What is Panda after?

I have 4 sites that are built the same and backlinked the same. 3 of the sites have dropped 95% in traffic, 1 site has increased 900% in traffic, almost 10x more traffic than before panda. I am so confused, the only difference I can think of is the site which got boosted is in a niche that people would share with their friends and family.

The biggest change I've seen recently is that google shopping results are almost all big site spam now.
buy.com, walmart, etc all moved up significantly

This is the most evil thing google's done that I've ever seen, as it's effectively supporting conglomerations regardless of popularity.

Apparently is doesn't like it if there is no content above the fold - for example only ads and the content below them.

I think this is what killed one of my sites when I put CTR theme on it.

I have not the slightest idea about what is Panda after. All I know is you can see quite weird things on page #1 today.

Last night I G00gled make money internet in a widespread language spoken by 350+ million people. I could not believe my eyes when I saw all those crappy sites ranking on top 10. Such a killing to be done!!!!!!!!!!!!

omida86 said:

check out the leaked google manual and you will have a very clear idea what Panda is after: Sites whose only purpose is to make money.


Solution? Easy:

Remove the affiliate links and ads and add more unique content, and you will get your ranking back.

Just try it, I guarantee that it will work.

Click to expand...

That is not the whole picture, how can I be so sure?
Well My site has dropped and so has one of my clients site, which is an exact match domain, neither of which have any advertising on them or affiliate links, they are legitimate white hat websites.

One is an ecommerce website, and the other a services and info website.
Both have plenty of unique content and no adverts...

The EMD dropped like a stone and stayed there...

This Panda update is interesting, but my feelings are it's good for the web. On 18 November I've seen many websites (likes EMD's) being Panda and losing their traffic because they provided no value, and only using their EMD power to rank and get Adsense money.

Things I've seen so far:

1. Once Panda hits you there is no coming back. I'm monitoring hundreds of websites that have been hit by Panda since 28 September and none of them came back so far. There is one Big Panda update at around 2 months and lots of small Panda updates weekly. Once Panda hits you, the only way is down, no matter what you do.
2. Panda is not over. There will be big Panda's in the near future, as Panda learns more and more, and small Panda updates weekly or so.
3. Panda is not side wide. Or Panda doesn't hit all websites the same.
4. It seems that Panda likes big brands like Facebook or Blogger, but not article directories like Suite101 or others.
5. Comment links seem to matter more these days.
6. Brands matter a lot: do you have others talking or linking to you? Do big news websites tell something about you? If not, probably you are not as important as you think.
7. Facebook likes don't matter. They give you traffic, but not so much traffic boost from Google or rankings.
8. Links from authority websites seem more important than cheap or spammy websites.

How do we get out of Panda? Improve our website more and more?

One of my sites was hit by the first panda. It fully recovered but on October 14 it was hit again. The first time I added a shitload of new content to each page, basically changing all the content on the site. But now I am back to square one.

I am starting to think that the "beahvioural" factors have more weight nowadays. Google recently admitted that now they use such info in ranking sites. This site of mine has a bounce rate of about 80%, but I think all my competitors have similar numbers. The bad thing is that it didn't really care about the visitors, was pushing them to the affiliate link to drop that cookie. That can piss of some of them enough to hit the "Block all results from this site" button when they are back in Google.

I made a couple changes to reduce the bounce rate and be more helpful to the visitor. Hoping for the best.

Edit: if visitor behaviour is indeed a big factor, there are two scenarios:
-after you make significant changes to your site, they let it fly back to see how it performs
or
- they just wait and see how it performs in the lowered position and let it back after stats improved.

mmmmeme said:

This Panda update is interesting, but my feelings are it's good for the web. On 18 November I've seen many websites (likes EMD's) being Panda and losing their traffic because they provided no value, and only using their EMD power to rank and get Adsense money.

Things I've seen so far:

1. Once Panda hits you there is no coming back. I'm monitoring hundreds of websites that have been hit by Panda since 28 September and none of them came back so far. There is one Big Panda update at around 2 months and lots of small Panda updates weekly. Once Panda hits you, the only way is down, no matter what you do.

<Snip>

How do we get out of Panda? Improve our website more and more?

Click to expand...

Is this not a contradiction? - once you are hit, there is no coming back, .... How do we get out? Improve our website etc...

I dont believe at all that once hit there is no comming back, as this would go against Googles own policy. There must be changes that the algorithm requires, and once in place you should return.

If you would have to make the corrections and file for reinclusion as it were or if it would be automatically noted and the penalties lifted, I dont know.

This is one of the craziest Pandas I've seen. After the October 14 massacre the keyword that was ranking the best for me had fallen from #1 to #2. I thought that would be the easiest one to target for some BMR links and started to hit it. I finally got it back to #1. It stayed there for about a week and then.....yep, you guessed it.....fell right back to #2 again.

*shrugs shoulders*

My main site was number 1 solidy then fell to 3rd then 4th, had some article links and press release links done, climbed to 2nd, then fell right back down to 3rd.

I suspect that any work we do now, will only benefit us after Google has finished experimenting and weeding out the websites they are targetting at the moment...

I tried to add tons of content to my website, remove content, but no recovery. It's my feeling that Panda uses data from your niche (or top 10-100 results) to monitor which results should not be there because people either ignore or don't stay enough there.

The bounce rate you see in your Google Analytics is not important. Google's bounce rate is super important.

Example - user has 10 results to choose from on the first page. If the user click most of them, but hits the second page and then never clicks another result, the first 10 results might be not good. If users click the first result, but always click the second and third result too, maybe the first result is not good enough.

designsonline said:

I suspect that any work we do now, will only benefit us after Google has finished experimenting and weeding out the websites they are targetting at the moment...

Click to expand...

I imagine whatever will be done will happen SOON. This friday is Black Friday then there will be Cyber Monday. I would not be one bit surprised to see this whole thing come to a head on Thanksgiving so that the big companies that are now dominating are forced to up their Adwords budget for the upcoming shopping holidays. I would also not be surprised if Google did nothing.

ramen noodles said:

This is one of the craziest Pandas I've seen. After the October 14 massacre the keyword that was ranking the best for me had fallen from #1 to #2. I thought that would be the easiest one to target for some BMR links and started to hit it. I finally got it back to #1. It stayed there for about a week and then.....yep, you guessed it.....fell right back to #2 again.

*shrugs shoulders*

Click to expand...

Whats BMR links and are they high quality links? If not you are just doing the same things so will not make a difference.

bestmate said:

Whats BMR links and are they high quality links? If not you are just doing the same things so will not make a difference.

Click to expand...

BMR = Build My Rank

And yes, they are high quality links.

BMR is not quality. Msnbc or cnn is quality.

Nothing will happen soon. Panda is learning and I'm thinking it might learn until Christmas or later. Is a slow process, or so I'm seeing this moment.

We should provide quality content. We all hate spam, so why would we create spam anyways?

I'm really seeing that Google is trying to get better with this Panda update.

mmmmeme said:

BMR is not quality. Msnbc or cnn is quality.

Click to expand...

Well duh... of course MSNBC and CNN links are quality. But there are certainly much worse links than BMR links that you can get.

I'm thinking about buying an aged domain in the same niche as the one that got Panda smacked on 10/14 and targeting my best keywords with new content. It's worth a try, I guess.

Of course. What I'm seeing in some niches is that websites that have old links from quality websites (news site, etc), have got a very big boost from Panda.

I might be wrong, of course, but you need quality content to get a link from Msnbc, but you don't need quality content to get a BMR link or more. BMR is good, but Msnbc is quality.

Seems they are rolling out a new update. All my keywords are popping up in the new york area Guess other datacenters have not been refreshed yet.

It would be interesting if they would roll out a BIG update these days.

It's been almost 2 months since 28 September.

This is interesting. I have my own private network and 22/50 sites lost ranking