Panda 3.3 Links TEST Ahrefs *MUST SEE*

X

xtube

Regular Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2010
Messages
310
Reaction score
71
So, I have been in the SEO business many years now and this is the first time I really feel that something drastical has happened...more so even from the first Panda that rolled out.

So I have been analyzing backlinks and trying new strategies to find a new way to rank quicker and in my analyzing I found this:

Whatever website you check in Ahrefs.com will have this downwards trend:

Ebay
rwu2
http://d.pr/rwu2

Facebook
Af0p
http://d.pr/Af0p

These are 2 examples and this is the trend for every single site I have tried so far and it all happens in March = Most probably related to Panda 3.3 and indexing of websites.

So how do we get past this?

We need to find a way to get a positive trend back in the linkbuilding and I am doing tests as to what kind of links seems to work and so far I have not really found the right way (I know wikis are giving me good results). This will however not affect most people as everyone is more or less hit the same way....but going forward it will definitely affect results and how we can rank our sites

So I will have this thread up here for everyone to do tests and posts results with the type of links that are actually registered and websites that are showing a positive growth instead of this boring negative trend. If you break the trend let us know how you did it!
 
Last edited:
Advertise on BHW
Good insight but according to Majestic SEO, no such trend is observed. I know both these tools have their own way to check backlinks but Majestic SEO seems have better reputation than AHrefs.
 
There was a case study couple weeks back about a guy blasting 5 million comments to his site. It was observed in there that ahrefs doesn't always trend accurately so take what ahrefs says with a grain of salt.
 
Wow, that's a fascinating find op. I'll do some more research on it and see what I can find.

As to the person above who says Majestic SEO does not show this trend, Majestic has not updated their "historic index" to show March yet because it's still in progress. But looking at the current information it does look like March is going to take a significant hit.

We will have to wait until the month is over to know on both of these sites for sure though.
 
I would tend to agree with you, xtube, I have been observing this trend recently as well both on my sites and competitors sites. This means that in the end, everyone is in the same boat...sorta

What I "think" is happening are two things.
- Google is putting a cap on the # of backlinks from a site [so if 10 backlinks are coming your way from only 1 site, you will not get credited for them all]. Maybe taking into account sidebar/header/footer links that appear on every page. But something in terms of trying to get "Quality" vs quantity
- I know a lot of people had received GWebmaster emails and got their websites deindexed, which would lead to the backlinks being down as well.

What is interesting to note is the downward motion. If its a steady slope on all the graphs, so we will probably see it go down for a longer period of time until it levels up.

Im gonna be trying a test of 2 fresh sites, to see what backlinks stick and which dont. But Google is providing a service in return for advertising money. That service is the most relevant Ranking. Most relevant does not equal to most shitty spun articles with backlinks. Quality might soon trump quantity...
 
honzarox said:
- Google is putting a cap on the # of backlinks from a site [so if 10 backlinks are coming your way from only 1 site, you will not get credited for them all]. Maybe taking into account sidebar/header/footer links that appear on every page. But something in terms of trying to get "Quality" vs quantity
Click to expand...

So you think they are not counting sitewide links anymore and just the referring domain as one link? Interesting observation. I have actually seen a couple sites that have very uneven referring domains to backlinks getting hit. Could definitely be something they are implementing.
 
Last edited:
Negative SEO - by this I think u mean blasting competition with shitty backlinks and hoping they get a webmaster email - wouldnt do anything we are talking about in this thread. But this is def. a possibility to do ;)

I have no real evidence to support my claim and Im testing it out, but it does make sense to me. A link that appears on every page of a blog, the same link, over and over again should not have that much weight IMHO, from Googles perspective, if they are trying to crack down on quantity
 
OP - I'm not quite sure what you conclude from those two pictures? It looks like number of backlinks is going down but where are they fetching their information from? Who says they're collecting information the same way as google? If it is a trend on all websites then it might affect everyone equally proportionally and thus not have an effect... Or what?

Personally in my niche I'm seeing a lot of EMDs and close to EMDs popping up, though I did not study it pre-panda, but I'm quite sure the number has been increasing.
 
Last edited:
I also think that multiple links in articles are either ignored or serve as a flag.

most of the articles I see submitted to the article directories have 3 and sometimes 4 links all from keyword anchors.

= not natural
 
2 remarks;

1.) how do you know it's not some change/error/bug/etc. with ahrefs.com? Especially since this trend cant be seen with Majestic SEO?

2.) if it's a trend that affects 100% of sites it could be it has minimal impact on the rankings as all sites are dealing with the same changing circumstances.
 
nikao said:
2 remarks;

1.) how do you know it's not some change/error/bug/etc. with ahrefs.com? Especially since this trend cant be seen with Majestic SEO?

2.) if it's a trend that affects 100% of sites it could be it has minimal impact on the rankings as all sites are dealing with the same changing circumstances.
Click to expand...



1) We cant. So a) its a bug and we will go back to our normal ways in a few weeks. b) its not and we will be few weeks ahead of the game

2) While you are right that it should affect everyone the same way, in the end it wouldnt.
Say ur have a ton of shitty links. Ur comptetitor has less links, but diversified. They suddently take 100 of your links, count them as 1. U r more screwed than ur competitor...
 
ActionTaker said:
OP - I'm not quite sure what you conclude from those two pictures? It looks like number of backlinks is going down but where are they fetching their information from? Who says they're collecting information the same way as google? If it is a trend on all websites then it might affect everyone equally proportionally and thus not have an effect... Or what?

Personally in my niche I'm seeing a lot of EMDs and close to EMDs popping up, though I did not study it pre-panda, but I'm quite sure the number has been increasing.
Click to expand...

Yeah that what i was thinking about also how does Ahrefs know the way google thinking with
 
Yep, just checked my sites and I have the same results.. Its showing a decrease in backlinks which is leading me to believe that google is starting to lean towards counting each link from a domain as one backlink.
 
What I am saying is basically that I am seeing a more difficult climate for SEO, last 2 weeks I have had a extremely hard time to RANK my sites the way I have before and I still see the sites getting links in WMT....however I think this trend has to do with Panda 3.3 and this statement:

"Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable." - Matt Cutts

Surely I am speculating and like someone else said MajesticSEO has not updated for March as of yet so that will be a interesting thing to look at.

My questions to you are:

Since 2 weeks back, are you strategies still working?
Do you feel its harder to rank pages since 2 weeks back?

If your answer is YES on the first question and NO on the second question:

What type of linkbuilding are you doing?

I have totally went from profile backlinks and such and web 2.0 and doing a lot of Wiki linkbuildings, long articles with incontent links and diversify my link anchors like crazy. I dont do 50% my main keyword like I used to. I do 10 keywords at a time and I am trying to diversify my links so that I have around 50 different anchors or more because this seems to help.

I cant really verify my statement 100% yet and thats where I need your help to try this with me and tell me your experiences. I also think they are cutting links from the same domain....OR they are really starting to deindex spammed sites, link networks, article directories etc from their index thus making us loose backlinks.
 
Last edited:
so who really gained from the 3.3 update?

what sites are seeing more traffic / better rankings?
 
Yes, it is harder since Panda 3.3 hit the interweb (19-Feb-2012).

I think it is more an issue of de-valueing more and more link types and hence the Panda effect is like a snowball. I've noticed that sites that got hit are those that their SEO is handled by internet marketers... it means they had majority of their backlinks from article directories, blog network etc'

Google probably even flag sites that have a certain percentage of link juice coming from sources they decided to de-value.

In my opinion, even if wiki links still work, they will not last much longer.

The cure... I believe that we need to balance all aspects of backlinks - anchor, fol/nofol, social signals, sites that really being used by readers, mainstream media age of sites, age of links, etc'
 
Not related to panda or even to google for that matter and definitely not a 'must see'.
 
ActionTaker said:
OP - I'm not quite sure what you conclude from those two pictures? It looks like number of backlinks is going down but where are they fetching their information from? Who says they're collecting information the same way as google? If it is a trend on all websites then it might affect everyone equally proportionally and thus not have an effect... Or what?

Personally in my niche I'm seeing a lot of EMDs and close to EMDs popping up, though I did not study it pre-panda, but I'm quite sure the number has been increasing.
Click to expand...

Ahrefs pick up their links by crawling the web (crawling through search engines, websites etc). So the conclusion here is basically that their robot went crazy in march (coincidence its basically the same time a panda 3,3?).

So what I am saying is that somehow everyone is dropping in amounts of backlinks and it seems that there is a major "cleanup" being done by google as to which sites are being indexed and which that are not... (Ahrefs bot MOST PROBABLY SURF google and try to find new links throught the sites)

So the conclusion here is that the robot can't pick up all the links that they used to because G probably deindexed huge amounts of sites in a short period of time.

If you look at facebook.....they have lost over 100 million links according to Ahrefs
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top