Panda Update 2012 November 21

[tedster]

If you check our Monthly Update thread for November [webmasterworld.com], you'll see a lot of buzz about a possible Panda Update around Nov 21/22, or right on the Thanksgiving Holiday in the UD - for example:

I have woken up this morning to signs of a Panda update (UK). Is anyone else seeing this?
-petehall

Barry at SERoundtable reported on Nov 20 that Google said a Panda Update was coming in 7-10 days... however, now they have confirmed that it actually rolled out on Nov 21! I guess the holiday scrambled someone at Google, but now we do have official confirmation about Panda #22 Update on November 21.

See [seroundtable.com...]

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

This Panda seems to have been gentle overall, whatever hit Nov 16th/17th was much more cruel to many I think.

[claaarky]

Our traffic improved 20%, that's two improvements in a row now but I have to say this was a much smaller improvement for my site than I expected.

My niche has hardly changed since 6th November so if they hadn't said there'd be a refresh on the 21st I would have put it down to normal seasonal fluctuations. It's normally much more obvious.

Saw some ranking changes on the 29th however which brought more traffic. I often wonder if Panda runs much more frequently than we realise. I've seen the stats of other sites which show huge falls at a non-panda date followed by a huge leap at an official panda date.

How confident are we that google tells us about all Panda refreshes?

[LostOne]

I thought it was more weather related the last few weeks than anything after finally seeing some improvements for the first time since being hit by Panda 1.0. Colder weather typically brings in more traffic as many focus their home improvement (my industry) activities indoors.

Oh, I did see some improvements with the first Penguin, but that was probably related to many of those sites dropping off as a nice bump lasted only one month.

Maybe there's hope, but I'm still skeptical. No changes since this thread..

[webmasterworld.com...]

[HuskyPup]

I've seen a steady improvement in traffic this week with much better trade widget enquiries to our B&M sites to the extent of our best week's new enquiries for several years .. i.e. Multi Million Dollar projects with 90% of them from the Middle East.

[diberry]

I got a bump up on the 6th an again following this update.

[zeus]

always have Nov-December in mind, there often more traffic in those month.

[HuskyPup]

there often more traffic in those month

Not for my widgets, it's usually a steady downhill run towards Xmas on my "western" sites and a two week break. My Chinese and Indian sites remain pretty steady with their local traffic.

[Zivush]

@claarky

Our traffic improved 20%, that's two improvements in a row

I remember you told you were in a huge workout on you site lately, improving pages based on their performance. I'm very happy to see that it helped :-)

[claaarky]

Thanks Zivush. Things do seem to be moving in the right direction at a pace now. Still a long way from a full recovery in terms of traffic but I still have loads of changes to make. It's my peak season now so I need to keep the site stable but once January arrives a batch of changes will be going live that I think will complete the recovery.

I've had some partial recoveries this year that didn't stick but I know why now so the site will be ready to handle the returning traffic this time.

[Zivush]

Cheers claarky.
I think most of us know/realized that there are no shortcuts to offering the best content. It might be hard, but it surely rewarding at the end of the day. Let's keep going.

[Bewenched]

there are no shortcuts to offering the best content

Once you get the good content all the scrapers come calling. sometimes it seems like a never ending up hill battle... it really shouldn't be this way. Google has to know when the first instance of some content was... they have to.

[diberry]

I'm seeing some fluctuations today. When I check results myself, I'm up on this phrase, down on another - nothing too unusual there. But my stats program is showing that some visitors have found my keyphrases in very different positions than I'm seeing them. Looks like this activity was all early this morning, like maybe there was a different data set, but by the time I got up and started checking it was back to normal.

[getcooking]

Looks like this activity was all early this morning, like maybe there was a different data set, but by the time I got up and started checking it was back to normal.

I noticed pretty much the same thing this morning. Traffic was stronger than I anticipated after being decimated by the latest Google updates so I started poking around. Things seemed to settle back down after a while unfortunately.

[diberry]

I'm seeing more dancing this afternoon. I'm ranking for phrases I've never seen before - strange stuff, and all long tail for the most part.

[tedster]

If the Panda Update was on November 21, it seems to me that variations on December 1 and 2 would be related to something else rather Panda. Is there any reason to assume that Panda changes dragged on for 10 days?

[diberry]

I don't have a clear understanding of how long it takes to see these updates, Tedster. If this can't be related, feel free to delete my post. I'll go mention it in the December changes thread, now that that's up.

(PS... ah, so we go ahead and use the old month's update thread and you guys just break off the posts starting at the current month to make the new thread. Sorry, I just now figured that out.,)

[tedster]

Thanks, diberry. There seems to have been something quite odd about this Panda Update - starting with an apparently incorrect "prediction" about when it would happen according to Google. I'm just trying to keep our analysis on track so we don't add any further confusion to the record.

[Splugged]

My site is ranking for "strange" long tail keywords.
This is the first time I see them in my stats.
"Money" keywords (short and long tail) completely down today.
Unuseful traffic, no interaction with site, 1 or 2 page/visitor.

-15% from G since yesterday.

Huge spike in crawl stats (GWT)

Something is on the way, I thing.

Anyone is experiencing something similar?

[menntarra 34]

@Splugged:
Traffic remains to be the same for the last 3-4 days, BUT:
Crawl stats are crazy, it is the highest in 3 months.

[diberry]

@Tedster - understood!