[Knowledge base] How do we beat the Panda after it slaps a site?

[gorang]

I've just been speaking with a potential client. He has 19 similar sites. they are all legitimate businesses which target a different sector of the job search industry.

Not long ago he linked in the footer to each of the other sites and noticed a drop in rankings. He removed the links but then in the last Panda update "2.2" one of his sites went from position 2, to page 5.

I explained that it could be Panda and hopefully he understands.

Here's the thing;

I've been researching the Panda update across multiple boards and websites. I'm reading everything I can on it.

The problem is we know so little about what is actually happening when they run Panda. We know that Google is trying to remove webspam like content farms, duplicate content and websites which rewrite content. We know they are targeting link wheel type content farm sites and also made for adsense sites.

But HOW are they doing this?

You can find some good articles about it here

http://search.searchengineland.com/search?w=panda

I think for the future of the SEO industry we need to crack what makes Panda tick.

There are sites dropping from the sky for reasons we just can't explain and until Google runs the next Panda update, we never know if anything we change will help the site return to its' normal position.

These are legitimate sites as well, not just content farms which are being slapped down.

Apart form building links and maybe diversifying the content what else can we do?

The problem is, how can we rectify the problem(on a very whitehat site) when we don't know what has caused it to be flagged by Panda in the first place?

So do any of you understand something more about the Panda update than this? Have you got a theory on it?

 

[gorang]

Here is an interesting case showing good sites being slapped by Panda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/apr/13/google-panda-uk-update-winners-losers

 

[bulletservice]

It's really a serious case as the client will not bother what panda is all about. Google has started slapping us. I am also looking for a solution.

 

[pixaal2net]

yea thats true

 

[godeye]

somebody has good way to solve it ?

 

[dantob]

The problem is, how can we rectify the problem(on a very whitehat site) when we don't know what has caused it to be flagged by Panda in the first place?

So do any of you understand something more about the Panda update than this? Have you got a theory on it?

Ya I'd like to know the answers to these as well. I can't put on finger on why some of my sites dropped into the abyss while others nothing happened. Some went from top 3 to page 3-5 of the SERPs. Others are just MIA not being the top 100, but still indexed.

I'd like to know if anyone has seen any changes to their rankings for sites that have dropped after they have done some new backlinking and maybe added/change content on their site?

 

[dragonrage01]

You first have to ask the question whether your site has a penalty or if your site just went down due to other sites ranking higher due to the change in the quality of link juice.

 

[dantob]

You first have to ask the question whether your site has a penalty or if your site just went down due to other sites ranking higher due to the change in the quality of link juice.

Don't you think that if it a change in the quality of link juice then it would be a few spots down compared to like moving 5 pages back? I mean these sites were ranking at their current position for like 6 months and in one day they dropped down that much. Most of the sites that were there before are still there and nothing has changed. These are mostly merchant sites which are not even optimized for the keywords I'm going after.

Having said that is there a way to really tell if it is a penalty or certain backlinks were devalued tremendously?

 

[dragonrage01]

well think about it. Most people have been using xrumer blasts or spamming forums. Every time google updates its algorithm, they find new ways to devalue spam, profile links, and etc. Some sites will have more link juice and some will have less. If your site drops, it could just be that a lot of your links are now worth nothing or no link juice. A drop in serps when google updates their algo doesn't necessary mean you site has a penalty. It may just mean, you need better or higher quality links.

Get some good quality links, and write 10 to 20 good articles. If your site climbs then it doesn't have a penalty.
What I'm saying is like there are 3 possibilities.
1. Your site has a penalty.
2. Your site lose link juice due to devalued anchor links from certain sites.
3. Your competitors sites increased in serps due to google update.

A good example are my sites. While others are deranking, or losing serps, two of my domains that I haven't touched for a long time just reached paged 1. I am enjoying a nice increase in revenue.

 

[dantob]

well think about it. Most people have been using xrumer blasts or spamming forums. Every time google updates its algorithm, they find new ways to devalue spam, profile links, and etc. Some sites will have more link juice and some will have less. If your site drops, it could just be that a lot of your links are now worth nothing or no link juice. A drop in serps when google updates their algo doesn't necessary mean you site has a penalty. It may just mean, you need better or higher quality links.

Get some good quality links, and write 10 to 20 good articles. If your site climbs then it doesn't have a penalty.
What I'm saying is like there are 3 possibilities.
1. Your site has a penalty.
2. Your site lose link juice due to devalued anchor links from certain sites.
3. Your competitors sites increased in serps due to google update.

A good example are my sites. While others are deranking, or losing serps, two of my domains that I haven't touched for a long time just reached paged 1. I am enjoying a nice increase in revenue.

Good points. Well for the ones that dropped from the top of page 1 and like page 2-3 it might be the devaluing of the types of links that I had to those sites (I never used Xrumer or SB blasts for any of these). They were just article backlinks, blog comments, profile links for the most part all done manually.

But what concerns me are thoes sites of mine that went from the top of page 1 and no where to be found now. Not showing up for their main keyword in the top 15 pages of the SERPs.

I don't what happened to these sites? These are sites that are 3 years old and had been on the first page for like 1.5 years.

When you are saying write 10-20 articles are you saying to put those up on the site or like article directories, web 2.0s, etc. and link back from them to my money site?

 

[reallife]

The only thing that I've seen that I truly believe made a difference after getting clobbered by Panda 1.0, was removing all of my footer interlinking.
Everything else ---- just guesswork, from my vantage point.

 

[proff124]

I think quality spinners could fight Panda

 

[madoctopus]

1. Panda uses links not content analysis alone. Only figures out entirely copied paragraphs which most autoblog systems generate, can't figure well spun text.
2. Analyze the top ranking sites, especially the shitty ones to figure out what they have in common.
3. It is not always panda - I got 3 whitehat sites hit before Panda. Did reiclusion requests (2) but got denied. They are quality sites with unique and useful content. One of them was in top 3 sites in my niche. I conclude Google employees are going drunk at work. They must. 15 out of the top 30 sites in the SERPs are shit. My reconsideration requests have failed yet the sites are just fine. Did no spam, not even grey hat stuff. As a matter of fact, haven't touched the sites in 2 years. And this I believe is a manual penalty - maybe a competitor did a complain or has someone inside Google (have have huge competitors).

Regarding what works - same thing that worked before, except the low quality spam.

• Content that is or seems unique. I can computationally generate content that passes any automated filters, but it won't pass human inspection. I can also generate content that passes human inspection but that requires more manual work (spinning).
• Hard to get links - editorial, the stuff you can't spam.
• Custom site networks - these are gold! If you do them right and do enough of them (50-100) and you do SEO on them too, you will obliterate any competitor. I have studied this topic for past year and trust me when I say that details will make or break such a network. And there are details very few think about.
• ******** comments on non-spammed sites. Again details make or break this if you automate it. I can personally spam non auto-aprove sites and get huge acceptance rates because I know how to do it. You'd never think a comment I post is automated, it looks natural. No I am not using scrapebox, I am using my custom built comment spamming tool and it is a few steps ahead of scrapebox i terms of capability and effectiveness (but has a lot uglier interface lol and it's good to have some SQL and PHP skills to change options).
• A bunch of other techniques and strategies based on well known ideas nobody uses because they think it doesn't work or they don't know how to make it time and cost effective.

Bottom line is most people that think are SEOs and know SEO don't know shit. I might be harsh but it is the true. Most "SEOs" follow the pack and use commercial tools (which are shit) and don't look at the problem and how they can improve stuff. I do the same thing everybody does, I just do it 10 times smarter, cheaper and better.

Frankly I would never explain for free my methods, strategies and technical aspects. Maybe I would sell it as a course but I can't be bother making one especially that it ends up on torrent and download sites and the more people know my strategies, the faster they stop working. Also, even if I would explain my methods 99.999% of the people will either not understand them, not understand what is important but copy the strategy only at surface (as i said details make or break SEO), think it is too complicated (it is) and never even try it, think it is rehashed shit (it is, i do the same thing everybody does, i just do it different. there are no magic methods to rank), etc. Also, implementing my strategy would take close to a year of work put only in infrastructure. You'd make no money from that, but you would have costs. I once gave in and accepted to spend a few hours offering consulting on skype for $200/hour. After 2 hours of explaining just keyword and market research the guy told me to slow down because he's feeling overwhelmed by the information and has conflicting thoughts because he learned to do it differently lol.

But, why the hell do I brag so much? I must have some form of complex... maybe those whitehat penalized sites of mine make me doubt my skills. F*ck that, I am awesome! (somebody pinch me)

The #1 advice I have for you if you want to figure out how to win at anything (not just SEO) is study the winners and see what makes them winners. It requires more than just common sense and pseudo-knowledge in that area, but if you know what too look at, then you just have to figure out how to do the same thing better. In SEO, the only guy who can beat my strategy and technique on long term is someone who is using illegal techniques like hacking, exploits, trojans, botnets, etc. How did i got here? I studied the winners across the board, not just in my niche and saw why they are the winners. Since I didn't had their budget but only a PC, internet and my brain, I had to come up with out of the box, innovative solutions to the problems. You manage to do the same, you will obliterate your competitors.

 

[BFHoodn!nja]

Content and Social media seems to be king.
I run a couple of whitehat blogs t hat all increased their SERP ranking seemingly overnight going from positions like 20 down to 1-5 overtaking my competition who had only been autoblogging.

My formula:

3-6 Unique Articles a day
2-4 Spun articles which I don't put on my frontpage but still ping
Facebook Fanpages
Tweets to over 5000 People
Backlinking on new forum discussion on my subject (in the last week)
Youtube pumping with my URL in description (Not Backlinking I know).

I've registered some domains yesterday and going to see if I can push some popular microniches which don't seem to have any competition anymore due to panda.

So all in all, panda has been in favour for me.

 

[madoctopus]

I got some PMs with some questions about site networks and stuff I said earlier. So here are some links to get you started:

[Guide] Link Networks - Interlinking

Guide - How to Build a Link Network of Support Sites

Components of Googles Ranking Algorithm in 2010 - Linking Still King

 

[innerged]

What are the inner workings of panda?

thats very easy to answer.

1) Dont have the auto bot in the server, lets say you have 10 domain names, and in each you run a seperate subject niche. In each of these site normaly the old way was to have the bot installed per domain. Panda is looking for such sites that have the bots, so no bots no panda getting suspicious.

2)OK so no bots then how do i run my campaings? once you have your 10 domain names with no bots installed, make an additional domain. This 11th domain is the only one that will have a bot installed fetching articles per keyword or category and have them seperated so its easy to catalogue. Then manually get the articles based on the niche market or category and paste it to your no bot, domain. now remember you have to set the posts in this 11th domain to draft only and not post at all. and none of your other sites should not be in the 11th one server. the 11th domain that fetches needs to be isolated not posting just fetching, then you grab the article copy/paste to a translating software then translate it back in your own words with no software to inglish. this would suck for you if you know no other language other than inglish.

3)huh, manual cutting and pasting?, but im lazy and i dont want to work. well if this is your mentality then drop this whole bot thing althougether. auto pilot blogging is long gone.

The 2 stages of panda.
The first stage and most agressive working of panda is constantly looking for website that have bots, and it analizes their algo, it analizes where the data is being fetched from, it back tracks everything.

the second stage and not widely implemented, is it analizes article by seaching the first letter of the first word of each sentence to see if its dupcon. this is not done regularly, but only on weird spikes of sites that suddenly have content. so even if you have no bot installed per domain per server, then panda switches to its second stage to analize the first letter of the first word of each letter. so even if you change some words to a synonym it calculates the statistical chances of you having some words arraged almost like other sites.

If it sees more than 30% of you content having a similarity then it gets thrown into a bin for human analitics, and it gives the links to the sites it suspects its stealing content from, so, a real person will have a final say in the matter when comparing the 2 based on what google panda found.

my work around this is by simply translatin the original from inglish to spanish then i rewrite it in my own words back to inglish and add about 10 to 20% my own words.

I know its hard work, not like before, but come on, i still cant complain that i can easily have 60 to 70 new post per month, so i can still live the luxurious life i once had when fully auto-pilot was the thing to do.

 

[madoctopus]

What are the inner workings of panda?

thats very easy to answer.

1) Dont have the auto bot in the server, lets say you have 10 domain names, and in each you run a seperate subject niche. In each of these site normaly the old way was to have the bot installed per domain. Panda is looking for such sites that have the bots, so no bots no panda getting suspicious.

2)OK so no bots then how do i run my campaings? once you have your 10 domain names with no bots installed, make an additional domain. This 11th domain is the only one that will have a bot installed fetching articles per keyword or category and have them seperated so its easy to catalogue. Then manually get the articles based on the niche market or category and paste it to your no bot, domain. now remember you have to set the posts in this 11th domain to draft only and not post at all. and none of your other sites should not be in the 11th one server. the 11th domain that fetches needs to be isolated not posting just fetching, then you grab the article copy/paste to a translating software then translate it back in your own words with no software to inglish. this would suck for you if you know no other language other than inglish.

3)huh, manual cutting and pasting?, but im lazy and i dont want to work. well if this is your mentality then drop this whole bot thing althougether. auto pilot blogging is long gone.

The 2 stages of panda.
The first stage and most agressive working of panda is constantly looking for website that have bots, and it analizes their algo, it analizes where the data is being fetched from, it back tracks everything.

the second stage and not widely implemented, is it analizes article by seaching the first letter of the first word of each sentence to see if its dupcon. this is not done regularly, but only on weird spikes of sites that suddenly have content. so even if you have no bot installed per domain per server, then panda switches to its second stage to analize the first letter of the first word of each letter. so even if you change some words to a synonym it calculates the statistical chances of you having some words arraged almost like other sites.

If it sees more than 30% of you content having a similarity then it gets thrown into a bin for human analitics, and it gives the links to the sites it suspects its stealing content from, so, a real person will have a final say in the matter when comparing the 2 based on what google panda found.

my work around this is by simply translatin the original from inglish to spanish then i rewrite it in my own words back to inglish and add about 10 to 20% my own words.

I know its hard work, not like before, but come on, i still cant complain that i can easily have 60 to 70 new post per month, so i can still live the luxurious life i once had when fully auto-pilot was the thing to do.

Mate, don't give advice if you don't know what you're talking about. People might actually believe what you say and it is incorrect. That is not how a text similarity algorithm works and it is not how Google works. Also it doesn't check bots on your site because it can't unless those bots are really badly architected and leave footprints. Panda as most algo updates is mainly a link-based algorithm, even though many misinformed people that it has to do mostly with content. They read the official Google announcement and their tiny brains interpreted something Google said about quality as being about content analysis. Look in the SERPs and you will find plenty of sites with shit content. As a matter of fact, with the right links you can rank anything. That doesn't mean copied content is a good idea. At least not how 99.99% of autoblog owners do it.

 

[gorang]

Just to add to what madocto said, we're also talking about Whitehat sites that should not be slapped. The question is why are they being slapped? A whitehat site doesn't run bots.

 

[madoctopus]

Just to add to what madocto said, we're also talking about Whitehat sites that should not be slapped. The question is why are they being slapped? A whitehat site doesn't run bots.

Not only WH sites get hit, but they even reject reconsideration requests for them. I have 3 sites, 100% WH and they rejected 2 reconsideration requests for them. Beats me why...

 

[ronaldosurfseo]

I've got a recent 1 month old autoblog that has not yet been hit. Will be looking after it for the next month. I will post what I did if it works.