Traffic dropped 75% - Panda 2 Penalized?
-
Hello everyone,
My e-commerce website traffic dropped by 75% overnight, on April 12th. The website has been around since 2003 and growing every year. Over the years gained some great placement for some competitive keywords and stayed on page 1 for some time. After the Panda update, some of our major keywords dropped from page 1 to page 10. The first Panda update had a slightly negative effect on us, by bumping up all the brand's websites (brands we carry) placing the brands in the first couple positions (giving them 2-3 first spots) pushing us down. However, the Panda 2 killed us.
I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on my situation.
Did anyone ever have luck or would recommend contacting Google, and asking them for advise or reasons why the site was dropped.
The website in question is www.instyleswimwear.com
Thanks in advance,
Alex -
You're welcome Alex.
Actually my recommendation is to not noindex category or pagination pages. They each need a unique title, meta description & h1 tag, and categories need quality descriptive content on the 1st (default) page in the pagination sequence.
I would not have that content repeat on subsequent pages in category pagination sequence - allowing each of those to stand alone as supporting pages - the unique products on each should be enough to communicate uniqueness of content if you've got thumbnails and captions for each.
I would use noindex/follow on all other filter types though, or block those filters from search bots altogether (it's easier to do noindex/follow).
-
Alan,
Thanks for your help. Recent post by Dr. Pete had some great pointers as well. In reference to the pagination and category pages, do you recommend NOINDEXing them?
-
Alex
content scraping is a challenge, to say the least. going after scrapers is monumental. I bet they scraped by sucking up the feed that bizrate uses. The best defense against such action is to provide a different description to bizrate than that which you use on the site. Yes, it's more work, however it can help a lot.
Whether Google recognizes bizrate for what it is or not, I honestly don't know. I do know that the overriding scrape issue and the potential that bizrate's pages are battling yours dictates the two different description solution.
-
Alan,
Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my site. I didn't think of searching exact match on descriptions. But now that I did, I see the same site (with different domain) scraped my site and using my product descriptions.
hoodieswebsitedesigner.com, <cite>coolauthentichoodies.com, etc.</cite>
In addition, I found another online store that are steeling our descriptions, <cite>summerfashionshop.com</cite>
And finally, as you have pointed out, Bizrate also shows up, however these are our listings on Bizrate.
Having all this data, what can I do about Google seeing my site as the content owner. And also, does Google realize that Bizrate uses our descriptions, since they are linking back to our product pages?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Alex
-
Great Insight Alan. Awesome observation! Ecommerce websites are faced with faceted navigation, duplicate content and canonical URL issues. Thats why ecommerce websites are more prone to relegation on Google updates.
Something has to change drastically on the way ecommerce websites exist. Otherwise, Google may end up delisting or relegating a huge number of such websites.
-
Alex,
I've had the opportunity (misfortune?) to perform audits on a few ecommerce sites that saw a major hit due to Panda. I can tell you that Google set up a mechanism for submitting your site to let them know. You won't however, get individual site reconsideration, you'll simply be giving them an opportunity to include your site in their ongoing evaluation process. And be able to commiserate with others.
Taking a quick look at your site here's a few factors:
**1. Duplicate product descriptions. **
I pulled up a random product on your site and did an exact match search for the first line in the product description. I got your site among some bizrate.com listings, and a couple rogue sites.
Having a truly unique description for every product page is critical. It should be at least a few paragraphs long. Yes, that's a massive time-suck. However it's one of the most significant factors in the long list of factors.
2. Topical Confusion
With so many sorting options included in primary navigation (New Arrivals, full catalog, Sale, Final Sale links up top as well as the entire left sidebar navigation that's site-wide), you're not doing anything to help Google comprehend content relationships that are unique on the site. Many of these pages are purely pagination with no unique content other than product images, a one word product name, and price. There's no way any of that content can stand out as truly strong content pages uniquely identified to a particular set of important phrases.
There's also no navigation breadcrumbs, which would reinforce topical relationship focus and separation.
3. Inbound Link Profile
A quick check in OpenSiteExplorer.org shows the majority of links contain "swimsuit" anchor text. Overall, there are hardly any phrases built around variations such as "bikinis" or "women's bathing suits" or any of countless other variations - without that breadth, your site is too heavy on too few variations.
That's just an overview that should get you going in the right direction, however it's just what stood out in a quick review.
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
-
Penguin 4.0 update: drop in results end of September
Has anyone noticed certain drops in keyword rankings on/around 29 September? Has this to do with the Penguin 4.0 update? I read that this hasn't come "bug-free". Will this be adjusted the upcoming weeks? Or is this drop content-based based on the new algorithms and the content needs to be adjusted/updated?
Reporting & Analytics | | Mikrocentrum0 -
Internal Referral Traffic Issue due to https/http?
Hi Mozzers, we´re running a secured https account section on our website including a messaging center where lots of non secured own URLs are being shared among the users. Is there a possibility that a user clicking on one of the shared URLs within the https section triggering another session thats been counted as direct traffic? Thanks for your help! Greets
Reporting & Analytics | | LocalIM
Manson0 -
Organic Traffic going to Direct? How to find the ultimative proof
Hi there, a few months ago we had a new site launch. As we operate internationally, visitors in different countries do get redirected to the specific country subfolder. e.x. domain.com/it Since site launch. Direct Traffic is performing really really well(almost to good to be true) while organic is doing decent but not more. I'm quite sure, that a part of direct belongs to the organic channel. Though now I need strong arguments to fight against our own web development team. Do you have any suggestions, where and how I can find strong evidence of my hypotheses? Thanks in advance
Reporting & Analytics | | ennovators0 -
Domain Authority Drop
We just witnessed a domain authority drop. We went from 24 to 21.Not sure why. We've been creating fresh new content for our site over the last few days and haven't done anything that would cause it.
Reporting & Analytics | | StickyLife
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.0 -
2 questions on avoiding issues with Google and while being right in it.
Hi SEOmoz community In fact I have two questions I would like to ask (with future SEO in mind). Do you consider a WordPress Multisite or various Single installs 'safer' for SEO? Theoretically, having various sites packed into one Multisite network seems like an ideal solution. However, is there a chance that once a site in the network encounters a little 'negative turbulence', that your other sites in the network might get impacted too due to the cross-referencing, linked account i.e. Webmaster Tools etc.? It would seem outrageous, but then again I wouldn't rule it out. Do I even have to go as far as setting up new Gmail, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts, so they (the sites) are technically not linked? You can see, I don't trust search engines one bit... Is there still a point posting articles once Google is having a hissy fit with your site? Basically I am currently going through a 'rankings and traffic drops storm'. It's not as bad as being de-indexed, but it's still having enough of an impact. In addition, Google does not seem to treat my new articles (unique content) with the same attention anymore i.e. does not seem to index them 'fully' or not at all (i.e. posting the headline in Google should return the article, but it doesn't). Is there even a point spending time now and posting new material or may it pick it up again once I am through this low phase? Does Google still index what it considers worth or is it a waste of time right now to keep posting, posting and posting more? Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.
Reporting & Analytics | | Hermski0 -
No (Not Provided) Traffic
Hi All, I have a site that gets around 500,000 visits every month from the UK and US, but funny enough the number number of visits under (not provided) traffic is only 179 per month. For most websites I usually get 10% or 15% of the traffic under not provided, what could the reasons be for such a low percentage of (not provided)? Thanks, Carlos
Reporting & Analytics | | Carlos-R0 -
Drop In Analytics
So I have a site that was getting about 200 hits (not a lot). They came to me and asked to do SEO. There were over 50 pages in HTML format so I created header/footers and changed the .html pages to .php. I set forwards up in the htaccess and everything. I did everything that I was suppose to. Now when I go to the analytics it almost looks like it lost all it's traffic from the keywords it was ranked in. Any ideas on why?
Reporting & Analytics | | blackrino0 -
Weird drop in ranks... google.fr
Hello folks, Before our domain: <cite>www.convertisseurvideo.net</cite> Keyword: convertisseur video ( convert your video ) is at the first(page) google.fr for this keyword search. Right now, its at second page, really dropped. And our CTR = 1% . How can we improve the CTR? Any toughts ? Thanks. ss.JPG
Reporting & Analytics | | augustos0