Was there a Panda iteration today - Oct 19th/20th ?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

At noon Pacific time I have already received more traffic from Google than I did all day on any given day last week. It would seem my previous Panda slap has been reversed although I hesitate to say that for sure since the day is only half over.

Is anyone else seeing a significant change in traffic levels today?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

This is a major design flaw (one which I assume is due to the sheer size of data that needs to be calculated). But, until this happens any high quality content we have is getting superseded by the fact there's some low quality content or structure "somewhere" on our sites.

I couldn't agree more! Let me explain why.

As Google breaks away from evaluating on a page level in favor of slightly adjusting page A rankings due to content on page B they are ignoring the fact that not every page is a home run. I do see the wisdom in grading a source however in this case that is counter-intuitive to the desired goal.

e.g. My website has a lot of pages, some of those pages are fantastic and some are boring but necessary to support others. Each webpage however is a complete work and even the worst of sites is capable of having a diamond in the rough, my site is no exception. While it may seem like a good idea to come up with an overall score for my website, as if judging a book, it's a terrible idea if your goal is to find diamonds in the rough, something Google used to be good at. It has the effect of burying good pages in rankings and that's not good for anyone.

~ Do you read every page of a newspaper? No, you pick your favorite section first and some sections are junk to you. Google has seemingly forgotten that. The argument that "but what if the newspaper is trashy with a bad rep, would you search for that page?" doesn't hold water because I have Google do the searching for me, I want diamonds and currently that's not happening as frequently as it should/used to.

[Zivush]

Sgt_Kickaxe,
Now they are suggesting to delete/remove some pages (which pages)in order the ranking for the rest returns to normal (hopefully).
Is that applies for all websites including the big brands.

[tedster]

There were definitely some big brands hit at each iteration of Panda - so I'd say yes, the advice does apply to big brands too.

[asusplay]

so, what i dont understand is when you guys say delete/remove pages, is it ok to just let them produce a 404 error?

I am asking and did so in another thread but it wasnt really answered because I ran a batch on copyscape only to find hundreds of copied articles which are unique were copied, some by spammy blogs, others were picked up by bigger authority sites in which case i might as well remove from my site.

but is it safe to just delete a page or should it be 301's somewhere else?

[Bewenched]

Has anyone recovered from Panda by completely removing google ads and/or analytics from their site?

[DirigoDev]

I recovered fully on 2.5.2 from an overall traffic perspective. The KW ranks are a lot different. I lost a wee bit this 2.5.3 update (~5-7%). Is that what we're calling this one? Overall, I'm still pulling in more traffic than pre-Panda. The traffic is not converting well.

[DirigoDev]

@Bewenched

I don't use AdSense. I'm contemplating pulling GA and moving back to Urchin 7. I launched GA for the first time on my penalized site after years of pressure from management and just three (3) days prior to being hit by Panda 2 - April 8. The launching of GA was too close to my Panda problem. I don't think that Google reacts that fast. I’m suspicious of this SSL security thing and not sending referring URL data anymore when users are logged into Google. It does not smell right to me. If I were Google and had mountains of analytics data I’d sure use it. Even without GA data Google has access to some ISP clickstream data from the usual players.

[mhansen]

Just as an FYI... One of our trash sites we keep remotely located in a Siberian (no offense) server, fully insulated from everything else we do, started breathing again out of nowhere on the 20th.

We built this site after the Mayday algo change last year to monitor what goes on in the world of Google, as it relates to thin affiliate sites, and have not touched it since. (150-ish pages, 100% datafeed)

- There have been no previous fluctuations to this site in any of the Panda changes. (No increase in visitors, no decrease)

On October 20th - traffic from Google suddenly picked up with many of the visitors coming from buying signal terms. (price, review, cost, comparison, etc) After looking deeper, Googlebot came calling and re-indexed the entire site on Oct 14th.

We tend to look at the site on major changes... that's it. Could this shift at this site mean that the change on the 20th was MORE than just a Panda change? Maybe a shift toward the usual commerce algo that rolls out for Xmas shop[ping season every year?

[edgeman]

We've been up and down with Panda updates - down in February, up in July, down on 9/28, up on 10/4 and down on 10/14. No change to traffic since the 14th. We're down about 30% overall.

@Bewenched - We removed 100% of our adsense ads after the first hit and they've been gone ever since. Based on what's happened to our site, it wouldn't appear as though the ads had much, if anything, to do with it (at least in our case).

We are incorporating some indexation logic this week that will do an ongoing analysis of the bounce rate (particularly, back-to-search bounces) on a per page basis and determine if a page should be indexable based on that bounce rate. Within the context of our service, if someone does not click anywhere on the page after their first page request, we can assume the page did not do its job. So, we'll see how that works out.

[tedster]

particularly, back-to-search bounces

How will you capture that data?

[ohno]

The "minor" update(what?!) has knocked us for six again. Knew it was happening, normal pattern, yawn. Yesterday was terrible for a Monday. I'd love to know how a "minor" update can knock 90% traffic off two ecommerce sites yet not affect others. Hard not to take this personally at times. (seeing as THEY have screwed up our Google Checkout feedback and product feeds too, yet they assure us they are working on it! Really? How many MONTHS does it take your "engineers" (quote) to fix a bug in your system? My honest feeling? We ranked far too well for our niche & they want us gone).

[ohno]

I'm seeing a 30% increase in the last 3 days. All time record high type of traffic. *knocks on wood*

Not always a good thing, we've had massive spikes before & then sales to follow, yet a few days later completely crashed.

[reseller]

Just wish to ask what do you think about the serps of:

[google.co.jp ]

[Shaddows]

@mhansen

Could this shift at this site mean that the change on the 20th was MORE than just a Panda change? Maybe a shift toward the usual commerce algo that rolls out for Xmas shop[ping season every year?

Absolutely. I called it about 30 posts ago.

I have access to a few bellwether sites, sections, subdomains and even pages, as well as having a database of "sites of note" which behave strangely in different circumstances. Importantly, they cover a wide range of niches.

There is no doubt in my mind that this was NOT a Panda change, it was a realignment of users with sites, either by reinterpreting query intent, or by reclassifying sites.

A classic sign of a traffic realignment is reports of zombie traffic and related phenomena; increased traffic but static gross conversions, static traffic but decreased conversions, and spiked traffic followed by either a semi-permanent increase in conversion rate, or a total crash

Besides, as soon as @ohno and @backdraft show up, you know its a discrete ecom update

[HuskyPup]

Just wish to ask what do you think about the serps of:

Oh, wow, it's looks as though Japan's been untouched for my searches! Clean and no garbage mostly.

There's definitely new stuff in there since I have a new site ranking very well.

Why's this? It's drawing on a different set of results altogether for my widgets.

[ohno]

Japan's results look like the UK from a long tiem ago, image results at the top? Not seen that for a while!

[reseller]

It seems the serps of google Japan [google.co.jp ] are Panda-Free and much better in quality than the serps of Panda-infected-Googles.

[Pjman]

Oh My God! Japan Searches are Panda Free.

I just might stop using Bing and come back to Google Japan. What an absolute difference. It really goes to show you how much Panda resulted in poor results.

I just compared my last three everyday personal searches. Wouldn't you know every time Bing or Google Japan had the most satisfying results for things that had to do with my personal life.

[whatson]

I wouldn't say they are totally Panda Free, but definitely an improvement.
You are right though, the results are so much better. It makes me think more that Google truly is broken. Which gives us some hope. I think they tried something, and it didn't work, and they have been trying to resolve it ever since, with no avail.
So when will they have these results sorted is the question.

[DirigoDev]

particularly, back-to-search bounces

@tedster

We subscribe to a 3rd party clickstream dataset that provides a "success" measure. We can see at the KW level what percentage of traffic is returning to the search engine to repeat another search. This is the only way that the data could be collected. Expensive stuff. Costs me >$50k/yr. I've not looked yet at correlation of success rate to Panda or ranking. I'll take a look in the next week or two when I find some time.

[Bill_H]

FWIW, we (retail website) saw a return to some traffic "normalcy" starting on Oct 24th after another drop off (similar to the Oct 13 'minor update') that started on Oct. 19-21. Certainly a roller coaster result the last two weeks.

Down Oct-13th-15, Up Oct 16th. Normal after. Down Oct 21-23 Up Oct. 24. Normal after.

Perhaps the most recent flux (Oct 24-25) was the start of return or meld with Panda iterations to the holiday retail shopping algos?

Cheers,
Bill

[whatson]

Similar thing to me. Just too stressful.

[rlopes]

I got hit on 14th by Panda. Some days later we uploaded the index code and added the GA code twice, which doubled our Bounce Rate.

On the 22th we saw an even bigger drop in the rankings. I wonder if it was because of the duplicated GA code?

[netmeg]

I strongly doubt it.

[rlopes]

I strongly doubt it.

What if Google uses the GA data to infere metrics like the site Bounce Rate and Time on Site?

[LostOne]

Oh My God! Japan Searches are Panda Free.

It almost seems like there's hope out there...somewhere:)

[supercyberbob]

This google.co.jp thing really really needs to be made more public, like searchengineland, or even better the NYT.

Seems to be a good example of how messed up Panda is. I double dare you to make Google look stupid.

[danijelzi]

I would like to know if the google.co.jp results are something new. More precisely, were the .jp results better than .com all the time since Panda roll out, or they tweaked (rolled back) something recently?

[Leosghost]

I have the same single page site, with only one link inbound on page on for it's kw1+kw2 two short words.. IT context..on page one in top 3 ( depending on the time of day it moves from # to #2 or #3 ) on Google.com 850,000,000 results returned ..and on Google.jp also on page 1 at position # 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 again depending on time of day ( or it may depend on the DCs I'm hitting when searching ..need to look over aperiod of at least 7 days or maybe 30 )..results from 1,300,000,000 results returned ..in both cases there is also "wired" and another well known tech/web site high on the page..I would have expected the pages from both of them to rank wwell for the queries..

The top 3 spots on .jp are all Japanese language only ..massive backlinks ..and the #2 and#3 spot are the same site..

I wasn't aware that serps on Google.jp placed a Kanji translation next to the page title, if it was in English..explains some of the Japanese traffic I'm getting that I had not bothered to investigate or attempt to translate as yet..testing other sites built using the same principle ( but not all single page sites by any means ) I find they are in about the same place as they are in Google .com ..so I'm happy with them..and Japanese Google serps..now to think of a way or ways;-) to put this to good use..

this is not personalised results as I'm not using the same machines nor the same IPs..

One thing I do notice is that ehow is getting higher positions on on these searches and others I've tried on .jp than on .com ..so although these may be more similar to the .com serps of a few months ago ( where my pages /sites were at mostly the same places as now, not having been affected by Panda ) they favour ehow and other content farms and MFAs etc more than the .com serps..

[zerillos]

so let me see if i get this right
google japan was pandalized and now it's panda free? or was it never pandalized?

I can confirm too that google.co.jp SERPs are much much better than those on .com

[offtopic] what's up with [webmasterworld.com...] ? I can't see any of the threads [/offtopic]