New Panda Rollout 2012-03-23

[netmeg]

Tweeted out by Matt Cutts & others:

Panda refresh rolling out now. Only ~1.6% of queries noticeably affected.

http://twitter.com/google/status/183312403100995584 [twitter.com]

[edited by: tedster at 11:40 pm (utc) on Mar 23, 2012]
[edit reason] make link clickable [/edit]

[agent_x]

From what I'm seeing in my stats it looks like it started on the 21st.

[tedster]

What are you seeing in your stats that would be Panda related?

[agent_x]

Sites losing 20% = 30% of traffic, some I've been working on and some I haven't touched. So it must be some update they've rolled out, if not Panda then something equally significant.

[Whitey]

@netmeg - approx what time estimate for us followers around the globe ?

[tedster]

So it must be some update they've rolled out, if not Panda then something equally significant.

I agree - there has been some other major update rolling out this week, but it was before today's Panda iteration. Others in our March SERP Changes thread [webmasterworld.com] have been reporting the some kind of thing.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

My traffic is up a solid double digit % this week but it's March break, hard to tell if it's Google related or more people browsing related. I'll know next week.

note: I don't see ebay hovering around my top keywords right now which is encouraging, in fact I don't see ebay on the first page anymore(or wikipedia). Something has changed and it feels like more than just Panda as we know it.

[mslina2002]

That tweet leads to a blog post that is 1 year old.

That was Panda 1.0

[netmeg]

I dunno, I saw the tweet somewhere around 6:15pm Eastern.

[mslina2002]

It's here as well on search engineland referring to the same tweet:

[searchengineland.com...]

[gyppo]

Interesting, our rankings haven't really been affected but we're down about 30% in traffic. Something to do with the long tail perhaps?

[tedster]

@gyppo, Panda affects rankings. Your report is something others have noticed and it's not explained or understood very well so far - but it ain't Panda.

One possibility - at least in some cases - is a shift in Google Suggestions. If your search term disappeared (or even dropped lower) in Suggestions, fewer people would be even seeing the SERP where you rank well.

But again - Panda definitely affects rankings, not just traffic.

[gyppo]

Well, it's not impacted a lot of the rankings that we monitor. But we've definitely dropped positions for a lot of the longtail query for certain keywords.

Example:

Widget Blah - Rankings unaffected
Widget Blah 2012 - Rankings Dropped

Thats what I meant about it impacting more of our long tail queries for terms we're already quite strong in. Which doesn't make sense really.

[Whitey]

@gyppo - you're a Panda recover [ for other's benefit].

30% is huge - is it something else, such as the over optimization adjustment kicking in, .... i guess you're still struggling with an explanation as you say.

[Rockyou]

Well its not safe for us to use only Google, If you guys use Bing as well, It will protect us against Google madness, Last week i heard of a guy losing many things in life because of Panda updates in Webmasterworld, Solution to this uncalled madness is to diversify your searches to Bing. Let us all build a healthy internet.
Webmaster Community should unite to stop this Google Madness.

[onebuyone]

With so many different updates and algo tweaks around, also with the cycle of being penalized by some part of algo or recovering from it

.. it is impossible to say something about effects of this panda update.

[reseller]

With so many different updates and algo tweaks around

Google SERPs have dropped remarkably in quality and Google search quality team has realized that and taking urgent measures (rolling out several algorithm updates in short time) to resolve the issue.

[AlyssaS]

I agree - there has been some other major update rolling out this week, but it was before today's Panda iteration.

Well Google deindexed a major blog network on the 19th.

Here's the post from the network concerned confirming that it all happened on March 19th, and that they are closing their doors:

[buildmyrank.com...]

I understand they had about 25,000 sites each with about 1000-2000 posts all with links going out to various sites on the web. That's millions of links lost in aggregate (at least 25 million assuming each post had one link).

I think it takes about 4-7 days for the SERPs to recalculate when links are lost, so the timing is rather cute - the recalculation due to link loss will be hitting at the same time as the Panda refresh and peeps will be rushing around wondering whether their ranking loss is down to Panda or down to links (or maybe both!)

I've seen gains, but I think it's purely down to my competitors being knobbled rather than anything to do with my sites.

I think G is focusing on links this year, and it's kind of exciting.

[petehall]

Interesting, our rankings haven't really been affected but we're down about 30% in traffic. Something to do with the long tail perhaps?

@gyppo I am finding the longer the tail, the worse it affects the accuracy.

If I try a large multi-word (8+) search for a page I know exists using the exact words it's optimised for then it's often nowhere to be seen.

Throw a couple of words into the mix which are loosely related to the page but not the target term and they are easily found.

It seems to me that the site is ranking better on related terms than on exact match / target phrases.

Which sounds like over optimisation to me...

[tedster]

We were wandering from the topic: the new Panda roll-out. All other topics belong somewhere else or not posted at all. Please help! I just removed a number of posts that were all over the place.

We need some serious observations about the new Panda iteration, if anyone is seeing that effect in the rankings they monitor. I can't say that I've spotted anything much. There's one possible exception. A site I work with that has worked hard on improving their quality. They are seeing improved rankings today, up 2 or 3 positions on their best kws.

[petehall]

A site I work with that has worked hard on improving their quality.

Quality; as in links, content, usability? (or all three?)

I manage a large number of sites and they are all up bar one, which has taken a 30% hit.

I would say in general it's only flaw over the others is longer title tags, so may be classed as 'over optimised'.

[tedster]

1. The site rewrote content on 200 out of 240 core pages.

2. They had been using their blog like an advertising feed. They took some time to survey their market (social listening!) and identified areas where there was an information gap. They wrote new blog articles that directly addressed those holes - and have been getting natural backlinks for those new blog articles.

3. They moved content to begin higher on the page, by shrinking an oversize graphic header.

4. They improved interlinking within the site.

[petehall]

My site is also guilty of 3.

But it's of huge benefit to users and really makes the website. A picture paints a thousand words as they say.

But not all searches are affects.. surely above the fold would be global? Your thoughts much appreciated.

[pontifex]

No serious changes on my flagship since yesterday... Traffic stable.. Hmmm

[barley]

I focus mainly on long tailed keywords and yeah they all have mostly taken a 30-50% hit. But some have higher rankings...its weird.

[ken_b]

I'm cautiously hopeful. 23 of 51 pages are on page 1 as of right now. That's up from 6 of 51 pages the other day.

But these pages have bounced up and down with various Panda episodes over the past year+.

Still 23 is a good as it's been since January 2011.

[Ummon]

2 of mine got nailed. One I am not too surprised about. Traffic down about 50%

[helenp]

Strange, I fall in last update (still on first page) however now Im back to were I always been, second or third on first page. But the strange thing is, yesterday and today I have had the lowest amount of visitors in this month....And my homepage is pr3, my spanish indexpage in a folder is pr2 but my swedish homepage in folder also have raised to pr4......
Strange a indexpage in a folder can have higher pr than rootindex.
I can also see 3 companies that disappeared from first pages, 2 were spammers, however dont think penalized as appear when I search for there names or on speacial words.

[inbound]

A few observations from the UK. Although we don't have the traffic level we used to (which was enough to spot a trend very quickly) I'm pretty sure that it has hit the UK.

It may be worth looking out for a larger drop in visitors that were logged in to Google - we saw a much larger drop in these in comparison to the overall drop. This may be a symptom of a rollout that is incomplete.

The long, long tail appears to be where we have lost penetration and this has resulted in a 20% overall drop. There may have been a widening of the matching of keywords so that "more trusted" sites that had close matches gained more exposure than less trusted sites with exact matches - that's something I have seen change a few times and it looks as though Google are getting more confident on what they feel they should treat as being close enough to allow a match (being correct on many but also having some very poor results on the margins of their algo - where data is sparse). Google seem to be taking the view that a poorer match from a "better" site is preferable to them.

[helenp]

I can see the reason now. Oh how bad, we are higher in serps but less visitor. We are a local rental site, and many local sites disappeared but the big international companies rent direct from owner are on first page,..... I do think a site especialezed in a city should be better in serp if you search for city villas than an internacional site.....
This is to do the rich richer and the poor poorer :(