Panda recovery - Change more or wait for a data refresh?

[streetshirts]

Hit by Panda 26th January.

I was hoping for a data refresh soon, but from my reading on here there might not be one (if Panda is incorporated into the main algorithm).

Dropped to 2nd page from no. 1 positions for some excellent one-word keywords and 2-3 word keyphrases.

Action taken so far

• No-indexed blog month list, tag and search pages and other potential duplicates on the blog
  
• 301 duplicated https pages to http
  
• Given each page a unique title (before they were all the same)
  
• Unique meta descriptions (as above)
  
• Removed some low quality content
  
• Noindexed about 25,000 thin pages (the site allows users to start their own widget shop and lots of these had links to them but were all identical to googlebot - content loaded later via ajax

I was wondering what to do now

1. No indexing the blog as it's not great (about 500 articles)
   
2. Waiting for a data refresh to see what effect the changes have - will there be one?
   
3. Changing the url to the .com (we use the .co.uk at the moment)

What do you think?

[tedster]

First, there are two different activities with Panda - 1) a change to the actual algorithm and 2) a data refresh with no change to the algorithm. In January we saw the second event, but the algorithm remained untouched. However, in February Google just announced that there was a true Panda Update - however, with no particular date announced:

Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

[insidesearch.blogspot.com...]

I wouldn't jump to any conclusions about the future of Panda right now. Anything is still possibile, even as it slowly gets more integrated.

Changing the URL to .com seems like a short term fix, if anything. However, no-indexing (or removing!) sub-par content makes plenty of sense to me.

[Whitey]

@streetshirts- You may need to wait another refresh to see the results of your actions - 2 cycles is about right. Personally I'd be proactive and keep working on it.

[streetshirts]

The blog articles aren't written in perfect English and sometimes target keywords. My feeling is that users wouldn't read them.

Also they didn't realy rank.

Still, it's a little nerve-wracking removing the vast majority of the site.

Here goes..!

[Whitey]

aren't written in perfect English and sometimes target keywords

There's a good chance Google has picked up on unnatural language. Other's may chime in to back this up, but I would have considered this needs to be re edited to a higher quality.

[streetshirts]

@Whitey

Thanks. We discussed this today and the general feeling in the office was that the articles aren't worth reading. Short (500 words) and full of fluff.

So, we are removing the entire blog and will work on soem quality tutorial articles.

So, although the site is now small, everything on there is good.

[Planet13]

My feeling is that users wouldn't read them... it's a little nerve-wracking removing the vast majority of the site.

Maybe I am overstepping etiquette here, but if the "vast majority" of the site is stuff that you think users wouldn't read, well... I think you know where I am going with this...

[streetshirts]

The rest of the site is good and offers a great service. It's the blog articles I was talking about :) They were peripheral to the main site and were under 3% of traffic.

Stil, they're gone now an we are left with 40-50 decent pages I think in the core of the the site.

[streetshirts]

Obviously, also, it is easy to be brutally honest in hindsight.

At the time, we didn't see this as bad content - it was a blog suggesting ideas on how to use the products