What constitutes being "hit" by Penguin?

[javooooo]

I've been trawling through all the threads about this latest Penguin update and everyone seems to have a different definition on what being "hit" means.

For instance, there are a lot of people who have been completely blown out of the index- from page 1 to nowhere.
Others, such as myself, have only been slightly damaged- my main keywords have gone from #1-2 to the top of page 2, which in my eyes isn't a massive drop. Some of my other keywords have gone from #25 to #100, but nothing deindexed as some have been posting.

So, what constitutes being "hit"? Could those of us that have seen rankings drop be really seeing mere link devaluation? Perhaps some of the sites linking to us got deindexed? Surely a small drop of only 5 or so positions can be rectified with some high quality link building or fresh content, rather than everyone dropping their sites and bailing?

My apologies if this is perceived as a stupid, useless, waste of oxygen thread. I'm just curious because there seems to be a lot of exaggeration.

 

[Gyuman82]

I would say a loss of 100+ spots (or around there) per keyword would be a hit.

Shuffling a page to a few pages back is likely just a shuffling.

I could be wrong though.

 

[tony_d]

I would say a loss of 100+ spots (or around there) per keyword would be a hit.

Shuffling a page to a few pages back is likely just a shuffling.

I could be wrong though.

I had a couple sites move down by 6-10 spots, and with a small number of very high quality links placed about 24hrs after Penguin 3.0, those sites have both moved up 1 and 2 places respectively.
I don't think I was 'hit', I think my movements were relative to others.

I would agree though that a significant drop (I'd suggest anything >50 spots) is a direct hit, and not worth attempting to recover.

 

[JournoNick]

Well considering this update is looking more and more to be a "fuck you" to domains that use spammy looking web 2.0 links, I'd say that if you drop 100 spots and that keywords relies on the juice flowing to your site from these links, then you're hit. If you have a pbn link and a web 2.0 link and that keyword drops a ew pages, then you're hit. If your traffic has declined dramatically over the weekend, you're hit. Good enough of an explanation?

 

[tony_d]

Well considering this update is looking more and more to be a "fuck you" to domains that use spammy looking web 2.0 links,

I'd probably agree that's mostly what's happened - reading through the details thread by netmoney1, it appears that those who were hardest hit had used either blog comments or 2.0's in large numbers.

Coincidentally, the sites of mine that slipped a little had some 2.0's built about a year ago - the majority of my sites, that didn't slip at all (some even gained) were purely powered by my PBN, with no other crap at all.

 

[Zwielicht]

This does.

 

[gurubest]

I noticed that sites hit by Panda 4.0-4.1 got hit also by Penguin now, seems that they are on killing spree

 

[cloudyquasar]

I noticed that sites hit by Panda 4.0-4.1 got hit also by Penguin now, seems that they are on killing spree

Yes, looks like it but with a slight variation. It was the site owners who were on killing spree of their websites. Having hit by both Panda and Penguin means they have absolutely ridiculous onsite content and next to rubbish linking structure so effectively making the owner almost not having a clue or resorting to churn/burn tactics.

Can understand if one of the animals hit you, but if its both more often than not means there is a bigger underlying problem with the SEO tactics employed by the owner. And No there is no relation with the core Penguin and Panda algorithms other than they were developed by Big G.

 

[javooooo]

Thank you all for your comments.

The strange thing is that I've seen some pretty strange movement on my keywords. Our main money making ones, which are actually long tail, have only dropped five to ten places. Other more generic keywords which we were taking on page 2 have now slipped to page 10 or so. Nothing has been deindexed

So yeah, not really sure if it is recoverable, or if it was just a link devaluation as we haven't done much seo on this domain at all. I am a little reluctant to move the site because it is an established brand, with a fantastic reputation, and a physical business earning $200k+ pa.

Has as anyone seen similarly inconsistent drops?

 

[thejesus]

If you were getting a lot of traffic from Google, but now you're getting none your wallet is not increasing, you got hit by Penguin.

 

[JournoNick]

I'd probably agree that's mostly what's happened - reading through the details thread by netmoney1, it appears that those who were hardest hit had used either blog comments or 2.0's in large numbers.

Coincidentally, the sites of mine that slipped a little had some 2.0's built about a year ago - the majority of my sites, that didn't slip at all (some even gained) were purely powered by my PBN, with no other crap at all.

Yep, same! The sites powered by PBNs stayed, or moved up due to other sites being hit. So today was all about looking for those web 2.0 logins and deleting all that shit. What is left - meaning not posted by me - and content scraping fuckers that link for a more "natural" look will go in the disavow file and submitted.

 

[Adam718]

A "hit" is a significant blowback in rankings. If you went from #1 to #13, you weren't hit. People sometimes forget that there are other websites within their niche that can actually surpass them in rankings, and when someone outranks you, you move 1 spot lower.

Therefore, when Google rolls out a significant update, it's VERY likely that 10-20 sites within your niche just benefited from the algo change and knocked you down. After that, you have to keep working to outrank them again.

Technically - you were "hit", but not penalized, you were just outranked. Frustrating? Yes. But count your blessings if this was your money site.

 

[BreaknBrix]

I would agree though that a significant drop (I'd suggest anything >50 spots) is a direct hit, and not worth attempting to recover.

What if you worked for 3 years on a site. 90% of what you did was legit. You got citations, spent years getting reviews, tons of video content, youtube channel, facebook, etc.... built out a real funnel, the worst you did was sprinkle in a few PBN links (which helped a lot) then 1 day the site drops from #1 to page 6 and beyond. However, a few back pages still rank and drive traffic. And you can't tell wtf is going on?

That's the problem with 1 of my sites.

It seems to have been hit but compared to my hardcore spam projects, or the sites I ranked purely with spam and PBN's... it responded completely different. Like Google gave it a feather punch rather than an uppercut. Cause my sites that deserved to get penalized, the lost ALL keywords and ALL pages dropped about 150+ positions. When you log into your serpbook and see that, it's pretty easy to determine "it's time to move on".

But when you have a site that seems 50% unsalvagable & 50% salvagable.... it makes it really hard to judge what to do.

 

[Zwielicht]

What if you worked for 3 years on a site. 90% of what you did was legit. You got citations, spent years getting reviews, tons of video content, youtube channel, facebook, etc.... built out a real funnel, the worst you did was sprinkle in a few PBN links (which helped a lot) then 1 day the site drops from #1 to page 6 and beyond. However, a few back pages still rank and drive traffic. And you can't tell wtf is going on?

That's the problem with 1 of my sites.

It seems to have been hit but compared to my hardcore spam projects, or the sites I ranked purely with spam and PBN's... it responded completely different. Like Google gave it a feather punch rather than an uppercut. Cause my sites that deserved to get penalized, the lost ALL keywords and ALL pages dropped about 150+ positions. When you log into your serpbook and see that, it's pretty easy to determine "it's time to move on".

But when you have a site that seems 50% unsalvagable & 50% salvagable.... it makes it really hard to judge what to do.

I would be livid if that happened to me. I could understand getting penalised if half of what you did involved spammy links or PBN links, but only 10%? That's ridiculous.

 

[BreaknBrix]

I would be livid if that happened to me. I could understand getting penalised if half of what you did involved spammy links or PBN links, but only 10%? That's ridiculous.

I am livid. I'd say about 30% of my links are from the BBB, then 20-30% from yellow pages, angieslist, yelp, youtube, g local, and a bunch of other local directories. Then a few more links from MANUALLY created blog spots, wordpress blogs that were loaded with 40-50 pages of content each, and I very slowly boosted the pr over the years. The only "shady" think I did was buy a few PBN links and I noticed they had a huge effect cause they pushed the site up to #1 for almost a year. Just that this recent update seems to have wiped out 60% of my traffic. And then there's about 10 porn links which I have no idea why or where they came from but I'll obviously be disavowing those too.

Google is a fucking mess right now.

 

[wizdorf]

What constitutes as a hit is losing rank on the day of the update regardless of how big the hit was.

I have friends that dropped a few spots. Last year my rankings dropped close to 80 positions for all my keywords. We were both hit. Even though my friend dropped a few spots we were both affected the same amount. He fell from bottom of page one to page 2 (little to no traffic anyways) and I fell from top spots to oblivion. We both got hit to the point that we weren't receiving the traffic that we once did.

 

[Zwielicht]

I am livid. I'd say about 30% of my links are from the BBB, then 20-30% from yellow pages, angieslist, yelp, youtube, g local, and a bunch of other local directories. Then a few more links from MANUALLY created blog spots, wordpress blogs that were loaded with 40-50 pages of content each, and I very slowly boosted the pr over the years. The only "shady" think I did was buy a few PBN links and I noticed they had a huge effect cause they pushed the site up to #1 for almost a year. Just that this recent update seems to have wiped out 60% of my traffic. And then there's about 10 porn links which I have no idea why or where they came from but I'll obviously be disavowing those too.

Google is a fucking mess right now.

I wasn't negatively affected by penguin, but the shadiest thing I did to my primary website was take advantage of a few freebies (in other words, I didn't buy them) and get about 20 manually placed high PR blog comment and profile links. It's a good thing I didn't get any PBN links, otherwise my website would have probably been hit by penguin, too.