Does Panda love WP sites?

[Hissingsid]

A few months ago there was a thread here about how Google loved WordPress sites. There was something about the structure of sites created by many popular WordPress templates with tag clouds, monthly archives etc that fed what Google was looking for.

I'm interested to find out if this is still the case post Panda. The one site I have, that is driven by a different CMS/Blog engine but is strucured in the same way seems to have been given a small boost.

Are you finding the same thing?

[tedster]

One of the rather common comments about Pandalyzed sites - something Matt Cutts confirmed - is that you should be careful about tag pages. If they are just generated on automatic pilot, they can be very shallow and low value.

[chalkywhite]

Not in this case, im WP and got battered.

[netmeg]

I put most things into WP these days (mostly for convenience and because it's what my developer is most familiar with) but I block off stuff like archives and I don't use tags, so if Google loves WP, it's probably not for those reasons.

[Zivush]

I am finding the opposite -
First, WP is very slow platform.
It generates tags ,admin, archives and category pages. If you're not a web developer knowing PHP and HTML to deal with the above, you probably find yourself falling to one of these holes.

Most of these pages are useless to readers and conceived low level pages by the search engines.

WP also creates many duplicate content by repeating the same published post in the home page and in the category page.
So unless you adapt the theme and WP platform to your needs, it might be risky.
Though I am criticizer, all my sites are in Wordpress as it is very friendly and have many options - But I know by heart the weaknesses.

[indyank]

WP also creates many duplicate content by repeating the same published post in the home page and in the category page.

come on guys, isn't grouping pages in different ways helpful for users? One user might land on the home page while another user might land on the category page and yet another user on the article page. This kind of organization definitely helps each one of those users. If google isn't liking this in the name of duplicate content, it is BS.

[Hissingsid]

come on guys, isn't grouping pages in different ways helpful for users? One user might land on the home page while another user might land on the category page and yet another user on the article page. This kind of organization definitely helps each one of those users. If google isn't liking this in the name of duplicate content, it is BS.

The problem is this. If tag pages produce a similar "Panda signal" to machine generated spam pages then this may lead to an unwarranted demotion. I'm not seeing any evidence of this and the only site I have that fits this structure (uses Textpattern rather than WP but that has no consequence in this regard) has not been hit by Panda.

I suspect that tags and tag pages tend to strengthen the semantic theme of the site which if carefully done might offset and Panda demotion.

I suppose I could no-index my tag pages if this did become a problem.

Sid

[smithaa02]

I've had good luck with wordpress templates getting ranked. Could be the structure... Most wp templates a strong hierarchical structure with lots of correctly used header tags, which I think is good for google.

[mhansen]

First, WP is very slow platform.

WP is not slow, the server and the way some people build their sites is slow. If they get away from shared hosting, get a good VPS for the site, and clean up the code... WP is great! We have a +300k homepage that loads in -2 seconds. Every other page in 1-2 seconds, since they are cached.

WP is not slow.

WP also creates many duplicate content by repeating the same published post in the home page and in the category page.
So unless you adapt the theme and WP platform to your needs, it might be risky.

With the right free plugins you can "noindex,follow" the tags, categories, author, archives, pages, etc. Problem is gone... Focus on the actual pages or posts as the landing page, not categories or tags, and the rewards are long lasting.

We live by one rule for WP indexing, the WP-dashboard count of "Pages" + "Posts", should add up to around the same as a site:domain.com search results page. In other words, if a site:domain shows 100 pages indexed, our post count plus our page count should equal around the same. (Tags, archives, admin pages, categories etc are never indexed)

Tag and category pages are GREAT for users... they are NOT GREAT for search engines. After all, they are just prefetched search results aren't they? We focus on in-content placement to lead existing visitors to them for further reading to reduce bounce rates, and increase user engagement.

We live and love WordPress... and manage MANY sites for ourselves and our local/national client base, most of which are WP driven SMB and even a few eCom Frankensites we've experimented on... none are suffering from Panda, and some are affiliate type, or dropship sites.

[mslina2002]

With the right free plugins you can "noindex,follow" the tags, categories, author, archives, pages, etc. Problem is gone... Focus on the actual pages or posts as the landing page, not categories or tags

Nice post mhansen. That is also the same way I have my main site set up. Also, I only assign one category to each post, not multiple categories. Tags and categories are also never indexed.

In addition, my sidebar is dynamically themed to match my posts so that I don't always have the entire site showing the same ol' sidebar. This is done based on the category, and then related posts will show up in sidebar, related products, related ads, etc.. This way each post page is tightly themed.

This particular site was Pandalized in 1.0 but I believe it was due to datafeed indexing issues that is set up in a subdirectory separate from WP part of the site. It has recovered since then.

I see my competitors on the same page (pg 1) above and below me and none of them are WP sites so I don't think preference is given because of it.