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

[seoskunk]

Well I just did a Google Re-inclusion Request my first one. It was kinda like going to confession but without the hail mary's

[Whitey]

We believe it's an important service to our readers to link to further information - some links will be internal, but there's usually at least one external link.

Firstly the Panda algo seems not to be influenced by external links - that is a separate issue.
Secondly, my observation of sites in general supports your view that a useful site might include links to external sources - it could even be a Panda plus "signal" - certainly not a negative if it is done in context.

For this reason i continue to think that no follows are associated or counted with the recipient page ( even if they don't pass link juice or anchor text influence ), but again that's a separate issue and off topic.

[gehrlekrona]

I don't know if this has to do with Panda or not but when I was searching, or rather starting to search and types in "ch" and Google started to show sites they, probably, thought I wasnted to see in the serps.
The first one is a resort,
The second one is a review of the resort
The third is some type of travel site
The fourth is a clothing store (I think!) and it has a Google map to the right
The fifth is a yelp review (left back in after the gov quest?)
The sixth is a Yahoo travel
The seventh is a virtual tourist
The eigth is a lonely planet
The nineth is a time zone thing
The tenth is a Map Quest (left back in after the gov quest?)
The eleventh is anothe site from the resort......

So does Google think I need to go to a resort? Maybe I do after the Panda schock!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

What about comments on a page? If you look at Google blog search you find forums and news site who's comment sections are either log-in only or via some 3rd part service like Discus. Wordpress comment sections are rare in the top articles, which is strange for a "blog" search.

I'm leaning towards removing my wordpress comment section in favor of a Facebook comment section because a) it's javascript and the text isn't on my site and b) there is a large ready audience on Facebook to tap into. I'm hesitating because the code is horrendously slow.

[seoskunk]

So does Google think I need to go to a resort? Maybe I do after the Panda schock!

I think its called "psychic search"

You clearly now need to go to the resort as you will meet a tall dark stranger.....................

[Whitey]

Let's get back on topic, ( me included ) ...

Did folks that returned from Panda earlier, and that are unaffected by this latest update, continue to make improvements. I think it would be helpful for the community to understand a bit more about why some sites held and others dropped after initial alterations. There's something that needs deeper digging around those thresholds and how to manage them better. We need more focus on data and participation from members versus lurkers and off topic inputs ( my apologies if I've drifted too ).

[edited by: Whitey at 10:14 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2011]

[whatson]

@seoskunk I did my first re-inclusion request the other day, and received the disappointing reply informing me that my site was not in violation. i.e. Panda is not a penalty.

As for external links, I think it is good, and important for us to discuss each theory, if I recall correctly, after the first Panda, people even had theories on white text on black backgrounds.
But in my opinion, I don't think external links are a factor.

[gehrlekrona]

@seoskunk, you might be right BUT what is interesting is that the resort is in my area which would be the location in the search. Then the other ones tells me what and where it is. So is what I am seeing an Panda's understanding of my intentions? "Ah, he put in CH so he must want to go to a resort that starts with CH, and the reason I am thinking this is that he has been looking for plane tickets the last week."
Just guessing but what if Panda is all about your personal integirity that's being violated by Google?

[seoskunk]

Thanks Whatson, my site dropped after panda February so I think it is a Panda issue.

I hope incomming links do not form a part of the algorithm and your right. I hope that blogroll links don't cause a penalty. I hope that person I paid on fiverr hasn't screwed my site with profile links.

Because my concern is a competitor can do it too.

Lets hope your right.

[seoskunk]

gehrlekrona had to try "ch" myself

I got "chase, cheap flights and cheese cake(YUM)"

[Whitey]

[blog.searchmetrics.com...] - 2.5 winners and losers published . Zappos is a standout lift - what makes it distinctly different in terms of content ( not brand )?

[edited by: Whitey at 10:46 pm (utc) on Oct 2, 2011]

[whatson]

I think that the vast majority of us, can honestly say, Panda is an on-page algorithm. It was allegedly created to get rid of content farms, but it's classification of a content farm is too hard to generalize at this stage. It is possible they are slowly rolling back and tweaking panda, so less non-farmer like sites are hit. This is my only hope.
In my serious [perhaps bias], honest opinion, I generally think that Google is better off ranking my sites, I have literally done what I can to make them the most useful sites I can imagine, with no expense spared.
For example, a whole site about Los Angeles travel, and guides to the city, would provide far more information than a wikipedia page about the city, or an expedia list of hotels, so why won't it rank?

[mullman99]

I've been able to get feedback from a LOT of small sites - my own, plus a sampling from appx. 2000 webmasters & developers on a private forum. One benefit is that it's often easier to isolate individual aspects than it is on larger sites.

The more I look at 'actuals' - self-reported 'actuals' included - the more I'm beginning to develop a "user experience" picture of Panda, similar to what Rand Fishkin has been promulgating (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-panda-update-changed-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard-friday).

This is why there seems to be such a quandary for those who isolate certain factors and change them (removing 'low quality' pages for instance), yet don't see any correlating improvement.

Consider this: no change is 'registered' until the next Panda iteration, so no one gets any immediate feedback. And if the underlying 'measuring stick' is "user experience", many singular changes aren't going to impact that in a meaningful way quickly.

If "user experience" is algorithmically expressed as some summation of bounce rate, time on site, various social signals, etc., combined with some 'universal user experience' factors - content "quality" (algorithmically expressed through length, LSI-like relevance scores, etc.), PLUS the 'improved' analysis of backlinks, then it will take a combination of the RIGHT changes to turn that scoring around, and the time for those metrics to accumulate.

[Freedom]

Relevancy means nothing to google any more. Nothing.

[Donna]

So from what I see here the basic idea behind Panda is penalize "pages" for optimization with the intend of outgoing backlinking(which is ludacris) , which includes context, OBLs On Page SEO, and in this case seems like ads are not be counted toward the score. But again tedster said he has a lot of examples with pages without OBLs or tricky interlinking.

Just my 2c.

[Leosghost]

Bear in mind Rand Fishkin wrote that after people had been saying the same thing here for months..You'll learn more reading and posting here, and get a wider variety of hypotheses ..and get them earlier ..than by reading elsewhere...panda is also about "original sources" ;-)

[Shatner]

@Whitey:

Did folks that returned from Panda earlier, and that are unaffected by this latest update, continue to make improvements.

My site and Daniweb's might be good test cases for this.

Daniweb has already said they have made constant improvements since Feb 27, pretty much non-stop. They recovered in June, and then were re-pandalized last week.

I made some improvements after Feb 27, but stopped at the end of April. And made no further improvements since then. I recovered in June, and then was re-pandalized last week.

So I don't really think that's a factor.

[mullman99]

Agreed Leosghost; been a very long-time lurker here.

I happened across that Rand video just about when I was reaching a similar conclusion - synthesizing a lot of datapoints that hadn't yet congealed.

[Shatner]

So from what I see here the basic idea behind Panda is penalize "pages"

Wrong. Panda penalizes websites as a whole, not individual pages. If it doesn't like a high enough percentage of your pages, the entire website has a weight applied to it which drags the site down to the bottom of search, good pages along with the bad.

[drall]

With each panda release every site in my vert drops, every single site. Hundreds of them, corporate/branded to ham and eggs. 15 year old sites to 1 year old sites.

No my niche is not dying, has been around since the pc was born and was doing fine till panda. Every panda release drops traffic to hundreds of sites in my niche, EVERY TIME!

Sites with bells and whistles I can only dream off, TOAST!

Aged authorities with the most cred in the industry, TOAST!

Thin sites, thick sites, deep sites, robust sites, TOAST!

Updated hourly sites to never been touched sites, TOAST!

Sites with hundreds of thousands of links, sites with 5 links, TOAST!

The smoothest sites, the clunkiest sites, TOAST!

Every freaking site is TOAST!

Hundreds which many of you have been using since 97, TOAST!

Watching as sites frantically redesign what was already an amazing design to watch them only drop further.

No winners, none, everyone is toast in my vert. It's as if the traffic just disappeared!

I wonder if Google is going to make a site for my vert?

Hmm..

[AussieWebmaster]

Amazon took a big hit this time

[whatson]

Not sure why you think Amazon got hit, looks stronger than ever to me. Can anyone else confirm this?

[mslina2002]

Searchmetrics measures SEO visibility whatever that means and that is not the same as what quantcast, compete, or alexa.

So only for searchmetrics their (amazon's) SEO visibility is down whatever the ** that is. Personally I like to look at visitor count.

[walkman]

Links on pages, thin content (whatever that means) etc is on most sites so Google cannot penalize for them, as much as they'd want to. Penalizing the 'wrong' sites costs Google credibility, so pick a 'good' site and try to achieve what they have. I have wasted way too much time listening to Google's supposed advice and focusing on stupid stuff, as if a spelling mistake can justify a 400 rank drop.

IMO, most pandalized sites are not supposed to come back on Google, almost no matter what you do. That's why Panda is a sitewide penalty, not a page by page. It's not personal, just business.

Edit: I agree with Muslina, visibility doesn't have to correspond to loss of traffic. You could be visible but barely get any traffic from those keywords so the loss is not much, if that visibility is lost.

[gehrlekrona]

@seoskunk, yes, the suggestions in the dropdown box is like that, but the SERPs is like I said or at least that what I got. I think the Panda is all about real time search and using whatever things Google knows about you and other searchers/searches is what they'll show. How can they show and count all the SERPS among billions of pages that fast? It is all cached.
They say "Oh, here comes that guy again from that IP address. He is interested in this and that and the last week he has been looking for tickets. Now, we know he wants go to Europe, but we also know that he doesn't make a helluvalot of money with his AdSense anymore so lets just send him to one of our sponsors in the area, a resort. He might need some new clothes to so lets show a site where he can buy some cheap stuff"

[onepointone]

most pandalized sites are not supposed to come back on Google

I'm honestly starting to feel better about goog outright banning my sites back in March.
If they had instead been placed in panda purgatory, god knows how much time I might have wasted trying to 'fix' them.

Better to just let go and work on other projects!

[whatson]

I am also concerned that when Panda calms down, then that will the end of it all, and it will be like another Florida. As in wiped out.

[Errioxa]

The small sites (1000 url) are not penalized, although they usually have a lot of ads, high bounce rate and bad design... the keywords ranking remains the same.

Maybe we should observe them carefully

[SEOPTI]

Before Panda I made 2k/day only with Goog traffic, now 10 Dollars/day xD so funny... but Bing almost replaced them. Don't waste months and months fixing things which are not broken. Let's all make Bing stronger so this Goog monopoly will probably come to an end one day.

In the meantime play poker, daytrading or things like this, there is not such a thing as "optimizing for Google" any more, they optimize and manipulate your ranking from the Panda day on. It has become gambling with Goog. Finally after 10+ years of SEO work, SEO for Goog has become a one way street, a time waster, a micro-management, a weekly moving target. R.I.P. Goog. Time to move on and stop thinking about their greedy and arrogant attitude.

And you know what happens with greedy companies in the most cases? (see lehman brothers)

[SEOPTI]

Did I say I rule? I offered a solution and provided facts about income, not about traffic. Traffic means nothing if you can't monetize it.

Open your eyes. Goog traffic will convert if you will be able to escape all panda paranoia in the next few years. Bing/Y! traffic is the creme of the creme.

[edited by: SEOPTI at 5:31 am (utc) on Oct 3, 2011]