What is Panda after?

[Kris88]

I'm assuming this whole update since last Friday is going on this whole time, but I wonder how long before this supposed "test" is done.

All but 2-3 keywords are all still gone in google for my site, nothing has been changing. The couple that have stayed aren't on first page but on the 2nd page.

I've cut my affiliate links in half just as a test. I hope they finish this update and get things back on track because there's no way EMDs with 3 pages are in the Top 10 with adsense left and right and few backlinks.

 

[junwen92]

With the way things are right now, I find it hard to part with my money to invest in any of my sites. Depressing

 

[drogon]

With the way things are right now, I find it hard to part with my money to invest in any of my sites. Depressing

i know how you feel but this is what has to happen. just have to keep your head up and also this is exactly why long term we cannot rely on just search engine rankings alone and need to start creating our own products and brands which are Panda proof!

 

[Expertpeon]

i know how you feel but this is what has to happen. just have to keep your head up and also this is exactly why long term we cannot rely on just search engine rankings alone and need to start creating our own products and brands which are Panda proof!

Or just have auxiliary sites that rank well in bing/yahoo and are only made to lead people to your main website.
Bing/Yahoo rankings are easy as hell to get.

 

[hatblackguy]

F Google use Twitter

 

[ugarte]

I am doing some testing of my own to see whether affiliate links have the potential to equal a site penalty. I have removed the vast majority of affiliate links from one of my main sites (75% weren't making me any money anyway). I'll report back with my findings, although it might be a couple weeks for google re-crawl all my posts.

A re-crawl won't matter. There will need to be a new Panda update to see if this works.

 

[Maja92]

And I can assure you they won't be this time next year.

Hahaha... we shall see!

 

[mmmmeme]

I think I finally found what is Panda after and how and when it works. I know my English is not perfect, but read the following in the next few minutes.


- some people reported getting their traffic down about 60-95% at some sort of Panda update (let's say it Panda X). The same people reported getting the traffic back at the next Panda iteration (let's say it Panda X+1). The same people reported getting their traffic cut or down again at the next Panda iteration (let's say it Panda x+2). Why is that, really? The answer is simple - Panda X cut your traffic because your content was not useful for your user. Panda X+1 got you back because Google Panda wanted to know if you changed or made your content useful for the user. If you haven't made your content useful for the user, then Panda X+2 will cut you again and probably Panda x+3 will bring you back or not. How does my logic sound?

- my theory is based on the fact that, let's say I have one website that has a lot of pages, but most of them don't give my searcher what he or she wants. At one Panda iteration Google will penalize my website, but it needs to know if I'm willing to make the content better or not. It doesn't care about grammar or links, but if my content is useful to the user (Google's bounce rate matters, not yours). I mean, let's say I look for "widget" and I have the intention to buy it. I wouldn't spend to much time on an informational website, but spend the most of the time on the website I want to buy on. I might even block that informational website, because it might not be there.


So it's simple, Panda cuts you down and then let's you improve your website. It might put your rankings back for a while to see if you improved your content and then back you down if you haven't. So if you have been hit by Panda once and you haven't recovered yet, you might, but in the period you are up don't think your content is good enough. It might not be as good as you think and if your users don't think your content is good enough, they will block or ignore your content, then at the next Panda iteration Google will put you back in the list.


Now, how can we improve our content?

- having or not breadcrumbs doesn't matter or influence the Panda update. I saw damaged websites with breadcrumbs and without breadcrumbs so it doesn't matter.
- nofollow external links it doesn't matter. I saw damaged websites with nofollow external links (all) and websites that got higher in rankings with nofollow external links.
- blogspot, knol and facebook rank higher than ever after this update, but I don't know how much.
- Mahalo wasn't hit by the latest Panda updates and Infobarrel is up in rankings, so they must be doing something right, even so they are content farms. On another hand Ehow and Suite101 are way way down, along with articlesbase. They are content farms already, so there is no reason they wouldn't be down.
- I don't think the number of Google ads is the reason to this update, neither the grammar and spelling. Not yet.
- I do think the way the information is presented on the website page matters, not that the Google bot understands it, but the humans read it or not according to the way it's presented on the page.


The only thing that we can do to avoid Panda in the future is to improve our website content as fast as possible and don't stop until 2-3 Panda passed our website and it's good and ranking. Ideas?

 

[Abstroose]

while real domain sites are dancing with the stars literally

I think you mean figuratively.

 

[1337WuLF]

Interesting. Both of my sites that got sandboxed by Panda are back.

 

[1337WuLF]

I think you mean figuratively.

Offtopic: I just noticed that your location says Astral Plane.
+ Respect.

 

[FimoX]

This last Panda update is a massive & historical failure for Google !
I"ve made some searches and 've founded on page #1 lot of expired domains or parked domains.

I don't know why G is waiting so long to restore their 1 week backup

Anyway... don't panic, for sure this is not a final state (or people will swap to Bing or Yahoo!).

 

[crazedspyker]

one of my sites returned stronger than ever

90% of the keywords I'm targeting is back on page 1! I hope this lasts.

edit: I just checked the stats and it actually came back yesterday, traffic is double what it was before the hit. Possibly more because I'm not sure what time it came back yesterday. Its morning right now and my traffic is already 70% of an average full day before that site was hit. My other sites have not returned yet but have made steady improvements each day.

 

[LBrown]

- some people reported getting their traffic down about 60-95% at some sort of Panda update (let's say it Panda X). The same people reported getting the traffic back at the next Panda iteration (let's say it Panda X+1). The same people reported getting their traffic cut or down again at the next Panda iteration (let's say it Panda x+2). Why is that, really? The answer is simple - Panda X cut your traffic because your content was not useful for your user. Panda X+1 got you back because Google Panda wanted to know if you changed or made your content useful for the user. If you haven't made your content useful for the user, then Panda X+2 will cut you again and probably Panda x+3 will bring you back or not. How does my logic sound?

- my theory is based on the fact that, let's say I have one website that has a lot of pages, but most of them don't give my searcher what he or she wants. At one Panda iteration Google will penalize my website, but it needs to know if I'm willing to make the content better or not. It doesn't care about grammar or links, but if my content is useful to the user (Google's bounce rate matters, not yours). I mean, let's say I look for "widget" and I have the intention to buy it. I wouldn't spend to much time on an informational website, but spend the most of the time on the website I want to buy on. I might even block that informational website, because it might not be there.

Interesting theory but for MANY people, this is the first Panda update that has had a significant impact on our sites. It doesn't seem like this algorithm update is complete as there are still wild fluctuations in the SERPs from day to day.

I'm in the camp that this particular algorithm update is for data mining but at the same time, I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to finish and for my traffic to come barreling back. I see this as an opportunity for me to find other income streams, something I should have been putting serious effort into all along.

What they do with the data gathered from Panda 2.6 will probably lead to a more definitive algorithm change. I don't think Panda 1.0-2.5 were specifically for data mining like this one is.

 

[redrubies]

So, is it that our sites are penalized, or that others are given some sort of boost? Kinda funny too actually, some of my pages are the exact same rankings, but traffic is completely shot.. i dont understand that one quite yet.

Traffic down about 90-95%

I think other sites are getting a boost. It just looks like you're penalized, but in reality, other sites are going up the search results. I am now on page 1 for keywords I don't even optimize. These are words that I never thought I'd get that high for.

However. Two days ago I totally dropped out of the results. Yesterday I was back to normal. I would not worry about this. I went from a little drop, to the 300's, to the 500's, then back to normal, then gone all together, and now back to normal again. I think we will all be back to normal soon.

 

[redrubies]

I think I finally found what is Panda after and how and when it works. I know my English is not perfect, but read the following in the next few minutes.


- some people reported getting their traffic down about 60-95% at some sort of Panda update (let's say it Panda X). The same people reported getting the traffic back at the next Panda iteration (let's say it Panda X+1). The same people reported getting their traffic cut or down again at the next Panda iteration (let's say it Panda x+2). Why is that, really? The answer is simple - Panda X cut your traffic because your content was not useful for your user. Panda X+1 got you back because Google Panda wanted to know if you changed or made your content useful for the user. If you haven't made your content useful for the user, then Panda X+2 will cut you again and probably Panda x+3 will bring you back or not. How does my logic sound?

- my theory is based on the fact that, let's say I have one website that has a lot of pages, but most of them don't give my searcher what he or she wants. At one Panda iteration Google will penalize my website, but it needs to know if I'm willing to make the content better or not. It doesn't care about grammar or links, but if my content is useful to the user (Google's bounce rate matters, not yours). I mean, let's say I look for "widget" and I have the intention to buy it. I wouldn't spend to much time on an informational website, but spend the most of the time on the website I want to buy on. I might even block that informational website, because it might not be there.


So it's simple, Panda cuts you down and then let's you improve your website. It might put your rankings back for a while to see if you improved your content and then back you down if you haven't. So if you have been hit by Panda once and you haven't recovered yet, you might, but in the period you are up don't think your content is good enough. It might not be as good as you think and if your users don't think your content is good enough, they will block or ignore your content, then at the next Panda iteration Google will put you back in the list.


Now, how can we improve our content?

- having or not breadcrumbs doesn't matter or influence the Panda update. I saw damaged websites with breadcrumbs and without breadcrumbs so it doesn't matter.
- nofollow external links it doesn't matter. I saw damaged websites with nofollow external links (all) and websites that got higher in rankings with nofollow external links.
- blogspot, knol and facebook rank higher than ever after this update, but I don't know how much.
- Mahalo wasn't hit by the latest Panda updates and Infobarrel is up in rankings, so they must be doing something right, even so they are content farms. On another hand Ehow and Suite101 are way way down, along with articlesbase. They are content farms already, so there is no reason they wouldn't be down.
- I don't think the number of Google ads is the reason to this update, neither the grammar and spelling. Not yet.
- I do think the way the information is presented on the website page matters, not that the Google bot understands it, but the humans read it or not according to the way it's presented on the page.


The only thing that we can do to avoid Panda in the future is to improve our website content as fast as possible and don't stop until 2-3 Panda passed our website and it's good and ranking. Ideas?

I have a five page site that has been dead for three years. It has a higher PR and does better in the search results than the site that I bust my behind promoting. I have come to the conclusion that there is no conclusion. LOL Google is odd.

 

[FireTheWild]

Interesting. Both of my sites that got sandboxed by Panda are back.

When exactly it was sandboxed ?

 

[Kris88]

Ok, it's been a week...how much longer.

 

[bizurk]

Most of my legit content sites dropped about 20%, about 40 of my auto blogs said the same. About 3 autoblogs dropped 90%

 

[1337WuLF]

When exactly it was sandboxed ?

The site that got hit the hardest was out of the top 100 for all keywords, so pretty much sandboxed. This happened on the 14th (day after Panda).

The site is ranking again, but not quite as high as it was. But I'm not complaining lol.

Another site that was sanboxed (and has been there for a while) seemed to come back the same day and is now ranking #30 (it was #13 before it went into sandbox)

My site that was doing the best at #1 is now #2 however when panda first hit it was bouncing from #6 to #12 to #2, it is now a steady #2 and I'm confident I can get it to #1 again.