In light of panda, is posting new content safe?

[andy_boyd]

This ridiculous question, in my opinion, proves how wrong Google got it with panda. Given that panda can hit an entire domain because a small number of pages aren't 'good' enough according to a machine learning algo, is it now unsafe to post new content?

The way I interpret it is that panda can only give you a neutral-negative score, with the best possible outcome being 0. Therefore, adding another blog post / review / gallery / whatever only increases the risk of having a small number of pages that fail the test, getting your entire domain whacked.

Of course you could argue that with panda promoting high quality content, the rising tide will push up standards across the board. But then why does so much junk persist in the top 10?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm asking the same question, it's indeed a great question right now. If Panda has an issue with a section of your site it does indeed smack the entire site, at least it did to my 7 year old established site last update.

I do see an increase in traffic on a pair of smaller sites however that's most likely due to my competition having been cleared from in front of me so yes, it does seem Panda only hands out negatives or neutral at best.

My thought is that you had better check your site extras. By that I mean that if you have a comment section on a page you had better be getting comments, if you offer links to a social profile such as twitter or facebook you had better be getting tweets and likes. Got a feed? Better be getting an steadily increasing feed following.

Panda seems tied to social and, from what I am seeing, it could very well be tied to your inactive comment sections (etc) on a per page basis. It might be best to turn off all the gizmos that are not being used, at the very least you site speed will increase. I started by removing the Google search box, analytics and all of the adsense on Pandalized pages.

[Karma]

Sgt_Kickaxe - On my site I have a comments section on each topic but if the number of comments is greater than 30, I add a new comments page (for comments 31 and above).

Is this a problem, as the primary page with the first 30 comments will never change once there are 31+ comments?

[andy_boyd]

@Sgt_Kickaxe - So how does it work for really big sites, those that post multiple times per day. Site like NY Mag, which apparently posts every 6 minutes during business hours. Surely those articles can't all be well researched and authoritative. Don't most stories just get warmed over and republished? So is panda secondary to authority? It's... weird.

I definitely agree with you that with social indicators like comments, likes and tweets, you're probably better to not have them if they aren't being used.

[Marketing Guy]

If commenting and social sharing is a factor, wouldn't the solution be better to improve that aspect of your strategy than remove it entirely? Maybe a private anti-Panda club to reshare / retweet / comment on content is in order! ;)

[chalkywhite]

Its bizzare, I posted a new article this am and its as if its not under the pands wing, its doing aswell as a new article used to. Old articles are still in the doldrums.

[potentialgeek]

My new rule of thumb post-Panda is if the content isn't long enough to be an article, it's too risky to get indexed by Google. I noindex, no follow all new content on short pages.

If you have a bad but "authoritative" site (tricked Google), it's like the mafia. You can pay off the police and judges (Google) to ignore your weak page crimes for which everybody else gets booked and jailed.

I've seen pages on these "authoritative" sites barely long enough to fill a post-it note jump to the top in rankings post-Panda. Pandas have never been called the most intelligent animals on earth.

[Reno]

If we remember back to the discussions here in the years pre-Panda, we saw something like the following very very frequently:

"I made a minor change to a couple of my pages and then I dropped in the SERPs."

It got so crazy that people like me were hesitant to change anything for fear of losing position. This was especially true at those sites that were getting a good rank. We heard "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "best to leave well enough alone", and because of the ongoing testimony from many professionals regarding a correlation between site edits & subsequent position drop, that advice had merit.

So from POV, nothing has changed ~ we STILL don't know what to do with any degree of confidence and no degree of certainty.

I like what potentialgeek wrote ~ that is a conservative approach that makes sense, and if thereafter you do get bitten by the Panda, you'll at least feel you made your best effort to protect yourself. Otherwise, nothing will change on our sites, which cannot be good for user satisfaction.

So pick your poison....

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[onepointone]

I put a lot of updated content on 2 sites about 2 months ago and the sites got pushed into oblivion shortly after. Could just be a coincidence. Other sites with better backlinks, seem ok.

[Zivush]

It is ridiculous.
In a Pandalized site, you may even publish content that worth the Nobel Prize in literature and Google Algorithm continues to ignore the site because of some "bad" pages or lack of social exposure.

[johnblack]

is posting new content safe

Doesn't seem to have affected news sites?

[sanjuu]

Doesn't seem to have affected news sites?

Ones that have been negatively affected by Panda?

[besnette]

That's all I have done this summer, is add original content, and I got hit too on the 14th...

Google says in their webmaster guidelines to not write content just to chase high-value keywords and traffic. I don't - I often-times write (and produced videos) about more obscure angles of my niche, so it may not get the most eyeballs, but it is stuff that isn't elsewhere...


I also am in a niche that targets a population that does not do the social/facebook/twitter/commenting stuff for the most part - my population would more likely pick up a pen and paper and actually mail something over e-mail.

There are flaws and glaring contradictions with this new algo - which should frighten anyone with a good, honest, established valuable (to the user) website...

[johnblack]

Ones that have been negatively affected by Panda?

Dunno if any have? I was merely making a comment that Panda doesn't seem to have halted output from the BBC or CNN, which would suggest that either they don't care or posting new content doesn't necessarily affect your rankings re Panda.

[Reno]

or posting new content doesn't necessarily affect your rankings re Panda

... or some major league type sites ~ such as BBC and CNN ~ are so branded & "trusted" and have such a huge backlink profile that they are virtually pandaproof. They could post the editor's breakfast menu every day and they'd rank for orange juice ~ they're that locked in to the top.

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[johnblack]

OK, I'm gonna bite.

So as a one man band, solo webmaster, the advice post-Panda is to stop posting on my blog?

So all my regular readers are left hanging out there, nothing from me cos I'm scared of a big fluffy black and white bear?

If you think sites like CNN and the Beeb weren't 'locked in' pre-Panda then well may be you should have checked the SERPS a bit more closely.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand why Google would trust the BBC more than me, but I don't think this is a Panda thing.

It just may be a bit more obvious now.