That Penguin
-
Without trying to rub salt into the wounds of anyone hit hard, on the flip-side did anyone get some good news.
We have one particular client that was effected in an immense positive way today, for the last four months we found it difficult to outrank one of their competitors ... but they have vanished of the face of the earth today, well Google's earth .. which meant our client moved up the SERP for a number of their key-phrases, which gave me a sense of immense delight.
I could see exactly what they where doing, not so natural link building, creating a lot of sub-directories, naming each index file by the key phrase and linking all their internal links, while disturbing all their backlinks form the same source to each index page ... I wondered of they stayed under the radar cause each term was a sub-directory almost.
No doubt they will be back, but not after a clean up and a restructure to their website
Anyway I digress, anyone else seen any major improvements
-
I lost one, but gained one. It was awesome to see that traffic spike back up after almost a year
-
Just to add my 2 cents. I have seen the same thing as a number of people reported. No major hit - unlike with Penguin 1.0 - but on my primary site I have seem a drop in 1-4 spots for my keywords across the board.
Luckily, this is massive hit we saw last year in Penguin 1.0. The odd thing is however (and I don't know if anybody else has seen this) is that my sites that were hit by Penguin 1.0 seem to have recovered a lot. Many are back on the first page. I had not touched them in over a year.
My primary site I have has most of its links from very high quality sites in education since it is our niche. Top universities like Stanford, Harvard, etc but we have also paid for some ads - no follow - on some related forums. The links are no-follow, but they seemed to be showing up as links in Google Webmaster tools. My guess is that Google did not punish my site per-se, it simply stopped counting those links which should not have been counted in the first place.
If this is the extent of Penguin 2.0 it was not too bad for me. Nothing that can't be recovered from in a month of 2 of good SEO, and these kinds of fluctuations are to be expected. Of course if the roll out is still going on and the SERP shifts drastically again I may change my tune.
Good luck to everybody as we wait for the algo to finish its work.
-
haha It was about 9 am when I replied! I hope not too many people are headed to the bar at that hour.
(But tonight? Yes, tonight I'm going to party like a rockstar, party like a rockstar!)
-
Most happy people are heading out for beers.
They will not be posting here.
-
I agree that it's active SEOers that appear to be hit, I have a few drops in a couple of rankings on client websites but nothing major. There seems to be some really odd results too which I wouldn't rate as good quality but local results but not in Google+ Local. My own personal site which I do very little work on has done well but I think this is also due to other sites losing rankings rather than my excellent strategy!!
-
Thank you! I know most people who have posted so far are the ones who aren't happy but I think it's important we know that for every site that moves down, someone moved up and is pleased with the change. We try to do everything "by the book" but since the book doesn't exist, just do what we think is best - and it seems to work, though a bit slowly sometimes.
-
Wow, that's great news ....Congrats
-
Yes, THANKFULLY I got good news. I had a client come to me after losing 98% of their traffic in a 2 day period after Penguin 1. We have been fighting a losing battle since including disavowing old spam links, removing links, adding new and relevant links and citations, redoing some of the on-page work, etc. NOTHING has moved the needle.
Finally, yesterday, nearly all of their main keywords jumped from what Analytics said was "Average Position 400" to a few on page 1, 2, 3, lots on 5 and 6 and a lot in the top 100. Most of their keywords have recovered including ALL their most important ones. Now we have work to do but at least we know where we're at and we're not flailing in dark.
This was the client I've had the single most trouble ranking in my business' history so I'm having a really good day.
-
I have taken a slight hit position 1 to position 2 or 5 on keywords I was strong on... It seems that some of my competitors sites which are crap seem to have gained. It seems the active SEO ers have had a hit... However I think I will bounce back...
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
-
Google traffic drops (October 24th 2014) - Penguin 3.0?
Hi All My client's site http://www.carismaautodesign.com took a bit of a knock around 24th October 2014. Google organic traffic down by ~32%. I am trying to understand if site has been hit by a Penguin refresh (3.0) - and if so why?
Algorithm Updates | | seowoody
If it was, it would appear to be a false negative as the site and backlink profile is clean. The content is perhaps the only area in question... as it's more of a brochure site, therefore content is relatively thin and promotional rather than in-depth/editorial. For example, the gallery pages are very similar in structure, with the images and specification text being the only variation, click on any of the vehicle interiors to see what I mean - http://www.carismaautodesign.com/gallery/mercedes/viano/ You will see the specification text is unique per vehicle interior, but not hugely; Then how could it be? The interiors all contain the same elements just a variation in seating, leather colour, stiching, wood finish etc. Question: Do you think... a.) This IS NOT a Penguin issue but something else (please ellaborate)
b.) This IS a Penguin issue but a false-negative, so do nothing, this will bounce back with next Penguin refresh
c.) This IS a Penguin issue related to content. Merge all gallery pages into one page per vehicle (i.e. one Mercedes Viano Interior page, with all 19 interior galleries as part of the page - thus building one stronger page with more intro text and simple bulleted specification per gallery)
d.) This IS a Penguin issue related to something else (please ellaborate) Thanks,0 -
Penguin 3.0
I saw slight drop yesterday after the penguin rollout, about 3 - 4 spots lower on targeted KW's. However, I'm still on first page for those KW, just near the bottom as opposed to near the top. I'm wondering if anyone else experienced, or has experienced with past Penguin updates, a "slight" dip in rankings. What actions did you take, if any? I'm inclined to simply focus on building better links rather than disavow given the lack of severity. With that said, I would love some feedback or suggestions from anyone who experienced what I would consider a "less severe" penalty (3 - 4 spots, still on first page).
Algorithm Updates | | mrodriguez14400 -
SEO Audit after Penguin 2.1 what are you guys seeing? this is my thougts
We have looked at around 2000 sites since Penguin 2.1 launched a few weeks back. These include our customers and their own competitors site. We are going through all the data which is obviously going to take some time. Hopefully we will publish a report on our findings as we are happy to share. What I currently see in my early analysis is Roughly 70% of sites tested have 0% exact match Anchor Text for their money keywords. The other 30% have less than 5% exact match Anchor Text. The quality of the links is often still poor to the sites ranking on page 1. The content surrounding the links is only about 10-15% of the time related to the money keywords. The loading time of the sites ranking seems to not matter, we encountered a lot of slow sites. Design and usability of the site was not important. We are not seeing much impact via Social media, a lot of these sites are small business Less than 10% of sites on page 1 had a Google+ account More than 40% of page 1 sites had Facebook profiles. More than 80% of the sites ranking on page 1 had less than 100 links to the landing page that ranked What are your opinions of helping to recover if hit by the above??? Q) If you have too high an anchor text percentage and have been hit or may get hit in the future would you. a) create some more high quality links with more varied anchor text, ie Click here, brand name etc b) not create any more links just remove the links you have to dilute the anchor text c) change the anchor text on links you are able to These figures are a work in progress so data will change just wanting to share our early findings and try to get a good conversation going. What are you guys seeing?
Algorithm Updates | | tempowebdesign0 -
Penguine 2.0 Confusion
I am getting seriously confused over our rankings and am hoping someone can give me a bit of clarity. When Penguin 2.0 hit last week we saw a drop of between 2 – 6 places on seven out of a set of around a dozen key phrases I monitor. We had been in the number 1 / 2 position for the majority of them over the last year – 18 months, and this drop has reduced our traffic by around 30 – 35%. I have looked at our back link profile - http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.wombatwebdesign.com%2F, and I don’t think it is that bad. Being a web design company the vast majority, 80% of the links are from the footer of client sites. We have a small, 5% number of links from comments; a similar amount of dead links and the rest are made up of the usual, profile, directory and article links. I was wondering if the way we link from client sites could be an issue, we link twice, once with the anchor text (Web Design Cumbria) and the second link is our company branding (Wombat Web Design, with the title tag – Web Design Cumbria). Could this be causing a problem? If anyone could point me in the right direction I would be most grateful. Thanks Fraser
Algorithm Updates | | fraserhannah1 -
Penguin 2.0 - Any signs yet?
I'm waiting, probing and analyzing and haven't seen any signs of a Penguin change. I am seeing some of my head terms bounce around the last couple of days. Mostly bouncing up and then back down again. I'm not sure if these are signs of an algo change starting, and working through Google's servers. Has anyone seen anything yet?
Algorithm Updates | | tdawson090 -
Rankings Gone? Have I been effected by the Panda/Penguin Update(s)?
Our site www.alphameasure.com has been online since 2005 and currently has a page rank of 4. The site has always ranked on page one or two of Google for our primary keywords (Employee Satisfaction Survey, Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Surveys). I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but now our site is nowhere to be found. I'm thinking our ranking dropped somewhere in mid to late January? We did use an SEO company in the spring of 2012 that went on a link building campaign for us. They added about 450 inbound links over a three month period. Other than that - nothing has really change on the site. We're getting ready to release a new version of our software that was being re-written during all of 2012, so the timing of losing our rankings is just awful. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance,
Algorithm Updates | | EngagedMetrics
Josh0 -
Penguin type over-optimisation now part of main algorithm?
Hey guys We think we have been seeing some over-optimisation penalties outside of Penguin updates. One possible penalty seems for over-optimisation on page and one penalty for a page with an over-optimised exact match link profile. Does anyone else suspect, or have seen word elsewhere, that Google's main ongoing algorithm now has Penguin like capabilities and is able to bring over-optimisation penalties without a separate refresh being run?
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO0 -
Hit hard by Penguin
We've been hit hard by the Penguin update. To start - we have never paid for a link or participated in any link scheme. Never. I'm sure you've heard that - but in this case it's true. Our site - www.annuity.com - has been in existence since 2004. Because of our name, we've always been ranked on page 1 of Google for the search term "annuity". Now we aren't even on page 50. We got the dreaded letter about links, but we've never bought, exchanged, paid, etc. or participated in any link scheme. We have not needed too. We are referenced by sites such as Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Bankrate.com, etc. Our content is original and our own. We've spent years writing it. Because of our sites name - Annuity.com - we get a lot of web spam. Looking at some of our inbound links - companies are linking to us because of our name (keyword - looks like a auto link generation or something like that) or our reputation. Any suggestions or advice on how to get our ranking back without becoming the Web Police? We don't buy, purchase, spam, or need links that are not earned by the quality of our content. I'm at a loss.
Algorithm Updates | | galis421
