Panda #2: What's the culprit?

[Tirade]

Just checked after reading this thread and my most successful autoblog actually shot up in the rankings. The offsite SEO that I've done from this website has come from only blogs and forums that are relevant to my keyword. I manually added the profile links and comments myself--no SB, Xrumer, or Senuke blasts.

Not sure if this gave an advantage to my website or if it shot up because the update cleared away a lot of junk that was outranking me.

 

[stopnstare]

Mine is not an auto-blog, but I have been doing moderate blast on random profile backlinks and I am still getting better in the SERPS. I doubt it is your links.

 

[havingadabble]

Is there anyone who actually moved up due to this update? Or did everyone get bombed?

Check out Maruk at post #14 above

 

[britcpa]

Ok. Let me tell my story.

my site, this is my biggest site! has 250k backlinks. almost 2 years till now.

#1 for main keyword >> now its on page 5/6/7
#14 for 2nd keyword >> gone....
#27 for 3rd keyword >> gone...

i am not using scrapebox or any backlinks software..

traffic dropped to 40%, earnings dropped to 20%

i am using wordpress with these plugins : akismet, all in one seo pack, wp hide dashboard, exit rescue, feedburner, wp pagenavi, wp recaptcha, wp private. i have deleted one plugin called "like lock", i am curious this plugin caused it.

i place traffic widget to my site : mgid.com and zaparena.com.

Conclusion : i hate PANDA

"like lock" - interesting thread on that very subject and here sthe latest info within that thread on how to potentially solve it. not sure that its a definite solution as tech isnt my field, but its seems like somebody who understands tech has come up with a workaround option for it:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/2791615-post36.html

 

[zerodtk]

ok guys, I'm back on the first page! here's what I did...just realized that there's a link in my Cpanel called Attracta...it's basically a SEO Stat site which gives you points based on it's seo...i wrote unique descriptions for each of my category and tags. Fixed the meta descriptions and titles for the posts, and started postnig up 350 word articles....guess what, yesterday my site was back on the first page of google...well, this was a hard week, but it's kinda solved now what about you? did you solve the situation?

 

[wokaka]

dude, dont be so overwhelmed with just one change.. i believe there's more to come...

my own site has been dancing like crazy. 10 days ago it was #11, few days later it went up to #4, then went down again to #9, went up to #3, and now it's #10.

Basically every few days my site SERPs has been going up and down and up again (from #3-4 to #9-10). I dont know what that means but your site might also experience it...

 

[reallife]

A key site of mine that had been #1 for 6-8 months until Panda1 dropped it into the #21-#23 range. It has no affiliate links, no SB/xrumer links, etc.
I worked on it, cleaned it up, added content, finally got it back to #1 last month.
Panda2 hit - the toplists that Panda1 replaced me with are back at #1, and I dropped to #75. This morning, I had moved to #65. Tonight, I'm at #40. I'm sick over what's been happening the last few months, but I'm not going to panic until this dance is over.

 

[jeffern]

For sites that have been hit: How's your bounce rate? I think there's good reason to believe that bounce rate is now a significant factor.

Specifically, this paper by Google engineer Biswanath Panda (yup, his name is actually Panda.)

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36296.pdf

 

[Italian Hawk]

My stuff dropped two weeks prior. About 80 sites ranking for nearly a year on various keywords front page pretty much all simultaneously dropped the same day and with it 66% of my daily income was lost as well.

Primarily forum profile backlinks.

 

[geniusgullu]

I dont think profile Link does the damage . i know a site which is ranking due to profile links is still #1 for a very competitive keyword in the iPad niche..

 

[reallife]

For sites that have been hit: How's your bounce rate? I think there's good reason to believe that bounce rate is now a significant factor.

Specifically, this paper by Google engineer Biswanath Panda (yup, his name is actually Panda.)

http://static.googleusercontent.com...earch.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36296.pdf

I agree, at least in theory. The site I mentioned was a one-page site that was EXACTLY what people searching the term needed. But obviously bounce rate could be a problem. When I added second-level pages after Panda1, that's when I went back up. If I don't come back this time, I'll try adding more - but I also have a bunch of 1-3 page sites in less competitive keywords, that have been #1 for a long time and haven't budged.
(I don't want to jinx them, so don't read that last part lol)

 

[wokaka]

I always believe bounce rate might be a factor too. Well my bounce rate is about 60%, i dont know if that's high or low for my keyword because it has been always around that number since years ago and I doubt my competitors have way better bounce rate than mine (considering that the #1 spot atm is actually copying my site design and structure. he also just rewrote my articles, despite he's promoting different affiliate product).

 

[reallife]

I want to hedge my answer lol

I just looked a little more at the SERPS - and six spots above the site I mentioned, is *another* one of my sites. This one is a 100% hand-spun copy of the former #1, it's optimized for a completely different keyword, and it is only a one-page site with no other content.

So that means a site with a lot less content - a much worse bounce rate - much less optimized - and with a ton less backlinks --- ranks six spots higher than the one I've been babying and modifying to mollify the Panda gods.

I'm more confused than ever.

 

[wokaka]

yeah well you are not the only one who's seeing such weird results. I want to believe high quality contents tend to rank higher too but I simply cant after seeing the real results myself...there are just way too many examples where lower quality sites outrank everyone...

There's this person who copying entirely my web design and just change the colors there. Of course he rewrote the content as well...He is also an affiliate but we are promoting different campaigns. How come that kind of site can outrank me? I dont want to believe it's his content, i do have more pages than him and my web design has been noticed by google for a very long time (and it's unique too) while he's just copying my design.

I think it's his link building techniques that made him able to outrank me (and other affiliate sites that are still in page 1).

 

[reallife]

yeah well you are not the only one who's seeing such weird results. I want to believe high quality contents tend to rank higher too but I simply cant after seeing the real results myself...there are just way too many examples where lower quality sites outrank everyone...

There's this person who copying entirely my web design and just change the colors there. Of course he rewrote the content as well...He is also an affiliate but we are promoting different campaigns. How come that kind of site can outrank me? I dont want to believe it's his content, i do have more pages than him and my web design has been noticed by google for a very long time (and it's unique too) while he's just copying my design.

I think it's his link building techniques that made him able to outrank me (and other affiliate sites that are still in page 1).

Sometimes I think it's wh that wins - sometimes I think it's bh that winds. I'm just about to give up trying to figure this one out, at least until it settles down.
I just looked at two sites that I have - they're two EMDs, a .net and a .org. for the same keywords -- and they're both one-page sites. Both are optimized for the keywords, and they're each original content, nothing is duplicated between them.
The .net has a couple of dozen white-hat inbound links.
The .org has three regular inbound links, and had a big SB blast directly to it a couple of months ago.
EMD.net is #3. EMD.org is #5.
If there's a message there about what G wants and what it doesn't want --- I can't find it

 

[peetu69]

One of my sites which dropped from #2 to #10-#15 had a bounce rate of 80-90% and mainly xrumer profile backlinks, some articles from amr and some sb comments.

One other site with a bounce rate of 50%, mostly blasted web 2.0 backlinks combined with some natural backlinks coming from people who link to the images, is ranking very well and even jumped a little bit in rankings.

 

[wokaka]

One of my sites which dropped from #2 to #10-#15 had a bounce rate of 80-90% and mainly xrumer profile backlinks, some articles from amr and some sb comments.

One other site with a bounce rate of 50%, mostly blasted web 2.0 backlinks combined with some natural backlinks coming from people who link to the images, is ranking very well and even jumped a little bit in rankings.

bounce rate definitely plays a factor in SEO, i wont deny that fact. However how much it affects the SERPs is still questionable. Myself believe it's just a minor factor, unless of course if your bounce rate is higher than 80%.

 

[markomarkogame]

Lost rankings on 3 websites that were linking together

 

[reinie]

I thought it was just me that lost my rankings but now it all makes sense.

 

[pasdoy]

I lost ranking, Google stopped to index my websites (bing and yahoo pos 1 or 2), doesnt crawl any of my backlinks anymore