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?

[louieramos]

From my end there are no changes at all, most of my client's rankings & traffic have been very steady in the past 3 days. I feel like Google is resting at the moment :)

[zerillos]

Yup. Minor update

[Donna]

"Minor update" here too .

[kidder]

From my end there are no changes at all, most of my client's rankings & traffic have been very steady in the past 3 days. I feel like Google is resting at the moment :)

Agreed, It looks to me likes its in pause mode. There are no obvious signs of any tweaks in the markets we monitor.

[tedster]

Is there any particular reason to say these changes are Panda, rather than some other tweak in the algo? For example, did only Panda-demoted sites see a change?

[kidder]

I seem to remember the term "bad data push" being used a while back, from what I am seeing that"s a pretty good way to describe the results right now. Panda has evloved into a bit of a mythical SEO beast responsible for every fluctuation in the results which I don't expect is the case.

[rustyzipper]

We saw a brief jump of a one of our keywords to #1 from #5 today around 9:45 PST then when I checked again a couple hours later we were back at #5.. thought I'd check here to see if anyone had seen anything similar.. guessing it's not a major update but just regular indexing in flux or something. we'll see where we end up in the morning. _jen

[Serchen]

We haven't seen anything, the last spike we had was on the 11th?

Read quite a few reports of +1 spikes in the last 24 hours though so it definitely looks like a minor update of sorts.

[Shaddows]

Looks like a quite significant non-Panda update, more to do with query intent or taxonomies (i.e. either the way G deals with aggregate traffic, or the way it classifies sites, its too early to say which way it is).

I would suggest this is the first phase of the "holiday SERPs"

[almighty monkey]

A client got walloped by this on Sunday, 60% drop in organic traffic Monday and Tuesday compared to previous weeks, back to just about normal Wednesday (A little bit of variation in ranking data, but nothing beyond the usual flux over a 4 day period). I'd love to take credit for the recovery, but truth be told we were still trying to diagnose the problem - nothing had been actioned.

Weird thing was how inconsistant it was. We'd look at three similar keyphrases, each with the same landing page historically, with both similar verbage and intent behind them, and 2 would of been walloped out the top 100 while another would only drop about 2 places and stay on page one.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason I can find - I was wondering if anyone else hit last weekend has seen similar anomolies in their drop?

[ErnestHemingway]

Indeed there was one :) seems tiny tweak. But hey Adsense sites ranking as usual so good for G.

[Donna]

seems tiny tweak

Tiny for you , I went to the no man's land again lol.

[tedster]

Former Googler Vanessa Fox published a short report on SearchEngineLand that shares a tidbit about these smaller "Panda Flux" changes - apparently the result of a minimally informative call she had with Google:

Some Panda updates are due to new signals being incorporated into the overall Panda algorithms

Some Panda updates are recalculation of how sites perform within the Panda algorithms, based on updated data about the sites since the last recalculation

The only difference with this update [Sept 27] vs. the previous ones is that there will be (and have been) several updates (presumably of both types) within days or weeks of each other

Taking a Closer Look at the Google's Panda 2.5 "Flux" [searchengineland.com]

[Bewenched]

It may have been a "minor" update, but it slammed our ecommerce site yet again... down 30%

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Is there any particular reason to say these changes are Panda, rather than some other tweak in the algo? For example, did only Panda-demoted sites see a change?

Yes Tedster, the improvement held for the day and continues today and is affecting solely my previously slapped transactional pages (or go pages as Google calls them). The informational section of my site has not been affected by anything one way or another. I'm seeing 75-80% recovery to those pages right now, 36 hours old. It's like someone flipped a switch and as you know switches that webmasters control themselves to achieve drastic improvement immediately are very rare.

As for changes to those pages there are a few, namely I removed all Google products from them after the slap. I doubt that's the cause of the sudden jump in traffic, the increase is too sudden, section wide and dramatic, but it could have been speed related I suppose. The site is lightning fast without analytics, search box and adsense javascript calls.

I'm still holding my breath, the recovery feels fragile and is not complete.

[edited by: Sgt_Kickaxe at 6:48 pm (utc) on Oct 21, 2011]

[whatson]

#*$! down even more, OMG!

[gabidi]

I'm still holding my breath, the recovery feels fragile and is not complete.

I hear you on that one..

[Lenny2]

no real difference here with my Panda hit site...

[tedster]

So there are all kinds of possibilities. Panda flux can involve either new website data or a tweak to the actual algorithm. And it may cause some Pandalyzed sites' traffic to improve or to decline even more.

I'm wondering if this new flux that followed on after the September 27 Panda may become the rule - more frequent changes rather than big batches of change. At some point, it may become impossible to differentiate Panda as a component on its own - it may just blend into the over landscape of "the" algorithm.

[Dan01]

It is hard to tell why anyone gets more traffic. For instance, if you rank good for earthquake and there is a big earthquake - you get tons of traffic. The best way to keep track of things, IMO, is with SERPS, but this is dependent on where you are, your log-in etc. Keep track of your SERPS.

[gyppo]

The main issue I have with Panda is that it can impact an entire site for bad content elsewhere, rather than evaluating content at a page level & applying the algorithm to each page individually.

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.

There's quite a few problems this causes:

- Webmasters don't know what to fix & which pages are likely causing issues
- People are frantically moving content to subdomains purely because Google has released a sub-par algorithm
- A tweak in the algo seems to have profound results (i.e. massive demotions or massive promotions), this wouldn't happen if it was looking at a page level.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I think if Google can progress Panda enough to evaluate individual pages on their own merits things will become a lot more stable & we will know a bit more about where we stand (and what to do about it).

[Dan01]

The main issue I have with Panda is that it can impact an entire site for bad content elsewhere

I agree and am not sure if this method provides the best results either. It helps the big sites, that is for sure, but sometimes that is not good. I have been using Bing lately - at least they pay me to search with them, and I do a lot of searches every day on both SEs.

[Pjman]

I switched to Bing too! I never thought I ever would, but Google results are really bogus these days. It will take time for the general public time to catch on. Today at my kids Lacrosse game I overheard 6 parents really talking about how they switched to Bing, I never thought I'd see the day.

Maybe Bing should do a Pepsi challenge like ad campaign.

[Dan01]

I would love to see Bing provide a revenue method like Adsense. I think they have an Ad Center, but they haven't opened up their ads to everyone. I used Yahoo's publisher network for a few years before they got rid of it. I didn't make any money. I made more money from Amazon and other networks.

As per the topic: I have seen my revenue and traffic shoot up for a few days and then go back to normal a week later. I have also seen all of my SERP disappear for a month or so, only to come back. That happened this summer and I thought it was Panda. Now I am not sure what is happening. The SERPS are back, revenue is back.

[whatson]

Bing may have better results, but Google still has better services. In fact I can't believe the lack of products and services they offer.

[dertyfern]

Seeing a couple of websites make a comeback as of yesterday. One has almost fully recovered, the other recovered about 50%. Haven't make a single change to either.

[Bill_H]

We saw a drop off starting on the 20th, very similar to the drop off after the Oct 13th "minor update". What ever traffic we gained in a recovery after the 13th, is gone - again. Like riding a roller coaster.

Cheers,
Bill

[azn romeo 4u]

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

[Serchen]

Has anyone seen anything on the 15th? all our sites seem to see a slight spike (or drop) around here