Article pages not ranking since Panda 1.0

[My_Media]

Hi All,
Has anyone got the same issues that all of your articles created not ranked after Panda released on Feb 24, 2011? All 300+ new unique articles went down the tube with no respect from Google after Panda hit our site. Any body know why or got the same issues?
Any fix?

Thanks,

[Andem]

Welcome to the G SEO forum. This forum is filled with threads dealing with your issue.

You say you have 300+ unique articles. Unique can mean anything, but I noticed your post lacks any words which indicate quality: social signals, well written, useful, reading level, original thinking.

Anybody can 'spin' an article to make it 'unique'. That doesn't mean that it's worth ranking.

[My_Media]

Thanks for the reply Andem.

The articles are not just unique but of excellent quality and both interesting and relevant to the readers who were searching for the respective keywords. This is the same as the articles prior to Feb 24, 2011.

Here is some background information :

It is a health website with articles sourced from health care professionals. All our articles are then checked by a medical editor (health care and journalism background). English speakers only. The articles are orientated in a manner that provides a high level of technical detail to the reader but simplifies the medical jargon so that non-medical readers can understand the subject matter. The manner in which we approach content creation is such that it can still be useful for readers of most educational levels.

Almost all of our last 300 articles are around 1,000 words or more. However, we ensure that the first 300 words has sufficient overview information for the 'browsers' and significant detailed information thereafter for the serious readers who want to find out more about the medical topic under discussion.

Social signals - we were using Facebook 'Like' button and Twitter's 'tweet' button until recently when we found some of the code was creating conflicts. The removal of these social buttons actually gave us a slight increase in traffic for as a yet unidentified reason. May just be coincidence.

There appears to some sort of 'block' which is the best I can call it. Since Panda 1.0, most of our pre-existing 1,200 articles fell - some more than others. However, most of these still rank somewhere albeit not as well as prior to Feb 24,2011.

In fact some of our older articles had a few spelling and grammar errors (prior to hiring our current editor) yet they are still ranking. These previous editorial issues have been sorted and all the most recent 300 articles are up to scratch.

However, the new articles are not ranking decently if at all. It is specifically the content published after this date. I understand Panda is a site wide penalty but the current rankings (if you can call it that at position 100 for example) does not correlate with even our now under-performing ranking of previous articles.

My question is if those who were hit with Panda experienced this phenomenon - new articles not ranking within top 100 post Feb 24, 2011 yet previous articles still ranking within top 100 (even though poorly). I mean as in ranking for the given keywords as per the article titles, subtitles and keyword predominance.

A quick note - new websites with 'spun' content and articles with poor English seem to outrank us for keywords. I know this is a problem most Panda 'victims' are complaining about but just thought I'd mention it.

[CitizenJoe]

I'd like to thank tedster for directing me to this thread. I am not sure if the problem is related, but its also about article pages not being indexed correctly.

Since give or take a few days ago, my articles are not ranking either.
Each article, I write unique content that passes copyscape. After posting my articles, I syndicate them on 2 high traffic social bookmarking sites on categories that fit my articles. Aside from this, as my site is hosted on Wordpress, I also have a substantial list of "Update Services". The last few months, my articles always were indexed within 10 minutes, and immediately started to rank well. Since they're often on time-sensitive topics where sooner=better this was going great.
Since a few days my article pages do not get indexed correctly anymore.
I notice when googling the exact phrase of my article title that after a few minutes my articles get picked up by other sites, that show a small excerpt and a link to my main article. But the article itself doesn't show up!
The homepage IS visible for this exact phrase search, as the exact title phrase is listed in the "latest news" section.
After doing some testing, I did see after a few minutes that my article got indexed up by google correctly, but then after ~10 minutes it went away again.

Weirdly enough, when googling:
site:hostname.tld "exact title of article"
it DOES show up, whereas googling:
"exact title of article"
only results in the homepage

A sister site of mine (different subject, different unique articles), on the same ip, has no trouble getting its articles published within minutes
I double checked the robots.txt and .htaccess and they're ok
The SEO is OK and the Googlebot on Google Webmaster shows no problems.

I realise this post is long, but for days now I have lost thousands of visitors and i am at my wits end.

I hope anyone can help me, and also the original author, in finding out what is going wrong.

[tedster]

my articles get picked up by other sites

I recently worked with a site that had a similar issue. We made a couple of changes that seemed to improve indexing and ranking immediately.

1. Inaugurated authorship mark-up
2. Used pubsubhubbub (PuSH) to send Google "fat pings" immediately at publication
3. Delayed the standard feed until the PuSH feed was received

I did see after a few minutes that my article got indexed up by google correctly, but then after ~10 minutes it went away again.

That's a bizarre thing. I'm going to guess that the syndication sites have a stronger trust/authority in Google's eyes. Still, that doesn't really explain it. By taking the three steps I listed above, we were hoping to send a strong signal that THIS was the original author of the content, and it did seem to work.

The fact that there are now several reports of this kind of issue is troubling. I never understood why scraper sites were successful at sneaking past Google's defenses. But syndication sites - especially those who do not reprint in full - well, you would think they would be relatively easy to classify as not being the original source.

[My_Media]

CitizenJoe, I agree that we have a similar problem but not the same. :)
It seems like your content is being picked up due to syndication and of course scraper sites are also benefiting here.

Tedster's advice would therefore be extremely useful for your problem. You will find similar advice on many other forums and SEO blogs and while I am not in the business of "time-sensitive" content, I can say that Tedster's 3 tips could give you the edge. Also check your website on W3C Markup Validator - you may have markup issues that the scraper sites do not.

I feel we have slightly deviated from my problem which I know other webmaster's are also experiencing. None that I speak to personally have found a solution as yet therefore I looked here for possible suggestions here.

Let me run through this again :
1. Pre-Panda 1.0 (before Feb 24, 2011) articles still performs well albeit not as well as was it doing before Panda. I accept that this is a Panda penalty.
2. New articles are just not showing up on rankings. (No, it is not an issue with scraper sites picking up our content .... and so on as mentioned in other posts/threads)
3. Some of our new articles do not even have "competition" in that we attempted to delve into some fairly untouched topics yet it still does not rank.
4. Poor quality sites with, to put it mildly, "rubbish content" targeting the same keywords does at times outrank us as well as several industry-respected/authority sites. I know this is a Panda issue in general with some poor quality sites scoring on the big G.
5. My content is not being scraped. Those outranking me at times have terrible content but did not take my content. Tedster's recommendations for those who are being outranked by scrapers is excellent in this regard.
6. My articles are indexed within seconds, or at worst sometimes within minutes, and is not de-indexed thereafter. I found tweeting articles after publication prevented de-indexing and somewhat managed to state that mine was original so no scraper site ranked above me even with excerpts (thanks Matt Cutts for useful advice).

My question yet again :

Has anybody out there experienced a "block" on ranking of new articles after the emergence of Panda 1.0?

I ask politely and respectfully ... let's not detract with authorship issues, content quality and other stuff that is routinely mentioned elsewhere on the net because it just stifles original thinking and suggestions. We are all experienced webmasters here and many of these issues have been ironed out.

I had hoped to keep my thread original but I do find that heavy moderating of this forum frequently misdirects the topic at hand. It would have been great to see Citizen Joe's question and Tedster's answer on a thread possibly named "Scraper Sites/Syndication Ranks Higher than Original Content". Just a suggestion admin, I am not being impolite.

And where many of the usual recommendations fall short is that if the poor quality sites are still getting away without authorship, reputation, even Page Rank, then why are they scoring and we falling when we are long existing domains, respected brands albeit small, have high Page Rank.

As you so rightfully said Tedster, G should be able to differentiate original content from scraper sites using syndication to publish excerpts. Yet, it does not.

Once again, my questions is - has anybody experienced a "block" or "bar" on new articles despite old articles ranking?

New articles vs old articles - no difference. Yet old articles continue to rank and new articles are shunned by Google. Same author can rank at #2 for a competitive search term with his old article (previously #1) yet none of his new articles are given any attention now.

If so, did you find any fix?

[tedster]

Has anybody out there experienced a "block" on ranking of new articles after the emergence of Panda 1.0

The website I was discussing IS a Panda 1.0 casualty. After Panda hit it, their new article positions were taken over by authorized syndicators as well as some scraper sites.

The tactics I laid out helped fix that issue - but not the full Panda demotion around the site. In other words, the site fell into both your categories to a degree. We've got the new article challenge handled pretty well, but the entire site still does not have what you would call a "full" recovery.

[My_Media]

Thank you for your reply Tedster.

None of my articles have been taken by syndicators nor scraper sites. This was an old problem that I dealt with swiftly with the help of Twitter as discussed by Matt Cutts on his blog.

In other words, the site fell into both your categories to a degree.

I see where you are coming from and the overlap to some degree. Your suggestions are helpful and have also been discussed extensively on many forums, SEO blogs and even Google's blog. Yet following these rules just never "de-Pandas" a site signficantly. Yes I made some gains (about 20% of traffic) with tweaking in the past few months. I dare not even think of a "full recovery". :)

We've got the new article challenge handled pretty well

Citizen Joe, I think you have your answer and I fully agree with Tedster's suggestions.

but the entire site still does not have what you would call a "full" recovery.

Thanks Tedster. Will keep looking.

[CitizenJoe]

Thank you tedster and My_Media. With many problems it is difficult to define in which category it belongs. As such I hoped this was a good place to post mine. I will implement the changes that were suggested in this thread, and hopefully report that they worked fine:)
Again, thanks.

[potentialgeek]

Panda wants you to delete or fix your existing bad pages before creating new ones.

Except using new tricks it doesn't matter if your new pages are "super high quality." Your old pages should also be very high quality.

[My_Media]

You are welcome Citizen Joe. Glad to share the thread with you. I had a similar issue like you did a little while back and Tedster's suggestions plus Twitter solved these issues. Good luck.

Potentialgeek, I fully agree with you. We have undertaken this over the past 11 months as it was the first piece of advice given by Google and other SEO blogs. Fix what is wrong at the moment. We have bit by bit targeted any spelling and grammar errors that were missed (before having an editor) and have been working on an ongoing basis to touch up what may be seen as "thin" content by Google. We are gradually bringing it up on par with newer content.

[potentialgeek]

I'm still struggling between trying to fix a Pandalized site and starting over on a new site. I may end up dividing my time between the old one and a new one to hedge my bets.

I don't want to spend a year of my life trying to fix something which never returns to its pre-Panda success, or even gets worse, leaving me with nothing to show for an entire year of work.

I don't know if I should go all in or fold. I've spent many hours here and elsewhere online reading about Panda, but I still don't know.