Google Panda 4.2 Rolling Out

[netmeg]

According to Searchengineland:

Google has pushed out a Google Panda refresh this weekend, many of you may not have noticed, but this roll out is happening incredibly slowly. Google said the update can take months to fully roll out because it will slowly roll out through your site. The Panda algorithm is still indeed a site-wide algorithm but some of your web pages might not see a change immediately.

Emphasis by me, because WTF.

A Google spokesperson confirmed with us the update did being rolling out this past weekend. They also noted it can take months to fully roll out. Google did not share with us how large of an impact this was on their search results, but they did imply it was a fairly small impact.

I haven't seen any signs of it in any client sites yet, but maybe it'll be "months"

[searchengineland.com...]

[hasek747]

2-3% is not low at all; if I were to guess I would say that less than 0.01% of the web has anything remotely to do with SEO; the remaining 99.99% are websites owned by people who have no clue what Panda or Penguin are.

[Martin Ice Web]

Yesterday at 5pm I saw the biggest drop i have ever seen. Unfortunatelly it holds till now. It was getting a bit better after the weekend but yesterday all reverted again. Sales ZERO, Bounce >90%. Lot of foreign traffic. Even ebay-kleinanzeigen ( local selling on ebay) moved on first page.
Every time this occurs visitors from complete ranges of telecom suppliers are gone ( like no visitors from telefonica, german telekom, vodafone ), only visitors from static IPs.

[Shepherd]

Last week Monday and Tuesday were record days for revenue and visitors and then Wednesday the bottom fell out of the revenue.

This week, same pattern so far. Interesting.

[Shepherd]

On the up side, it is nice to have a pattern to work with. Traffic not converting, adwords off, see you on the other side of the wave google.

[EditorialGuy]

So far, the new Panda update has been a non-event for us. We had a huge boost from the May, 2014 Panda update (with additional gains for a month or two after that), but since then, it's been pretty much "same old, same old."

[mrengine]

Yesterday was the highest organic traffic we have seen from Google in a long time. Conversions were okay as well. Today looks like it will replicate yesterday's traffic surge.

[webmuppet]

Might be useful if people mentioned their regions when posting about gains/losses so we can gauge if changes are worldwide or not.

[Martin Ice Web]

One experience yesterday with google (germany)

I have been working for a customer and we had to buy a new ISDN phone. As we know the brand but not a certain model we went to to search for a suitable phone. First instance to go for my customer was google. Typing in the brand followed by related keywords google showed as some results.
Nevertheless it ended like i never thought it would. The customer straight went to google PLA, not just one look at organics. She didnīt even made a second try to find something!
I looked at the oganics and had to say they were worse. Not one usefull link on the first page. It was stuffed with the brands informational sites and some other stupid forum psot not related to the query. From a customer view this PLAs, with pictures and yellow border makes me think this is best google can find. Looking at the organics makes one very frustated and go back to PLAs. From google side of view: good job. From customers side. Bad, as we not got the best price or best phone we wanted to have.
I finally told here to go to a certain ecom shop ( not listed in google PLA ) and to buy there. She did so and got a least a better deal than on google PLA.

I donīt know if the everage user is acting like my customer but i guess they do.

The organics stuffed with "fuzzy" brands and only scratching the search phrase and without giving a real product page with "brand modell number " doesnīt even call my attention.
And this explains why - and i dindīt understand it up to now - so many poeple buy in big brands ecom shop where they donīt get the best price.

What has this to do with Panda?
With this new panda this "fuzzy" pages in organics moved up. Real pages/site that match the search are gone. Competition has been totaly vanished and only take place in googles PLA but on the basis selling price but bid price on CPC.

[Mentat]

Panda was a non-event for me until yesterday when I got +10%.
This is new for me in the last 2 years. Still holds today!

[Johan007]

Panda was a non-event for me until yesterday when I got +10%.

Good to know - do feedback by the weekend if this grows/falls.

I have no movement. Could take month(s) apparently.

[Nutterum]

I actually got bump in traffic on the most important website i work on. Very happy to say the least. The traffic is texbook pure international organic, coming from 10+ countries. This trend is visible from Sunday onwards, lets see if it holds. I must say that we did a very serious job updating the content and making it as unique as possible. I can't yet tell whether some of the competitors got hit and thus our website got bumped up or if Google started sending relevant traffic in general.

[Jeremy_ePC]

I have experienced a 10% uptick in organic traffic for a couple of medical clients I have, while all other clients have been flat. Has anybody noticed anything similar with their "doctor" websites? Just wondering if this version of Panda is finding more authority in the content that lives on the sites of physicians, dentists, psychiatrists, etc.

@webmuppet: Google confirmed 4.2 is a global rollout.

[McWebbs]

@webmuppet Stating regions is a really good idea, I think.

First time post. Woot!

Is there anyone else in Canada who is experiencing fluctuations?

[OldFaces]

Primarily US & UK/Australia/Canada traffic.

Our traffic is returning at the same rate it disappeared (e.g. 7-13% this day compared to same last day last week). Slow Google roll out + high volume of pages on our site = more gradual inclines than most of the recovery charts you see online.

The value of the traffic remains consistent with what we've seen in the past. Essentially, the higher the volume of traffic we receive, the better the conversion ratio. So traffic improvements usually seem to bring more dollar & more engagement valuable visitors.

We know we were hit by Panda last year, and we saw a very gradual decline over the following months. We saw a more aggressive decline during the two 'phantom'/'quality' updates earlier this year in February and again in May. Our recovery, (which began exactly when the Panda update was confirmed), is mirroring the opposite of the decline we saw in the two updates earlier this year. So how we lost traffic previously, we are seeing traffic return the same way.

[petehall]

For me the only Panda improvements are still on mobile... desktop is still pretty bad.

If I only had desktop results to look @ I would say this is a de-Panda. Sites with horrendous structures, thin content etc are all riding high....

[petehall]

And literally as I say this I see results switch to desktop! This is looking good.

[vlexo]

Anyone else notice some big changes on desktop?

[Johan007]

Well done to those seeing recovery. Do these sites have a small page count say less than an hundred or so?

Things are looking bleak for my review and interview site with a couple of thousand pages (All unique content since 2015) and my last hope is that larger sites like mine will take longer to process? So I just have to wait and wait!

I would really like to know when this Panda refresh is over to confirm a big fail.

[Ebuzz]

Looks like most of the positive changes people are seeing are minor, or non existent. For one of my sites, I see zero changes in this niche. I still see crappy, really slow-ass sites or non mobile friendly sites sitting comfortably at the top. So I really wouldn't put too much stock in any of Google's preaching because it's always been the case that they don't practice what they preach.

[mrengine]

I see improved traffic, but the traffic is not converting too well. There are seasonal factors at play too, which may be responsible for lower conversions. There's no doubt in my mind that if this traffic holds during the better months that my sales will improve. Site is USA ecommerce.

[snippet]

We have one property in the Panda penalty box. It saw a minor bump the first week of the rollout. Not much since. I'm wondering if we'll see the bumps monthly now over the course of a few months... that is my guess.

[MrSavage]

I can say right now that I'm no longer checking. If I happen to see some odd behavior like comment notifications, revenues, or other indicators, then I might check. A six month rollout or whatever? It's insulting and honestly, if I'm checking every day then I feel like a real fool to this whole situation. When now can I decide what I did to fix things didn't work? Oh, great question. Renew, pray, renew pray... It's senseless really. It's a delay for an event which may or may not come in the next year. I'm sparring myself. This is nonsense imo. Does anyone else feel a bit meek/weak by checking daily in hopes of seeing some spike? Even then, do you really feel that it's that magical moment when things have reversed and everything is good to go? I need to ask because this thread is ultimately going to dragged on and on over the rollout which is months and months. Seems senseless to me right now.

[JHobson]

I know the stated lengthy roll out of Panda 4.2 bothers a lot of people however; think about it from this perspective. Previously Google would launch a major change and all kinds of unexpected havoc would occur. They would then spend months trying to adjust and feather out the chaos. Now maybe a slow and incremental roll out will give them the ability to make steady incremental adjustments along the way, and avoid the abrupt chaos. The new way is probably a better approach than the release the hounds approach of the past.

[Johan007]

Seems senseless to me right now.

Mr Savage I totally agree. I have invested allot of time (7 months) in preparation for an update and in the end feel cheesed off.

[thereign]

Even then, do you really feel that it's that magical moment when things have reversed and everything is good to go?

IMO there is not going to be any magic moment when Panda/Penguin/Phantom, etc hit websites will be restored to their "former glory" by Google. Maybe before all the "other updates" we don't hear about in the interim hadn't happened and the algo was the same as it was when you initially got hit, but its not, and unless your site is truly popular according to today's algo, then I wouldn't expect that any site could rest on its former laurels of how well it did in the SERPs years ago and make massive gains as if nothing happened. The way I see it Google is now in "full monetization mode" which means in a nutshell that they are fully monetizing their platform and in part want the best searches/clicks for their advertisers (PLA ads, large partners, etc) and could give one f less how many businesses they damage in the process. From their end it is easy, they know what phrases convert best and exactly where to send them to get the most $$$ on their bottom line. Google's stance is and has always been that it is their platform and they will do whatever they wish with it. As we've already seen they have dipped their toes in everything from travel to car insurance with no regard for unfair or abusive use of their position as the leading search engine. To think that Google cares one bit about your site or its recovery is a delusion. It is never going to be like it used to be. Any gains you may get on this Panda rollout may very likely be lost to some phantom update in the future. And speaking of phantom updates, I think that eventually that is all there will be, as opposed to named/acknowledged updates - and much sooner than later. Those that can survive to see the day where the average web user is not completely oblivious to how Google works and realizes they have a choice and that their best interest in the search they type in is not Google's priority as it seems (eg: the cheapest price on ____ pair of shoes) have a lot to gain, if and when that day comes. As long as most non-internet savvy web users buy into Google's glossy do-gooder propaganda, don't expect things at large to improve in the world of SEO.

[webcentric]

I'm beginning to believe that this long wait for a Panda rollout has implications beyond Panda itself. Here's why. 10 months ago, I had a site with basically a home page, privacy policy, terms of service and a contact page and pretty much nothing else. I had purchased the domain a year earlier and just let it sit that way until I was ready to work on it in earnest. Starting at the end of last year, I quickly got to work on the site (adding articles and listing pages). Within a month or two, the site had over a thousand pages and it's now up over 3000 pages. During that entire time period up to now, I have been submitting updated sitemaps to Google. G was always quick to recognized the number of pages in my sitemap but the the indexing process has been at a virtual standstill over the entire 10 month. It seems to me that not only has Google been delayed in implementing a Panda update. It's been on a vacation where it comes adding new pages to the index. Maybe this isn't true for everyone and maybe this unfinished site did attract a Panda penalty which is only now being removed. I don't know but I do know that as this "update" rolls out, the site has gone from about 10% indexed to about 75% indexed in just a couple of weeks. I'm happier than I've been in a long time with my organic traffic. Still, I'm left wondering if this site was being penalized by Panda or if it was just off Google's radar during this period. They had the data all along but I never saw any real movement until this update happened.

[MrSavage]

@webcentric, until this update happened? Did it happen or was it something else? I'm not being a troll, but I'm just wondering if people believe that it's possible to say increases are because of this year long rollout. In a sense, I'm realizing quite clearly that I'm clueless about what to expect with this Panda rollout. I saw a spike downward obviously with Panda and if I don't see a spike in my traffic graphs, then how could I ever guess that it was because of the Panda rollout? I get the sense personally that it such a "mushy" mess that I won't be able to figure out up from down. Pretty much convincing myself to shut things down because I'm at the point of belief that the whole promised or possible Panda recovery is a farce. Certainly I would hope that there would be many many posts here in this thread about great things happening. Like spikes. We know the response of Panda before (the negative) so there should be at least some positive. In theory.

[webcentric]

@Mr Savage I'm asking your question (is it Panda or something else?)

My point is that it feels like the delay in updating Panda also put a lot of other things on the back burner at Google (like crawling new sites/pages and/or delays in updating the index with newly crawled pages). I don't think I'm seeing a Panda recovery but rather Google catching up with indexing new material that it's been sitting on for some time. Along with this Panda update, I have also seen a dramatic increasing in crawling on this site. It's like Google put off crawling and indexing my site while it mucked around with Panda (for almost 10 months). What I can say for sure is that the day after this Panda upgrade was announced, crawling and indexing both increased on this site, dramatically! And it continues to this day.

[MrSavage]

Ah okay, thank you for the clarification. I hope my previous post wasn't sounding snarky. Not my intention at all. In a lot of ways I'm just thinking out loud at this situation. Part of me wants to close down sites now, just as a personal pride situation. Times in my life when I've waited for something good to come, turned out as regrets. There is something empowering about making the call rather than being the person waiting on someone else. I'll chill for a few days and go from there. As drastic as the Panda update events were in the past (trauma for some), it's sad to me that there is a slow, non event roll out in which time there will be just as many counter algo's running in the meantime. Maybe it's just me, but how on earth over the next 6-12 months one can come here and claim. I've recovered! I did it! I fixed my site and it has been de pandalized! My inner response is...are you really sure about this? Further, does that person give me any extra hope? Simple answer. Nope. An extremely extremely frustrating situation to me. I think it's called running around in circles?

[Johan007]

Physiologicaly the situation will test the most patient minds to breaking point. Most notably if Panda is linked to someone’s life’s work/side-project . Have faith in the good work that has been done to get out and while we wait begin focusing on a another project (just don't call it plan B quite yet).