ECommerce site being "filtered" by last Panda update, ideas and discussion
-
Hello fellow internet go'ers!
Just as a disclaimer, I have been following a number of discussions, articles, posts, etc. trying to find a solution to this problem, but have yet to get anything conclusive. So I am reaching out to the community for help.
Before I get into the questions I would like to provide some background:
I help a team manage and improve a number of med-large eCommerce websites. Traffic ranges anywhere from 2K - 12K+ (per day) depending on the site. Back in March one of our larger sites was "filtered" from Google's search results. I say "filtered" because we didn't receive any warnings and our domain was/is still listed in the first search position. About 2-3 weeks later another site was "filtered", and then 1-2 weeks after that, a third site.
We have around ten niche sites (in total), about seven of them share an identical code base (about an 80% match). This isn't that uncommon, since we use a CMS platform to manage all of our sites that holds hundreds of thousands of category and product pages. Needless to say, April was definitely a frantic month for us. Many meetings later, we attributed the "filter" to duplicate content that stems from our product data base and written content (shared across all of our sites). We decided we would use rel="canonical" to address the problem. Exactly 30 days from being filtered our first site bounced back (like it was never "filtered"), however, the other two sites remain "under the thumb" of Google.
Now for some questions:
Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content?
Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"?
Why has only one site recovered?
-
Thanks for your responses.
@EGOL - I would agree that merging the sites would be ideal given that they share such a large database. Unfortunately, this isn't an option for our company (at this point-in-time). Acquiring new content for our product pages has been tossed around, but would be a HUGE undertaking, so its on the "back burner" for the moment.
@Ben Fox - We came to the conclusion that it was content because it was the only clear "offender" on the list of potential problems. However, the fact that only 3 of our sites got penalized perplexes me as well. It would have made more sense had all of our sites suffered a penalty (luckily only 3 did). One response I got from another forum was: since google removed enough duplicate content (3 sites in our case) it deemed that the others were "original".
We didn't point canonicals to any one site (like 9 going to 1). We only added the rel=canonical to our manufacturer category pages (a small percentage of pages). Since some of our domains sell products that aren't "niche specific" we told these pages to send preference to their proper niche domain (hope that made sense).
For discussion purposes, here is a response I got from another forum:
Why has only one site recovered?I suspect/assume the other sites will bounce back the same way after their own 30 day penalties expire.>Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content????? maybe removing the first site allowed the scoring penalty applied to the other sites to shrink in size. as each site was removed, the penalty applied to the others correspondingly shrunk. ?????>Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"?No. 30 day is a common penalty.Does anyone agree with these? I've heard of the 30 day penalty before. If this is the case, then a warning from Google would be nice.
-
Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content?
Google can be slow to detect duplicate content and sometimes tolerates it.
Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"?
Only google knows.
Why has only one site recovered?
Only google knows.
Google sees a lot of sites with same content and you say that these are "med-large" sites. If I was google I would say... "these are dupe content, we aren't going to index all of them, our searchers don't want to see ten sites with same stuff".
If these were my sites I would merge all of them into one single site. If the content on that site was unique to me I would probably then put all of my efforts into promotion and informative content for the product lines.
If the content was on other sites that I don't own then my efforts would go mainly into making unique product content and informative content for the product lines.
Google has been squashing duplicate content for years. If you have it and you place links between the sites it is very likely that at least one of your sites will be demoted in google or filtered - probably filtered. They don't want to spend their resources indexing ten duplicate sites. They would rather display unique sites to their searchers.
-
How did you decide that it was content causing the issue if only 3/10 of your sites were affected?
Also when you added the rel=canonical did 9 of your sites point to a primary site and was this the site that recovered?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Our Sites Organic Traffic Went Down Significantly After The June Core Algorithm Update, What Can I Do?
After the June Core Algorithim Update, the site suffered a loss of about 30-35% of traffic. My suggestions to try to get traffic back up have been to add metadata (since the majority of our content is lacking it), as well ask linking if possible, adding keywords to alt images, expanding and adding content as it's thin content wise. I know that from a technical standpoint there are a lot of fixes we can implement, but I do not want to suggest anything as we are onboarding an SEO agency soon. Last week, I saw that traffic for the site went back to "normal" for one day and then saw a dip of 30% the next day. Despite my efforts, traffic has been up and down, but the majority of organic traffic has dipped overall this month. I have been told by my company that I am not doing a good job of getting numbers back up, and have been given a warning stating that I need to increase traffic by 25% by the end of the month and keep it steady, or else. Does anyone have any suggestions? Is it realistic and/or possible to reach that goal?
Algorithm Updates | | NBJ_SM2 -
Early Feb Update?
After the Google "Mystery Update" in early Feb (Algoroo marks the flux as Feb 5th) one of my B2C e-commerce sites has gotten absolutely hammered. We had some trouble last May but cleaned a whole host of on-site/site quality issues over the summer and as of early Sept we began to regain rankings/traffic quite nicely...until Feb when we've almost given it all back. I was doing a little hunting around on SearchMetrics.com and saw lots of big ecommerce sites took a hit as well (eBay, Kohls, Target, etc…). I had read someplace (I think it was the SearchMetrics blog) that the Feb 5<sup>th</sup> update had to do with sites ranking due to misspellings. We do have several domains variations of company name redirecting to our site, I was wondering if that could have hurt. I dropped the redirects as a test since they do not drive traffic. I was wondering if anyone else has seen similar issues and/or could shed some light on the situation. It is very disheartening to see all that hard work simply "go away" so quickly.
Algorithm Updates | | costume0 -
How can I tell Google two sites are non-competing?
We have two sites, both English language. One is a .ca and the other is a .com, I am worried that they are hurting one another in the search results. I'd like to obviously direct google.ca towards the .ca domain and .com towards the .com domain and let Google know they are connected sites, non-competing.
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
Do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases?
do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases? i've always heard don't get links from unrelated sites but if that mattered, then how would sites with totally diverse pages such as newspaper sites, sears, and other catalogue sites rank for these diverse subjects on their site? How does Facebook rank when it gets 100,000 links a day from sites that have nothing to do with a social media site? I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this. Also, Do links from unrelated sites give less push than related links? Take care,
Algorithm Updates | | Ron10
Ron0 -
My Site PR lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic !
My Site PR5 lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic ! What might be the problem ? Nov 29-2012 my site was hacked very badly and google Blacklisted me for the first time and if you see now " it says, Past 90 days nearly 19 times my site was acted as medium to spread virus" Even thought we checked our FTP, Cpanel or Home Directory - Everything seems good. My domain which was hosted - has other domains in the same network and some are porn - those sites are injecting malicious code ! May be that's the reason or please give me some idea how to improve it !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
Google Panda - large domain benefits
Hi, A bit of a general question, but has anyone noticed a improvement in rankings for large domains - ie well known, large sites such as Tesco, Amazon? From what I've seen, the latest Panda update seems to favour the larger sites, as opposed to smaller, niche sites. Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this too?Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0 -
What is the best way for a local business site to come up in the SERPs for a town that they are not located in?
At our agency, we work with many local small business owners who often want to come up in multiple towns that are near to their business where they do not have a physical address. We explain to them again and again that with the recent changes that Google in particular has made to their algorithms, it is very difficult to come up in the new "blended" organic and Places results in a town that you don't have a physical address in. However, many of these towns are within 2 or 3 miles of the physical location and well within driving distance for potential new clients. Google, in it's infinite wisdom doesn't seem to account for areas of the country, such as New Jersey, where these limitations can seriously affect a business' bottom line. What we would like to know is what are other SEOs doing to help their clients come up in neighboring towns that is both organic and white hat?
Algorithm Updates | | Mike-i0 -
Regarding google panda: would it be wise to use automatic generated content when there is no content.
Hi guys, i am currently creating a local business directory and was deciding when we first start there will be a lot of business listings without a business decription until the owner of that business come to submit a description. so when if a business listing have no business description would it be better to have an automatic generated business description like this:
Algorithm Updates | | usaccess608
www.startlocal.com.au/retail/books/tas_hobartandsouth/Scene_Magazine_2797040.html the automated genrated description for this listing on that page is:
Scene Magazine is a business that is based in Kingston, 7050, TAS: Hobart And South. Scene Magazine is listed in 2 categories including: Magazines and Periodicals Shops and Book Stores and Shops. Within the Magazines and Periodicals Shops category there are 5 businesses within 25 km of Scene Magazine. Some of those businesses included within the radius of 25 km are Island Magazine, Artemis Publishing Consultants and Bride Tasmania Magazine. would google panda affect this or not and would it be wise to use this auto content when there is no description for a business?0