Minor Panda update Oct 13 - per Matt Cutts

[sid786]

Matt Cutts responds on Twitter that they have applied a minor algorithmic update last late night.

Link: http://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/124905069748559872 [twitter.com]

Have your websites been affected with this update? My site's traffic is stable, but I was expecting a positive bump.

[Mod's note: Fixed link so it would display, as the WebmasterWorld link redirect script will break it in most browsers. Copy and paste url into your browser if hyperlink doesn't go to Matt's tweet.]

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:54 pm (utc) on Oct 14, 2011]
[edit reason] fixed link display [/edit]

[NormanD]

There is a lot of debate on what has driven all of this, and what the right reaction is. But assuming Google's goal was to deliver better results then I would say that they have failed miserably. For many terms for which I was previously ranking (either through my focused efforts or as a long-tail)the first 5 results post October 13 are much poorer than before. I'm not comparing them to my sites, just objectively assessing their relevance and usefulness. Pages with broken links, thin content, and lack of relevance. I'm sure their goal was a worthy one and there is a lot of attempted gaming going on. However, I tend to click to page 2 results now because of my disappointment with the page one results. So that takes us back 2 years or so in terms of search result quality. Put simply - Google has really messed up this time if their objective is to provide searchers with the highest quality results!

[sundaridevi]

Reading through Google's webmaster forum, there is evidence to support the idea that sites have a sort of ongoing score of negative points. Panda 2.5 evaluated some new factors and that was enough to push some over the threshhold and allow penalties to get imposed for certain things, whereas there wasn't enough reason outside of those things to impose the penalty otherwise.

The Google engineer quoted above stated very specifically in that forum that *the* algorithm (notice singular) doesn't impose penalties on a page for one sole instance of a negative factor. She also referred to SEO forums as being full of people wearing "tin hats".

[WilliamT]

My 6 year old site that had slow and steady growth over all that time took a 70% drop in Google traffic from Oct 13 to 14. No idea why Google decided my site needed to be slapped so am stuck with it I guess. Frustrating though.

[Lenny2]

Welcome to the party William. I've been snooping around the net looking for answers since February. This site among many others has some very good theories about panda. Here is a quick review of things that I've personally taken to heart:

1. Improve the overall quality of your content
a. Look for technical issues like pointless pages being created and indexed by google; and hide/delete those pages
b. nobody really knows what quality really means so review the content of your page for your users and ask yourself and partners what could be improved

2. improve user metrics... as would be logical in your niche.

anybody else have succinct advice for Mr. T?

[WilliamT]

Thanks Lenny - I always did number one to some extent... at least to the best of my ability. I have also had a robots file for years that seemed to do a good job of avoiding indexing of certain types of pages. Nothing changed on the site to cause this, Google must have changed what it likes or dislikes.

Not sure what you mean by number 2 though. I'll research that.

As my site is really just something I like to do and 90% of my commentators, who I love, are repeats, this is not something that has an immediate effect. However it is frustrating because I do occasionally get a new, involved, reader and commentator from Google and a few of those have turned into good friends. I am sad to think that may stop with this.

[LostOne]

Regarding loss of long tail traffic mentioned here and there within this thread. After doing quite a bit of looking at my site the past few days I've noticed lot's of long tail that I did get in the past is now being dominated by message board sites.

Anyone else seeing this? I thought it may have to do with my "browsing" habits collected by Google, but discounted it while checking the same on an Iphone that I never use for search...fingers too big.

[Reno]

Improve the overall quality of your content

This is good advice and a worthy effort with or without Google. The problem with relating it to possibly restoring yourself to pre-Panda levels is the clear contradiction that so many people are seeing in the SERPs since the outbreak of Panda. The fact is, and even a cursory viewing of these threads will confirm this, in some niches there is more junk than ever at the top.

So you were exactly right to say "nobody really knows what quality really means" ~ that's been an issue here from the very start. That lack of clarity by Google is a HUGE part of the problem, and I believe it is entirely intentional.

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

[WilliamT]

Yes that is probably true. The thing is that Google seems to treat all the same. A site like mine, small potatoes, but lots of fun with many regular readers and commentators needs to meet the same Google standards as a commercial site that spends thousands of dollars a year to make money. There really should be a difference to Google between a small hobby site and a site with 200,000 daily visitors that sells something. But what do I know. It does seem that Google does have trouble telling the junk from original content. I know even my posts get scraped all the time. I can easily find the scraper sites with a simple Google search. Ironic isn't it?

[Hissingsid]

@Lenny2 b. nobody really knows what quality really means

So true but I'll tell you what I'm doing to try and answer that one. I'm researching the hell out of pages that have risen, in my niche, as a result of (I think) Panda. It all feels a bit like the early days but rather than just look at keyword repetition, density, prominence etc I'm looking for patterns that might be giving a signal or signals to Panda.

My hypothesis is Panda can only possibly be measuring things that are tangible and assessing those. The algo change was originally called "Farmer" and it was seen as an anti content farm action. Understand what signals content farms are likely to give out, understand what those that have done well out of Panda have as signals and use those things to assess your own site and pages.

I've also been seeking out and fixing technical issues. Dead links, inadvertent dupe etc.

[netmeg]

The thing is that Google seems to treat all the same.

For every person who says Google treats all sites the same, there are three complaining that they don't.

There's no winning on this one.

[sundaridevi]

For every person who says Google treats all sites the same, there are three complaining that they don't.

Here's a good example. After the Oct 13 update, one of my pages that had been number 1 ranked for a search term fell by a place. The site that moved above mine (they were number 1 and my page number 2) was a blatant rip off of my page. They started each paragraph with a sentence from my page, then modified the remaining text to avoid the dupe content penalty.

So I reported them using the scraper reporting form. A few days later the SERPs had significantly changed. Now the first two sites were sites that had never been in the top 10 for that search term, including a well known reference site as number 1. My page was number 3 and the scraper number 4.

So the scraper reporting seems to have triggered a manual review. The result of which was the well known reference site became number 1. I haven't checked but I'd bet that my page definitely has more citations (backlinks) for this topic than the reference site.

The moral of this story seems to be that even among sites that haven't been penalized, Panda hasn't come close to identifying quality in the way that Google wants and a lot more tweaking is in order. But if they just want branded sites to appear there should be a "branded search" option. I remember long ago, AltaVista tried to implement a feature that put brands in the first position. A year or two later, AltaVista was dead.

[WilliamT]

I have heard that scraper story before. It is amazing that people will do that and that their sites can stay in the Google search results at all. I have found my content many times on other sites. Sometimes it seems to just be copied exactly and re-posted. But many times I have found exactly what you describe. Some exact wording, some wording changed, and sometimes content combined from several sites into one. It is hard to know whey they go to the trouble sometimes as there often is no sign of advertising or paid links on these sites.

[Reno]

AltaVista tried to implement a feature that put brands in the first position. A year or two later, AltaVista was dead.

I was recently talking to my neighbor ~ not a tech person by any stretch of the imagination ~ about changes in Google. She, like so many people, is getting tired of all the space on the page being taken up by sponsored ads. She is also tired of the big brand results so often dominating. She made the point ~ which I believe Google does not understand at all ~ that part of the fun of using search is to find stuff from what she called the "treasure hunt" thrill. Which is to say, finding something special that she did not originally consider. In that conversation she also said that if she wanted Target, she'd go the one down down the street, and if she wanted Amazon, she doesn't need Google to tell her the address. Google does not even remotely get this attitude, so your reference to AV is relevant, and something that someday may come back to haunt the wizards at Google big-time. To my neighbor they are becoming predictable, which is to say boring, and that more than anything is the kiss of death.

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

[WilliamT]

But Google has it all for now. I am sure they are out there, but I do not know anyone personally that uses anything other than Google for searching. I just tried out Bing and it seems fine. I did a few searches and my site is right there on the first page. But when I look at Analytics, Bing and Yahoo are less than 2% each of traffic, direct traffic is about 14%. Almost all the rest is Google.

[londrum]

and if she wanted Amazon, she doesn't need Google to tell her the address

im always saying that, and i believe it too, but when i stop and think about my own behaviour i can understand why google does what it does.
i use firefox and like many people, i have a google search box next to my address bar. if i want to find a book on amazon the quickest way to do it is type the title into the google search box, because i know that it will appear in the SERPs. its much quicker than typing amazons address into the address bar and then searching for the book on amazon.

so, as much as i would like google to stop pushing the same old brands to the top of the SERPs, the truth is that i carry on using them because i know what i'm going to get... the results are predictable enough to make you expect a particular link.

its as if its taken over from amazon's (and wikipedia's.. and tripadvisor's... and the bbc's...) own site search

if people ever stop using google as part of the browser furniture, though, then google might be in trouble. because whilst it is much quicker to search straight from the google box built into the browser, if i had to actually visit google.com and search, then there's no way i'd do it -- because it would be just as quick to go straight to amazon

[Lenny2]

@Sid

I'm thinking that reverse engineering other websites in your niche to figure out what quality is... is a short term game. Try thinking objectively about your pages... what they bring to the table for the user and then cater-the-$%$@ out of that user. In this way you'll be ahead of the curve... and probably gaining long term customers along the way.

[mhansen]

i use firefox and like many people, i have a google search box next to my address bar.

Just asking... but if you use the search box on the right side of Firefox, why not just use the drop-menu and choose to search Amazon directly?

My one-search box has 5-6 choices, and I can add many others at will. Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia are all choices in the search box by using the drop-menu.

When I want something on Amazon, I click on the "G" one time, and change the search box to Amazon, then type my search into it and go.

MH

[sundaridevi]

But Google has it all for now.

I just looked at a couple of my sites search share:
Google 75-80%
Yahoo+Bing 10-15%
Ask 2-4%
other search 5-6%

I think the 800lb. gorilla in the room is facebook. If they ever decide to give a web search option in their little search box at the top of the page, Bing will probably at least double (and quite possibly more) its share almost instantly. To preempt that, Google may be trying to generate "quality" results. But if their results are so different nobody likes it, then the AV story will be relevant. They can still own mobile search for a long while, but 10 years is a lifetime at the top in this industry.

It's also important to note that every first place search engine (AltaVista then Google) got to the preeminent position by providing the back end web search service for Yahoo, who was the leading web destination back in the day. I'm sure that Google hasn't forgotten that, nor have they forgotten that they are not so much a destination page as a toolbar search box. So with Facebook as the leading destination and internet time sink, with Bing as its back end, there is that 800lb gorilla sitting there in the corner on its butt and everybody is wondering...

[topstar]

What kind of drops are people seeing in this algo update? I checked WMT and it showed an exactly 2.0 position drop for many keywords.

[Hissingsid]

@Lenny2 I recon "Quality" is different in different niches. I only need to go one or two places to get back to the top. What I'm trying to do is find the wood in the trees so I have some understanding of how to improve my pages and site while not throwing out the baby with the bath water.

I think I've just eaten the Guiness Book of Clichés!