can get someone to recover once again.

Generally speaking, we're considered one of the top businesses in our space. We try to lead in innovation and have won industry awards for several years as a result. This doesn't seem right, but if it's at all possible, I'm committed to do what I can to help solve this issue. But I'm not sure we can do that without coming together offsite and jumping into the data.

Let me know if anyone is interested.

[Whitey]

Shatner / Edgeman - any insight into what you did between those updates to win or lose your traffic and/or the type of site you have?

Looks like the much publicised DaniWeb has gone the same way.

[edited by: Whitey at 12:15 am (utc) on Oct 1, 2011]

[Shatner]

Is there a chart somewhere detailing all the dates of the known Panda runs so far?

[Shatner]

As requested, by Whitey, here's a breakdown of my experience with details on what I did between each Panda occurrence...

February Panda 1.0 - My site was Pandalized and lost -50% of google traffic
Immediately following the above period I sprang into action and discovered the Google was improperly indexing a lot of my site, creating non-existing 404 pages for some reason, indexing unnecessary duplicates, that sort of thing. I fixed all of those problems. I also did all sorts of things to improve user experience, I reduced the number of ads I had on pages from 5 to 2, I cleaned up the look of my site, sped it up, and generally gave the whole place a spit polish, doing everything I could think of to improve user experience.

March Panda 2.0 - My site was Pandalized further and lost another 25% of google traffic, to make a total of -75% lost.
I made no further significant changes, except around May I put some of my ads back and increased the number of ads on my pages from 2 back to 4.

June/July Panda X? - My site began to recover from Panda and over the next month eventually fully recovered +75%
I made no changes after this point except an upgrade to my server which increased the speed of my site by 50%.

September 26 Panda Y - My site saw further gains in Google traffic and on that day recorded more google referrals than we've ever recorded before. +15%
I drank champagne thinking that all my misery over the previous 6 months had been worth it and that we were finally out of the weeds. I considered giving all of my employees a bonus.

September 27 Panda Z? - My site's recovery was taken away and I lost all of my recoveries. The numbers have continued to drop bit by bit over the course of this week. -75%

[edited by: Shatner at 12:43 am (utc) on Oct 1, 2011]

[freejung]

Hi edgeman, welcome to WW, sorry to hear of your renewed misfortune.

I never recovered, so I wouldn't be able to contribute to the project you propose, but it would be very interesting to hear the results if you do get a discussion going.

Can you share the general nature of the changes you made?

It seems like you guys must be riding right along the edge of some sort of threshold. If we can figure out what that is, it might indeed be useful.

As for me, traffic is dead flat, no recovery evident. Changes made since last iteration were mostly text-content-oriented. I fixed lots of duplicate descriptions/captions, fixed a setup that was resulting in fragmented sentences in some captions, that sort of thing. I also made some further changes to user experience -- but I have to admit, for the vast majority of pages my user behavior metrics have't changed noticeably. I'm leaning more and more toward the theory that user behavior is at least part of this if not most of it.

It would be interesting to see if those who recovered noticed any changes in engagement metrics during the time of recovery or the time of re-pandalization.

[gehrlekrona]

I lost 50% of my traffic February 24th
After that it's been going up and down +-25-30%. Never really gained anything and not really lost more.
I haven't really done anything except for changes suggested in Webmaster tools, which was, you guessed it, mostly things that Google didn't get right. tried to index non-existing pages and things like that. @edgeman, i'd like to be in your group to try to find out what we can do.

[Whitey]

riding right along the edge of some sort of threshold

Sounds like it. In 2-3 months it took the first couple of updates, the time required to see a recovery, then in the following period it drops below the threshold.

Nothing was in done in between.

Sounds like more work is and was required. Add more content , keep it fresh, substantial and "useful", and work hard to get rid of duplicate pages and indexing paths, similar and/or thin content + usability.

Shatner - how many pages did you have, did you cut any out and if so what did you reduce it to? What type of content have you loaded on your site - is it aggregated ?

[Shatner]

@Whitey My site is a medium site with 100,000+ pages from a small number of dedicated experts on a couple of related, specific niches, and we add hundreds more all the time.

None were cut or had their content modified in any way as a result of Panda. They're all long form content (more than 250+ words many 1000+ words... the only exceptions being some image galleries... also properly formatted) and they're all relevant to their topic.

All of the things you have mentioned have been done, always have been done, and are always being done, since it's the very nature of our site to do those things.

[supercyberbob]

I would like you give an analogy on how stupid this has become.

Say one day you wake up and you are charge with murder, and the judge sentences you to life in prison.

6 months later, they say "oops we made a mistake", and set you free.

6 months later, they say, "sorry guy, we have decided you're guilty", and you're in prison again.

Part of me is glad too see this gong show, because I'm hoping for the NYT article that exposes Gooble for what it is.

As an Adcents publisher, I have seen them mess up big time over and over again, from the wrong exchange rate for payments this month and in the past, to mickey mouse changes to the Adcents interface.

For those of you who still think they are a magical unicorn corporation, the truth will reveal itself eventually.

[Whitey]

My site is a medium site with 100,000+ pages

That's a lot of pages to leave untouched - and presumably not all of them perform well - some might. Did you consider cutting pages with poor performance, low PR , high bounce rate?

Seems like you're playing with a threshold, that needs further major fixes.

Also the reason i asked about your site type is because i have a hunch that Google is hitting sites in competitive verticals . It must be, because the content has relative value , and add to that Google's own self interest in occupying certain verticals with it's own properties.

( I am seeing this update as not perfect from my limited view. One set of key results brings back 4 results from the same "branded" site in the top 10 organic results of a couple of popular phrass. So it may be a combination of things.)

[edited by: Whitey at 1:34 am (utc) on Oct 1, 2011]

[ACFinLA]

One of the sites I manage was hit in the February Panda update (50%+ drop in traffic). We recovered in July (100%+ recovery). On Sept. 28 our traffic dropped again (40% drop so far). The site has about 100K pages.

Some of the changes we made between Feb-July were...
*removed over 12K user profile and comment pages that had very little content on them.

*major cleanup on heading tags that were misused to format text rather than to provide page structure info

*removed standard manufacturer product descriptions from over 45K product pages. this content was also being used by other sites on the web.

*no-indexed over 7K pages that had text excerpts from articles published by blogs in our partner network as well as links to their articles

*no-followed links that we had pointing back to our content partners. these links were persistent across most pages on our site

*made some modifications to a section of pages that had low engagement metrics (high bounce rate and low pages per vist/time on site). we added links to related content on the site, to initiate more page view activity. that increased PPV by 20% or more for those pages

We didn't do much other than that. I believe we may have been incorrectly hit in the first Panda update and just recovered in July when Google said that update was made to help sites that were incorrectly hit. However, that theory is invalidated today, unless Google mistakenly reverted back to some Panda factors that were in place before July.

[walkman]

We didn't do much other than that. I believe we may have been incorrectly hit in the first Panda update and just recovered in July when Google said that update was made to help sites that were incorrectly hit. However, that theory is invalidated today, unless Google mistakenly reverted back to some Panda factors that were in place before July.

I think you have made a very astute observation. If Panda looks at metrics and they didn't change, it's probably that manual intervention was the cause. Apparently they didn't carry that code into this one. Makes sense as a theory.

Did you consider cutting pages with poor performance, low PR , high bounce rate?

BR can very well depend on what visitors Google sends and that of course changes quite often.

[edited by: walkman at 1:39 am (utc) on Oct 1, 2011]

[AlyssaS]

Are lots of the people impacted by 2.5 forum or user generated site owners? Daniweb is a forum, ACFinLA runs a USG site? And I'm pretty sure that I recall Shatner saying that he runs a USG site? Is that right?

[Whitey]

Shatner / ACFinLA - great insight, I hope this helps kick off some more objective observations from others

Could you have been more aggressive and sustained in what you did? ( I'm still playing with the notion that you didn't buck the threshold hard enough ).

Seems like those who relaunched on sub domains may have been given a temporary clean slate, making me suspect that Panda'd old domains are flagged in the algo ( who knows ).

AlyssaS - Forums / UGC - my uneducated intuition says they equal problems in the site configurations potentially producing dupe and thin content. Lot's of holes in forum/CMS software deployments, especially out of the box with developers who have insufficient SEO knowledge. Not saying this is the case - I'm just ringing a bell.

g1smd is working on a site he suspects might fall into this category - but results are still to come in

[tedster]

Is there a chart somewhere detailing all the dates of the known Panda runs so far?

Reference Dates for Panda iterations [webmasterworld.com]

Available through the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

[ACFinLA]

The site I mentioned is a combination of beauty/health advice articles and beauty product reviews. We don't sell products, but do link to some ecommerce sites. However, not for every product. There is a lot of UGC (product reviews and article comments from our thousands of registered users). That is all moderated well.

Our product pages make up over 40% of our overall page count. Those pages have the highest bounce rate (70%) and the lowest PPV (1-2 pages) on our site. We're continuing to iterate on how to direct users from those pages to the more engaging article content (25% bounce rate, 8+ PPV).

We don't want to kill too many of the product pages, becuase they are of value to our users. We've thought about putting them on a subdomain, but didn't want to make such a big change yet. We may have to try that if we don't recover from this latest hit.

[AlyssaS]

ACFinLA - would you say that the traffic you were getting up to now was transactional or informational? If you don't sell products but were getting transactional traffic, perhaps this is why you dropped? Maybe G expects product reviews to conclude with "here are three places you can buy this stuff".

There was an interesting thread a few days ago about a site that lost it's transactional (but not informational) traffic because G decided they were not relevant for commerce.

[dazzlindonna]

Seems like someone should take a look at the sites that fell/gained/fell. A third-party. Maybe an outside eye, looking at each of the sites in this thread that have ridden the down/up/down roller coaster could spot something.

I'm willing to be that third party if you'd like, but if I'm not suitable, then maybe another trusted forum member could be considered. Tedster, maybe? Someone willing to present honest thoughts and findings without tromping on the webmasters' feelings, while also keeping the URLs confidential if desired.

There's just bound to be some similarity (or similarities) that could tie these sites together.

Just a suggestion, but I think this one panda iteration might hold some answers, since there are a few that fit the down/up/down pattern so perfectly here. Might be the best time to find those answers.

[ACFinLA]

Alyssa, yes, it could be that a lot of people who get to our product pages are looking to buy, but that's not the purpose of the pages. They just happen to rank well for product-name/reviews keywords. They are useful from an unbiased product review standpoint, but perhaps shouldn't be outranking official brand and major retailer sites, as they've done in the past.

These product pages could be dragging down the whole site, as we've seen an across the board hit on all of our content types, even the highly-engaging article content.

It would be great if Google only applied the Panda penalty to the "bad" content, but that doesn't seem to be the case for a lot of sites.

[ScubaAddict]

My site is informational only - education vertical. Screwed again by this panda iteration after some recovery from removing short content pages, adjusting some navigation flaws, removing advertising, correcting spelling, speeding up the site, correcting coding errors, removing accidental duplication and most of all splitting into sub-domains.

As I stated in another thread - google is full of crap. Their guide to building a better site (to help pandalized sites) is just something to make people feel that they have some 'control' over the Pandalty - but you don't and you can't recover. Ever. Once you are hit, you are done.

Once you have been Pandalized there is no return. You may make steps toward "what looks like" recovery, but that is just the 500+ other algo changes that are happening over time. Once it is time for Panda to come, you will be stomped down again. Panda has no connection to the other algorithms. They are independent. But there is no recovery from the panda.

And for those who claim recovery - I seriously doubt they were ever actually hit by Panda... maybe something else, but not panda OR they were manually corrected (*cough*cultofmac*cough*) - but google does claim that manual correction never occurs.

I bet all of hubpages authors (good and bad) were hurt on their new subdomains. Be interested in hearing from anyone hit by Panda 1.0 that "recovered" that still claims to be recovered today.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

The inquiry against Google needs to be intensified, Google's destroying lives with such drastic changes. Yes, I saw another iteration too, or something. I'm finding eBay is now tops for many keywords that wikipedia was before... and now wikipedia is nowhere to be seen on them.

As I stated in another thread - google is full of crap. Their guide to building a better site (to help pandalized sites) is just something to make people feel that they have some 'control' over the Pandalty - but you don't and you can't recover. Ever. Once you are hit, you are done.

That about sums it up, you can put to rest the idea that you have control here. It's like a schoolyard lineup to pick teams right now, popularity being more important than talent.

[walkman]

The inquiry against Google needs to be intensified, Google's destroying lives with such drastic changes. Yes, I saw another iteration too, or something. I'm finding eBay is now tops for many keywords that wikipedia was before... and now wikipedia is nowhere to be seen on them.

_{Google actually said that they are creating jobs in such a bad economy so they should thanked for it. The jobs lost don't count mainly becuase Panda is quiet and Google's propaganda department is spinning it as a good move. Who can disagree with promoting 'high quality sites' ? No one, and Panda hit webmasters aren't 'taking action.'}

I wonder about what Scuba said about recovering. The biggest (if not only) batch came around the Daniweb was freed and Google commented that they did some sort of a pullback, but now many are going back. I have said before that the first thing that happens when hit by the panda penalty is horrible traffic and obviously horrible user engagement stats. Do the math

[SEOPTI]

Why do you think eBay is on top after each panda crap (panda = I will hide my own evil intentions, I'm just a greedy search engine)?

They have a deal with Goog, same with Amazon, they pay millions.

I'm so thankful for having Bing!