Panda 4.0 Roll Out confirmed by Matt Cutts

[EvilSaint]

Just saw a message on twitter from Matt Cutts alerting to an update of their Panda Algo Change...named 4.0.

Matt tweets just 8 minutes ago that there is an update to the "Payday Loans Algorithm" which is targetting "very spammy queries" at this stage.

[twitter.com...]

Wondering if anyone noticed a shuffle in site positioning already?

Algoroo is showing activity spikes over the past 4 days.

[dflayfield]

@SnowMan68 sounds like we went through much the same process of rebuilding and the same lessons learned. I just wish the lessons hadn't been so expensive!

[darthtoon]

This was my first experience of being negatively impacted by Panda - traffic on one site dropped by around 30% on Monday, stayed there until Thursday but is back to normal today - presume there's some ongoing changes still taking place...

[Martin Ice Web]

One site that is in a new google seller qualiy programm in germany got a big boost now. It s ranking for all its widgets. The site is all but hasnīt a good UE or a good design. It is just a brand and in this new programm in germany. So this seems to bee a new ranking factor in the algo.
Unfortunatelly it is a programm in "prooving mode" so only some business can take part in it.

Next step to eleminate sites like trusted shops...

[ColourOfSpring]

The moral of this story is don't rely on google as being a stable source of income. If you get biz from google you should treat that as a bonus but don't become reliant on it as it can disappear in a heart beat.

To add to that, I think it's incredibly risky to run a site that requires enormous amounts of traffic (therefore, FREE traffic) to profit from it. I run an e-commerce site that nets me around Ģ750 profit a month. It gets only around 100 visitors per day. It doesn't take up much of my time either. It sells tangible products with a decent profit margin. This is a basic model that can be repeated again and again. The difficulty is finding products and niches, but they are out there. The content-with-ads model seems like "boom or bust" to me, utterly dependent on Google.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm ranking much better vs big brand sites once again, which is a good thing since my detailed high quality content is much more helpful than the often copy/pasted user generated content on these big sites.

I run an e-commerce site that nets me around Ģ750 profit a month.

Dropship? reseller? your own goods? Just curious, Google doesn't always treat the different types of product selling sites equally.

[MrSavage]

Holding steady with this Panda 4.0 traffic. As mentioned this has nothing to do with what I've changed on my site. It's now that Google is doing a better job of finding content that isn't on some Goliath website. Some books that are 50 pages can have better resources than a book that is 2000 pages.

I'm glad to hear others are seeing upticks. Not sure ratio wise, but with such a substantial update as 4.0, the amount of wipe outs is minimal it seems. It's incredible for the first time in YEARS that I have some hope. Breathing room to earn some income as I untangle my dependence on organic.

[johnhh]

Keeping to the topic of the thread, I have a chance to look at our keyword positions and compare them with historical data we keep going back to 2011. It looks to us that the update is somehow reversing Panda 3.5 and 3.6, see [webmasterworld.com...]

So if you were hit by Panda post 2011 you may be back in April/May 2012 positions. If you were hit by Panda 1 ( Feb 2011 USA, April 11-12th 2011 UK ) I would be interested to know if you regained all your traffic, I think not.

In our case we have pages jumping from page 3 to page 2, page 2 to page 1 etc. The only the only time this doesn't happen, especially Page 2 to Page 1, is where we have 'new kids on the block' and where a major American brand ( lets call it American-Brand), often with Page 1 multiple listing but also with Page 1 listing of American-Brand.TLD's and American-Brand owned domains, or indeed American-Brand UK subsidiaries. Basically we have one American Brand pushing us back to Page 2 in many cases.

We have done a lot of work on this site, yet oddly another site of ours where no work has been done also seems to be recovering to 2012 positions and traffic.

I do think this has not settled down yet, and have seen comments that this is a new infrastructure so the updates, probably unannounced, may be more frequent.

Ebay seems particularly affected, and it was rumoured that they were going to decrease Adword spending due to lower ROI. Coincidence, or just taking a hit due to excessive internal linking ?

Info Site - UK -

Note: I have historic data going back further than 2011, but I cannot find the file !

_{<rant>I did talk to officials in a UK Government department about these American Brand's who pay little UK corporation tax and get other tax breaks as well in other countries, the reply was 'we hear what you are saying'</rant>]}

[Bewenched]

I haven't seen any change in traffic, however Google has been voraciously spidering our site this entire week.

[EditorialGuy]

If you were hit by Panda 1 ( Feb 2011 USA, April 11-12th 2011 UK ) I would be interested to know if you regained all your traffic, I think not.

We were hit by Panda 1 and nibbled by most subsequent Pandas. With Panda 4.0, we haven't regained all our Google traffic, but we're ahead of where we were in May, 2010 (pre-Panda) for our most authoritative topic.

[Clay_More]

Site changes and perceived improvements to user experience did not alter how Google treated your sites prior to the Panda change. They changed some aspects of the algorithm, the noticed improvements are due to algorithm changes, not site changes.

Not sour grapes, this change has been beneficial for me. But, it can easily be changed again. So, where would you focus your energy if you knew Google would once again throw your most important work in the dustbin?

[HymnSite]

My site is still crushed since 27/28 of February. Total site is only a couple thousand pages. Organic keywords fell in the tank, although all of my pages are unique and useful. Still scratching my head after several changes. I hope new changes at Google will stop working against me.

[Clay_More]

Couple thousand pages?

You realize that if you do one well written page a day that is 365 pages a year? When I'm cranking, I can do a couple pages a week.

I buy content sometimes, personally clean it which can speed the process up a bit. I normally start with a minimum of 5 pages.
5 aspects of one theme/concept. Then build from there.

[HymnSite]

My site can't work unless it has lots of discrete pages. They are all unique, they are all useful, and they all link to related resources (also in the site). I am adding video and PowerPoint resources which have not been available before, too. This project began in 1996, so a couple thousand pages really isn't that much of an accomplishment. Now it is time to develop some new sections, each with several hundred pages. It will happen over the course of the year, so again, not that big of a deal. It is a problem, though, if the way that I develop the site doesn't function well with major search engines, and there are changes in structure that I will be implementing to address that.

[netmeg]

So, where would you focus your energy if you knew Google would once again throw your most important work in the dustbin?

I always assume that could happen (though so far it's only been to one relatively minor site), and creating my own list.

[EditorialGuy]

So, where would you focus your energy if you knew Google would once again throw your most important work in the dustbin?

Fortunately, Google has never thrown our most important work in the dustbin over the past 12+ years. We lost a considerable amount of traffic to Panda, more because of what Google did than anything we'd done. (Google's new algorithm favored the signals given off by megasites, so the rankings for our most important pages were pushed down just enough to have a significant impact on traffic. Fortunately, our highest-revenue pages had a fair number of direct links from high-traffic sites, and traffic from Bing/Yahoo continued to climb, so the decline in Google traffic was painful but not fatal. Now we're back to being loved by Google's algorithm instead of merely being liked or tolerated, which is great for us and--or so we like to think--for people who need the kind of in-depth information that we provide.)

As for where we'd focus our energy if Google did throw our most important work in the dustbin, nothing would really change: We'd continue to publish intrinsically useful content for readers and let Google sort out its algorithm problems. In the long run, our goals and the goals of Google's Search Quality team are likely to be the same: to serve the needs of Web users. Trying to second-guess Google's algorithm changes is a short-term tactic, not a long-term publishing strategy.

Disclaimer: We're an editorial site (an "information site," in Webmaster World parlance), so content is our raison d'etre, not an embellishment or an SEO tool. YMMV.

[hannamyluv]

So, where would you focus your energy if you knew Google would once again throw your most important work in the dustbin?

Been there, done that. Twice now - in the dustbin. And you know what it taught me? That what I focused on before Panda is the same as after Panda, ups and downs. You focus on how to make the people who visit your site happy. You focus on making your site the end all be all in your niche. No topic too small, no change to improve too insignificant, you can be find new ways for how people see and use your site.

What you focus on is finding out how to get traffic that does not come from Google. Then it does not matter what Google does.

[ColourOfSpring]

Dropship? reseller? your own goods? Just curious, Google doesn't always treat the different types of product selling sites equally.

I buy from a wholesaler, and retail from my website (and send out from my own home). Google seem to hate my site (7 years old, Google loved it until March 2012!) - but people seem to like it as it has a healthy conversion rate and as I say, average 100 visitors per day nets around Ģ750 profit per month after all costs are paid - and that's a site that's utterly unreliant on Google traffic. My goal is to replicate this kind of site numerous times, selling in different markets. By the way, the site I mention sells an unremarkable fashion accessory.

[Ramone]

For me, it was nice last week, but this one has started with the same traffic like the week before panda 4.

[Martin Ice Web]

Again this Panda hit our site very hard. After researching where our pages have gone we found following similarities between upgoing pages and the pages beeing hit.

Since we followed the suggestion to "Siloing" the widgets, we did this very excessive. Widgets that belong to a parent category have been moved there and be installed in its own sub catergory. So our site structure looks like

parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1 / subcategory 1.1.1
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1 / subcategory 1.1.2
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1 / subcategory 1.1.3
...
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.2 / subcategory 1.2.1
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.2 / subcategory 1.2.2

Where subcategory x.x.x are summary pages with detailed paged canonical tags to this one.
Naturally subcategory x.x.x are very similar and differ only in color, manufacturer, typ ( all about 5-7 properties )

As we have the biggest choice for this items in our niche we have about 2.0000 widgets of these.

All this subcategories starting from subcategory x.x.x now took a deep dive in most cases a -30 penalty some have -50 penalties.

This pages have been replaced by some small ecom shops ( I have never been seen before ) that only have category x.x site structure. That means the widgets - whether they belong together or not - are all in the same category and displayed as so. The user now has to filter or search or go through the entire site to find what he is looking for.

So either this pages suffer a to similar penalty or the bot declares them to bee keyword stuffed.

All catergogires where we didnīt siloing up to now rose with this update.

From user experience I think this is a bad idea to penalize siloing site structures.


ecom, germany

[Diabolik]

Again this Panda hit our site very hard. After researching where our pages have gone we found following similarities between upgoing pages and the pages beeing hit.

Since we followed the suggestion to "Siloing" the widgets, we did this very excessive. Widgets that belong to a parent category have been moved there and be installed in its own sub catergory. So our site structure looks like

parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1 / subcategory 1.1.1
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1 / subcategory 1.1.2
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1 / subcategory 1.1.3
...
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.2 / subcategory 1.2.1
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.2 / subcategory 1.2.2

I have a site with a similar structure and I was hit by Panda 2 and 4. My keyword rankings were all in no. 1 spot previous to Panda 2.

My site structure is:
parent category / subcategory 1 / subcategory 1.1

I have noindexed all "subcategory 1" pages a few months ago to get rid of duplicate content and to see if I can climb back up in rankings, but my rankings are worst with Panda 4.

Now I'm thinking to only noindex all "subcategory 1.1" pages to see if that works, even though I think that would be a worst User experience.

Any help would be grateful!

[MikeNoLastName]

This is certainly interesting. Almost all of our sites were hit years ago in Mid 2011. We were totally missed by the earliest 1-2 Panda's but dropped steadily with each one following. The main site finally recovered to about 75% previous levels in July 2013. The others were always less than 1/10 the size and traffic of the main one and to us appeared for some reason that they were penalized as "bad neighborhoods". On May 20, 2014 all the others literally jumped to at least double the impressions for their prior primary passwords.

Meanwhile our primary/premier site with the most traffic, which previously recovered, has slowly dwindled since May 1 and is now at 2/3 of the traffic that it recovered to back in July 2013 and held until May 1. My pure intuition is it's almost like they shifted the site keyword density calculations or finally realized what some sites really are about better than they had previously.

Fortunately, we apparently still have a lot of loyal past visitors who tell others to search for us by name (according to our WMT queries) and we get a lot of traffic from being ranked #1-8 under our own site name.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Diabolik,

ha that is very interesting as i am seeing my subcategory 1.1 pages ranking but the following not.
I now that deep pages and their appearince in serps have some correlation on incoming links but the sites above ours donīt even have any links.
I now test to put subcategories 1.1.x on one page and load the content with ajax on user request.

[Diabolik]

@ Martin Ice Web

ha that is very interesting as i am seeing my subcategory 1.1 pages ranking but the following not.

I saw the same thing, my end pages weren't ranking, only my pages in between. Hence I noindexed the middle pages, but it didn't seem to work.

I now that deep pages and their appearince in serps have some correlation on incoming links but the sites above ours donīt even have any links.
I now test to put subcategories 1.1.x on one page and load the content with ajax on user request.

That's probably the best way to handle subcategories, and will do the same!

[Samanthatouch]

Meanwhile our primary/premier site with the most traffic, which previously recovered, has slowly dwindled since May 1 and is now at 2/3 of the traffic that it recovered to back in July 2013 and held until May 1. My pure intuition is it's almost like they shifted the site keyword density calculations or finally realized what some sites really are about better than they had previously.

Same situation with us. At least it is nice to know we are not the only ones hit by this in the manner described. The only difference is that we did not dwindle from May 1st but lost 1/3 overnight on May 20th.

I think that a lot of sites moved up because they got improved scores while ours did not get any change to their scores good or bad. As a result the sites whose scores changed moved above us but who knows LOL

It's okay because like you we have lots of visitors who know us by name and we focus on our visitors rather than Google's algorithms. These recent changes will only serve to keep us on that path.

It is funny to see so many of our old crusty sites that haven't been touched in a long time suddenly getting three to five times more traffic.

[Bewenched]

Just remember folks, sometimes during panda rollouts that Google floats the crap sites to the top so that they can scrape them off. I've seen this happen with two roll outs at least in our industry.

[Samanthatouch]

I can't be the judge of what a 'crap' site is in Google's eyes but here is an example for a search that we were #1 on prior to 5/20.

After 5/20 we were #5 and above us were Pinterest pinboards for #1 #2 and #3 followed by a blog post from 2013 in #4 then us in #5

Bing and DDG still have us as #1 for that particular query.

Hopefully, things will shift around a bit more but if not, we will continue on anyway.

[indyank]

i think the change was simple. Brand weightage in the panda formula had been dialled down. well, if this trend continues we might see a 100% recovery :) - [wordstream.com...]

[Jez123]

I am really struggling to comprehend what's going on with this. Has google pre tested the Penguin roll out at the same time do you think? My Pengion 1 affected, site had a sudden jump of extra impressions and some (WMT reported) jumps forward for some phrases. All increses (as per WMT) increments of 10 with 90 being the greatest and 10 being the smallest. No 15's or 25's, all multiples of 10. I thought my site had been totally released from Penguin back in October last year but now I'm wondering if it was. Can anyone shed any light why my non Panda affected site would rise in the last update? It's interesting to note that no main SERPS have risen, just long tail types

[CaptainSalad2]

Interesting read indyrank, google has had a problem with “high authority spam” for quite some time now, if this is the start of the end of authority sites getting away with the type of thin pathetic pages we see dominating many niches now that can only be a good thing! Shame its starting to appear from that article it only came about because of the money/AdWords spend, of lack of in this case.

I would guess ebay will now move back into adwords, the penalty will be dropped 7-10 days later and we see a panda update next month that suddenly restores all lost rankings without e-bay making any onsite changes the rest of us would need to. Call my cynical........

[indyank]

Is anyone seeing a recovery for competitive keywords? i am not meaning your popular keywords but keywords that have high revenue potential, and highly competitive as determined by no. of results, adword bid values etc..My exp. is long tail seem to be showing a significant improvement in relatively less competitive areas.