Coppermine Gallery, Panda & Penguin

[HuskyPup]

May 6th 2011 I saw a halving in CTR overnight on my trade widget directory site, the most hard hit section was an exclusive widget Coppermine gallery, there is not another one like it anywhere on the Net.

Since then the Panda seems to have had a problem digesting and understanding this gallery and even demoted to 500+ the search term keyword1keyword2 for something it had been top 1-3 for many years in Google.com, most other Googles it remains 1-5.

It would seem to me that the Penguin now has a problem with this gallery since its last "update" I have lost yet another 50% of impressions to this gallery therefore I am now at 25% of just over a year ago.

Obviously there are a lot of Coppermine galleries out there, has anyone else seen such a drastic reduction in numbers with the Panda and Penguin?

This is an important reference loss to my entire widget industry and there's no way I can financially justify re-constructing the gallery since there are thousands of pages.

Any ideas, what would you do?

I just feel like dumping it however Bing/DDG/Yandex/Yahoo/IX do not have a problem with it at all...is this simply another Google Panduin fubar?

[dawnstar]

I've not got a Coppermine gallery but some of my sites were effected by the penguin update and have seen 500+ drops.

When the -amazon.com hack worked (it's now disabled) they would pop back to their previous page one places for the main keywords.

I'm working on the assumption that it's an over optimisation penalty, specifically your backlink anchor text profile. I'm creating content with generic backlinks to try to remedy this (with no luck as yet).

Try checking "opensiteexplorer" to check if your backlink anchor text profile to your gallery is "over optimised". If it is try to dilute it.

Don't know if it'll work but that's what I'm up to at the moment.

Good Luck!

[realmaverick]

Hey HP, is it only the gallery that's dropped? Remember Panda and Penguin are more site wide than focused.

I would look long and hard at the gallery, check for duplicate content etc.

Perhaps noindex, follow pages 2+ of any given gallery?

It's hard to give solid advice without seeing it.

[jinxed]

So this is a picture gallery section of your website that is showing product related images?

Have you considered Google is using user/search metrics to come to the conclusion that the page isn't providing what the user is looking for?

Sorry if I have misunderstood.

[HuskyPup]

Try checking "opensiteexplorer" to check if your backlink anchor text profile to your gallery is "over optimised".

This seems to be ok. If over optimisation is naming the image correctly and also placing the image name on the page under the image then we're all screwed!

Hey HP, is it only the gallery that's dropped?

Mostly yes, some pages have gone down, even though they're unique since I have nothing new to update. No duplicate content, all unique images.

So this is a picture gallery section of your website that is showing product related images?

Yes, it was created to show both the trade and the public just how much the products can vary and also at the same time what alternative, but quite similar products compare, plus it was also made because so many companies, especially in the USA, tried confusion marketing by applying their own names to the products.

Have you considered Google is using user/search metrics to come to the conclusion that the page isn't providing what the user is looking for?

Maybe, maybe not, how would Google ever know the answer to this without actually questioning the user?

I am always checking my trade's products and sometimes I only need only a fraction of a second to know whether it's right or wrong. Does Google determine that fraction of a second as good or bad?

Does it determine me staying on that site and reporting to their webmaster that they have incorrect information as good?

I think that Google became totally confused last summer when I semi re-built one section of the gallery and G kept calling on a removed album. I'be just checked this and nearly one year later Google is still generating a Coppermine error page.

If anyone knows how to generate a proper 404 in Coppermine, please let me know.

[jinxed]

How would they know?

Because users maybe viewing a gallery page with the intention of buying the product, when instead they are seeing an image of it. Users may then be hitting the back button, returning to the SERPS and then viewing another page until they get what the want.

So essentially, they may be classifying the terms as transactional instead of informational and thus sending you less traffic.