Google Releases Penguin Update 1.1

[breeks]

Via Matt McGee at SEL [searchengineland.com...]

Google’s Matt Cutts announced the news a short time ago on Twitter, calling it a “data refresh” that impacts less than one-tenth of a percent of English-language searches.

https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/206232437427154944

Minor weather report: We pushed 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. Affects <0.1% of English searches.

May 26, 2012 at 12:48am ET

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:30 pm (utc) on May 26, 2012]
[edit reason] added links and attribution [/edit]

[Jez123]

crobb305. My site does not rank for a phrase on my homepage. A site does, that when I click on it, displays a 404. My site is displayed 4th from last in the supps.

[crobb305]

crobb305. My site does not rank for a phrase on my homepage. A site does, that when I click on it, displays a 404. My site is displayed 4th from last in the supps.

This is the Penguin conundrum. Google attacks spam by sending legitimate webpages supplemental for their company name and snippets of content. So, when a consumer searches for the company name, what do they find? They find irrelevant webpages, some created by content thieves with malicious intent. Those pages are the epitome of spam, yet Google allows them to rise to the top 5 and flourish in place of the Penguinized sites. If a consumer searches for MY company, it should be found. Not a scammer's FB landing page using my company name.

[edited by: crobb305 at 2:16 pm (utc) on May 29, 2012]

[Jez123]

I am discovering quite a lot of empty, 0 post forum profiles with my anchor text and a snippet of my homepage text that I have not added or asked anyone else to add. These can't look good in my profile

[mcneely]

When I saw a domain that I've owned for 6 years, with no content/meta, climb to #3 position for it's *presumed terms in the serp's .. I ceased to have an opinion.

"Forget about Google", I was told in a conference call the other day .. "Put them on the back burner, and concentrate instead on the sources that are still providing monitary returns" .. I would guess these to be Bing.Yahoo.others ..

Another even went on so far as to say that Google might be in fiscal trouble .. a bit of speculation indeed I agree, but these guys are the types that are in it for the money and I'm simply here to comply with those portions of their strategies that might include what I do.

I find it to be quite telling, in that here we are, in the middle of a strategy session, with more than 3 suggesting that Google be taken off the table for a while ..

Never thought I'd ever live to see the day ..

[gouri]

We are seeing Penguinized sites that don't even show up for snippets of their own content outside of the supplemental index, and they rank position 3 or higher for their own company name. This is a penalty, above and beyond simple link devaluation. Gouri, does your website rank for snippets of content, or do scrapers show up?

@crobb305,

For some snippets of content from a page, I am sometimes on page 1 in the SERP or later pages. For some snippets, I looked through some of the pages in the SERP, but did not find them. It is possible that they are there, but I did not look at all the pages.

When performing this search, I looked at All Results? Is this where I should look or should I look at Verbatim?

Also, can you tell me based on what I saw, what you think that I am dealing with?

[crobb305]

"Forget about Google", I was told in a conference call the other day .. "Put them on the back burner, and concentrate instead on the sources that are still providing monitary returns" .. I would guess these to be Bing.Yahoo.others

I can say that since I lost Google traffic, my bounce rate is at its lowest point in 3 years, from Bing/Yahoo primarily.

For some snippets of content from a page, I am sometimes on page 1 in the SERP or later pages. For some snippets, I looked through some of the pages in the SERP, but did not find them. It is possible that they are there, but I did not look at all the pages.

When performing this search, I looked at All Results? Is this where I should look or should I look at Verbatim?

Also, can you tell me based on what I saw, what you think that I am dealing with?

If you're not on the 1st page (ideally #1) for snippets of your own text (in quotes), I'd say you're dealing with the same thing others are: the Penguin Conundrum. Spammers and scrapers get to rank where you once did for YOUR content while you get spanked. Spammers, scammers, scrapers, and thieves get to rank for YOUR company name, not you. Spam is still there, only pushed higher up.

[bordering]

Coming in a bit late here (as usual), but the penny has started to drop. So it's - at least in part - about excessively repetitive anchor text, as a recognisable sign of over-optimisation.

Our sites have stacks of it: pick the product type from a fairly short list, pick the colour from another larger list, and that's made up the anchor text right across the sites, displaying identically for each product across multiple templates. Didn't seem to be anything wrong with doing so as it makes it clear to visitors what it is and what colour.

Also, maybe a sign of the '1.1' version, the sites with a higher proportion of affiliate content have shown a drop in search volume according to WMT over the last couple of days, but the one which has quite a high proportion of non-affiliate content of the same kind of products hasn't.

So it seems that changing this anchor text may well be a significant ingredient in improving things. Now I'm wondering how to handle it, having always been wary of making small template changes which have a noticeable effect right across the sites.

Possibilities are:

Take the links out of the anchor text and just rely on the 'More info', 'Pics' and 'Buy it' buttons.

Move the link on the product name so, for example, "Midsize German Saloon Car" could become "Audi A4".

Write something different for each and roll it out gradually... and it would be gradually because there are plenty to do.

Or none of the above, but something else? Any inspiration would be welcome, as I have little remaining.

[crobb305]

@bordering, I have suspected over use of anchor text (from inbounds combined with sitewide navigation). I tried changing the phrase, and fell 200 more spots. It's almost like any sort of deoptimization worsens the situation. Deoptimization seems to equal optimization. Any activity that significantly alters various document scores could be deemed an attempt to spam. No win. Changes that I make from here on out will be for the visitors, and gradual.

[bordering]

@crobb305, I've found that sitewide nav hasn't been badly impacted and have assumed the fact that it's inevitably going to be repetitive is factored in to some extent - making it too variable would confuse users. Perhaps I won't modify those templates just yet...

You mentioned lower bounce rates. I've noticed the same - in fact figures I wouldn't have thought were possible. Some of this must come from site improvements I've made as a result of this, but I doubt all of it.

[AndyA]

crobb305 wrote:

Spammers and scrapers get to rank where you once did for YOUR content while you get spanked. Spammers, scammers, scrapers, and thieves get to rank for YOUR company name, not you.

This is one of the most frustrating things to me. Google apparently isn't able to determine what site content and images should be credited to. Most of the sites I find with scraped content have content scraped from lots of other sites, so it seems like it wouldn't be too difficult for Google to determine which site was the scraper, and which site had the original content.

I mentioned in another thread that Google should add an "allowed sites" feature to Webmaster Tools, so a verified site owner could indicate which domains were authorized to host images. They already offer a similar ability in AdSense, so why not offer it in WMT?

This would eliminate the issue of other sites hotlinking images, then getting credit for them. It would also be another indicator to Google as to which domains are generating original content, and which ones are scraping from others.

And while they're at it, why not allow site owners to indicate bad links in WMT? Instead of just offering a "this link is fixed" option, why not have a "this link doesn't exist, never has, never will, disregard" option? That way, broken links shown in WMT could be cleaned up. Most of the backlinks showing to my site are the result of sloppy coding, where someone forgets to add the extension, or uses caps instead of lowercase, etc.

It seems like Google itself creates many of the problems, then expects site owners to find a way to deal with it. I'd like to see Google give us some tools to help clear up these issues.

[WebPixie]

@bordering

I am not sure that we can assume that there is a way to recover at this point outside of human review. Signs seem to be pointing toward problems with Panda and Penguin being much more difficult to fix.

[gouri]

If you're not on the 1st page (ideally #1) for snippets of your own text (in quotes), I'd say you're dealing with the same thing others are: the Penguin Conundrum. Spammers and scrapers get to rank where you once did for YOUR content while you get spanked. Spammers, scammers, scrapers, and thieves get to rank for YOUR company name, not you. Spam is still there, only pushed higher up.

@crobb305,

If you are coming on the 1st page for snippets of text, can you tell me what it could then possibly be? Is it a change in the values of the external backlinks that is affecting rankings and traffic?

Also, I was affected by Panda in March and April. Since Panda is generally thought to be based on on site factors, I took a look and saw content on a few pages that could be better written and more informative. Maybe this is one factor.

I also saw that my internal links could be better. Linking to the home page several times from images on the same page and repetitive use of anchor text in the body text on different pages leading to the same page were some things that I found. Could this be something that Panda saw and didn't like?

I am trying to figure out what caused me to be affected by Panda and then I am hoping to determine what might have caused me to be affected by Penguin?

[edited by: gouri at 6:41 pm (utc) on May 29, 2012]

[outland88]

I would agree totally Web Pixie. Plus the vast majority will likely find manipulating link profiles or whatever is going to backfire. Larger sites with many high PR links can get away with this, from what I have seen, but again for the vast majority of legitimate webmasters it spells disaster.

[DirigoDev]

<0.1% of English searches

Can someone do the math on this. How many searches? They’re doing, what – 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) English searches per day? So that’s only a million terms? My guess is that they just sank another 5,000 US businesses + a couple of thousand in the UK...

They make it seem so small and inconsequential. It isn't.

[Jez123]

but again for the vast majority of legitimate webmasters it spells disaster.

I hope not. I have heard, in some other forums, that people have been able to come back from this. By diluting the anchor text they can and further diluting by adding more, diverse anchor links. What sort of size sites, I have no idea. Or age of domain or the number of links involved.

This is exceptionally harsh. I no longer like or trust google but I hope they don't have it in them to be that cold.

[crobb305]

I wonder if the "unnatural links" notices received in Feb/Mar were a prelude to extreme suppression with Penguin and an opportunity for a handful of sites with age/authority/whatever to get reconsideration. Perhaps the two are entirely unrelated, perhaps not. I don't know if everyone who got notices were hit, but I do know that not all Penguinized sites received a notice. Reconsideration is not something I have sought as of yet, but I do have the "unnatural links" notice sitting in my WMT from March 2.

[bordering]

@Jez123 - perhaps it is variable depending on factors which we don't clearly understand.

I've noticed that those real big sites in my sector have responded by changing anchor text. Actually, the result is rather a dog's dinner compared to the orderly way (which surely would have contributed to the 'user experience' by way of its consistency, and offended no-one) in which this info was previously presented.

Also I'm finding that my pages linked to using anchors which mention less common product types are still ranking ok.

Just not sure how it will upset things if I change all these overnight. There are rather a lot to change by hand - I'd be here until Christmas that way, by which time creating good quality, original content would be something I'd forgotten how to do.

Alternatively I could make some scripts and have it done (not necessarily fixed!) by lunchtime, which is what I suspect the big boys did.

[rlange]

mcneely wrote:
I find it to be quite telling, in that here we are, in the middle of a strategy session, with more than 3 suggesting that Google be taken off the table for a while ..

I wouldn't necessarily take that as confirmation that Google is doing something wrong. It seems likely that these folks are as lost as most people when it comes to "what Google wants", so it's only natural that they downplay the importance of Google organic traffic instead of either a) potentially losing a client by admitting that Google traffic is important, but they no longer know how to grab it or b) risk their reputation by making a potentially false claim about their ability to grab Google traffic.

--
Ryan

[tedster]

I am discovering quite a lot of empty, 0 post forum profiles with my anchor text and a snippet of my homepage text that I have not added or asked anyone else to add. These can't look good in my profile

@Jez, are those spam forum profiles only using content from your site, or are they doing it for others, too? I'd guess that Google would ignore that footprint if it is the spam forum's usual way of populating their profiles.

[Jez123]

@Tedster, Not sure, how would I tell? FWIW, some are not spam - one was from club penguin - like I need more penguins in my life! Well clubbed penguins would be Ok I guess

[bordering]

And here's a silly one, which ties in with various other posts: one of my pages with a non-standard anchor pointing to it ranks a treat for that, and it's still a phrase with money volume. But the advertiser copied and pasted from his own website so its dup content. In fact it's ranking just behind it - presumably because his was there first (so at least they sussed that in this instance).

[tedster]

@Jez, just do searches on the content of other profiles that don't use your content.

[DigiSEO]

I have experienced similar inbound links from bogus forum profiles without any posts. One of my sites recently got hit (6 months ago or so) with literally thousands of inbound crap links to one of my in-site forms. I have been hit by penguin and I certainly hope I haven't fallen victim to negative SEO from competitors.

[Whitey]

They make it seem so small and inconsequential. It isn't.

@DirigoDev - Bang on target with that statement. Add that to Panda and there isn't a lot left that's untouched in the commercial space. Except brands.

Brands really are getting a fress ride. One site with huge following offline that i watch, has it's website with every conceivable term interlinked to specific landing pages with minimal content, if not otherwise auto generated content. It has stacks of exact match links pointing to it. And it appears to be untouched.

[Swanson]

I think that with every update the message is clear - "we don't want small time affiliates and shops we want trusted brands"

The CEO even said that a few years ago.

All these updates are to stop the people that post on these forums ranking in Google - unless you are different.

The message is completely clear, be a "brand" or get lost.

That should mean to a lot of you guys, forget Google or change and use other ways of getting traffic.

Or of course become a brand. In the UK there has been a massive change in how affiliates can work on Google - I don't think it is viable to be a small affiliate in Google anymore.

In a weird way this forum is going to die as "webmasters" looking for startup advice is just not going to help anymore.

[Swanson]

To be honest, do I really want anything other than the brand in the search results - I don't actually want a content site with a bit of adsense etc. in there.

Maybe it is a harsh reality that we have to deal with - users don't want affiliate sites done in the manner in which small time guys have done it in the past.

Good looking and useful affiliate sites such as price comparison and voucher will always win.

Small time blogs etc. (the type everyone always said you should create) just aren't any good for the customer.

[outland88]

When Whitey gets pessimistic things are looking bleek.

In a weird way this forum is going to die as "webmasters" looking for startup advice is just not going to help anymore.

That dawned on me a few days back. Best advice: Get listed in the Fortune 5000 before submitting to Google.

[rubygzayas]

Hi friends i am new here. Before some time my site ranking was on first page of google. But now it is coming on 500 of in google. Are my site panalize? How would i promote my site. please suggest me.

[petehall]

I see industry leading sites that relied on 'designed by' type links have lost serious ground with this update. These are definitely defined by links you are in control of. This type of SEO company is in trouble in my opinion.

[bikedorkseattle]

I've run a very popular niche site for the past 12 years that includes a very active forum. We have an affiliate section that has done very well in the past, although each update seems to take out a large chunk of our search traffic. This morning I noticed we had literally zero search traffic to it so far today. We are "well ranked" and have a lot of inbound links and unique content. Obviously this isn't a good development for us as the majority of our income comes from this traffic. I'm sitting here completely stunned wondering if there is anything I can do.

Four or so months ago I added a preg_replace for some common brand names to be sent to our product system. While I was hoping there was some ranking benefit to this (small studies have shown adding links to old content has no effect) the benefit was getting our traffic to our affiliate pages. I'm wondering now if that has majorly hurt us.

One thing I'd like to point out. Cyrus Shepard formally of SeoMoz has stated numerous times that these updates (specifically Panda) are site wide, but my data suggest they are not. Our forum traffic and article traffic has gone completely untouched, only our affiliate pages have been effected in these updates. I'll be going over the most recent data in the next couple days to understand the impact more.