Minor Panda Update 19 Nov - Google announced on Twitter

[gyppo]

I haven't seen any change across any of the sites I monitor but saw this tweet earlier today:

[twitter.com...]

Official Google Twitter account announcing a small Panda update impacting 1% of queries on 19th Nov.

Anyone seeing anything?

[edited by: tedster at 5:18 am (utc) on Nov 21, 2011]
[edit reason] help the link resolve [/edit]

[peego]

We also have a whole bunch of "DNS lookup timeout" and "DNS Issue" errors in our WMT. All dated Nov 13, 15, and 16. Traffic is down another 10-15%...

[Whitey]

Watching sites with slight downturn from 19 Nov. in range of 10% on the back of a solid 4-6 weeks of onsite improvements. Just goes to show lifts can take more than a single iteration to calculate.

[nettulf]

May be coincidence, but one of the most widely used DNS software had problems and crashed frequently last week...

[isc.org ]

[Lenny2]

No change over here... from a panda'd site in February... if anything slightly down... but, this is historically a slow week for us anyway.

[RP_Joe]

Two of my research sites are doing better each panda. Another site got tanked this time. Honestly it deserved to be tanked. The content is old and sparse. I haven't given it any attention in a year. I wonder if it will come back? Its a good project for December.

[frontpage]

Yep, Goog WMT shows a ton of DNS errors on Nov 13 as well.

[Bewenched]

Ditto, WMT is showing a LOT of DNS errors for me as well.
We've had no dns changes in years. Very odd indeed.

I also see quite a lot of 404 errors for pages that absolutely exist.

[ichthyous]

Big increase in traffic to my site yesterday. Up around 30%. PR for my home page went down one notch to 3 after many years at 4. Hopefully the traffic won't vanish again as tends to be the norm after big surges like this

[Kristos]

Our traffic is up ~30% also. three of our sites on first page for same term.
site 1 = steady at position 5 for a year
site 2 = tanked suddenly in the summer, now pos#5
site 3 = disappeared from SERPs yrs ago, RE-appeared in the summer, now pos#9

really hoping this isn't temporary!

[LostOne]

Doesn't seem to be much if any of a Panda thing. After all, who is the girl that tweeted it? I never heard of her.

[Bill_H]

Also saw about a 15% drop 18-19th, then a recovery with an odd smattering of dns errors in crawl errors. Checked all the dns server logs and they were clean. By the 22 up 15% so a total gain of 30% from the 18-19th bottom.

Six months ago, I would have said bizarre. Now, meh... Or to paraphrase an old movie/tv show - "Life with Google"

[Donna]

Usually errors come like this when an old data set is rolled. Mostly 404s

[ohno]

Why is it after EVERY SINGLE ONE of these bloody updates do two of our sites get nothing but junk foreign traffic? Do Google WANT us out of business?

[neildt]

How strange that today we check our rankings for the profile pages and they are pretty much back to as they were with regards rankings, including pages that we didn't even modify.

I believe either Google had a problem crawling our site, a DNS problem or a problem with the Panda update they released last Friday.

I was 100% sure before that our content, meta etc was correct and couldn't see why we would of been punished.

[nippi]

my 2nd last panda hit site, jumped from 4000 page views to 6500 a day average since the 20th.

[ohno]

@nippi, decent traffic though? How is your bounce rate? Our page views are WELL UP too but not much good if what traffic you have is junk and non converting.

[Martin Ice Web]

Traffic is up 15% but bounce rate is nealy 80%. Conversions are terrible, hope this will change in a few days. Before that "little" update, bounce rate were nearly less then 20%, conversions were up. For us, the update was not an improvement, i donīt know if it was for the users...

[thudufushi]

I dont post much but thought I would chip in here as there are so few stories of Panda recovery. My clients UK site was hit by Panda in April when the main panda update hit UK shores. It recovered a little in October and then another nice chunk on nov 19/20. Our solution in my eyes that helped us recover, removed 90% of the sites pages that could have been deemed thin or duplicate. Another client who is now suffering what I think is a mild panda effect has some news pages that are not unique. I feel they all have to go. The less content the better unless its really good and without doubt unique. Who agrees with me that the safest, easiest route out of panda problems is actually to remove and remove from googs index most of your sites pages if they arent good enough. Leave yourself with the key selling pages and reduce what you have to get 'right'. I really think this is 'the great purge'

[Lenny2]

@ Thud - the million dollar question is: what is the best way to "get rid" of the content?

1. 301 Redirect
2. Canonicalization
3. NOINDEX
4. NOFOLLOW / NOINDEX
5. Take the URLS out off of the web

We were hit in Panda 1, feb 24th. Lost 75% of our traffic in one night. Landed on the infamous list of top 300 sites to lose traffic due to panda... And since then we've: NoIndexed about 50% of our pages; Canonical tags on a few hundred similar category pages.

Per your observation we have not done nearly enough. but the question remains, what is the best method of getting rid of the data? Completely deleting the data isn't an option as they are typically product pages.

Anybody have any insight.

[santapaws]

can someone explain to me how noindexing pages improves the overall rating of the other pages. The only thing that has changed is that they are not in the index. Users still see them just as they did before, use them just as they did before. Why would some of the best minds in search engineering rate sites by whats in their index regardless of whether users interaction with these pages changes. Im struggling to understand how this is the result of a wish to return the best pages pages for a search.

[johnhh]

Completely deleting the data isn't an option as they are typically product pages.

no insight here - have the same problem, if you have a widget information site it would be expected, and useful, to sell widgets and accessories either directly or via affiliate schemes, as that would be logical. In some areas, including ours, for legal purposes the descriptions have to be as supplied.

<edit>I don't care if they are not in the index, but if their existence brings the whole site down well that is just silly. Once Google knows the url's it appears noindex has no effect.</edit>

[thudufushi]

@ Lenny and Santa. I am quite clear on this and don't think it needs to be complicated. Although the method I use depends on whether I want the pages to still 'exist' but not in googles index or whether I am happy for them to be killed. @ Santa , I disagree, its quite feasible you want pages to exist for punters but not for a SE. So, for the most part I have simply disallowed access in robots.txt and then followed that with a manual directory removal in GWT. Gone from G's index. How can it be harder, whats wrong with this?

[thudufushi]

@johnhh, dont delete your pages you just remove them from Googles index in order to pander to their panda.

[santapaws]

nothing wrong at all, im just asking that if this works, if keeping the pages but simply not having the search engines (google) index them boosts the indexed pages, why? How does this fit in with an algo looking for the best pages. So im not saying the affect isnt real, im simply asking why this should work? How has this made the other pages now more relevant and more valuable to the user? At some point someone would have needed to code for that affect, im trying to understand why given that the user has the same experience on the site if the pages remain but just not indexed.

[koan]

can someone explain to me how noindexing pages improves the overall rating of the other pages. The only thing that has changed is that they are not in the index.

Noindexed pages signify they are of no value as a first landing page for searchers. But they might be of value for visitors (ex: duplicate pages for easier printing, pages sorting, etc). So Google is happy with sending their traffic only to your useful, primary pages and will improve their evaluation of your site. It makes sense and in the end, it's not that big of an effort to ask web site owners to help maintain a reasonable amount of indexed pages. It's about showing your best face to search engines.

[Whitey]

It's about showing your best face to search engines.

I think that's about it.

Holding on to pages that have no added value will cause problems. If you retain them make sure that there is substantial information and/or features that set it apart from other sites with the same or similar info. No use writing about the same thing, or designing the same shopping cart as everyone else, but in mildly different ways. Remember, this is an algorithmn that assess' the competitve nature of a page versus other pages that are out there. If you don't add value, the chances are you'll have a low quality score across the entire site.

I'm seeing sites that have struggled getting value onto a large proportion of those pages and are only having very limited success in improving. Best to block them all i think and start again.

[santapaws]

!

[Bill_H]

Seeing another Thurs/Friday dip again. Prior to panda, they were the best days of the week for us. Is google going to roll out a new algo every weekend?

[nippi]

Hmm, well wow. my trffic is up, but my revenue is down.

I am ranking lower on main terms, but got a mountain or long tail back.

damn

[Kristos]

hello google (monthly)update (aka google dance?)
ergh!