Website hit by something, but not sure if penguin or panda?
-
Hi my site was doing ok, last week, humming along and increase in traffic. We felt that all the work removing bad links had worked. then all of a sudden, bang traffic dropped and is still dropping day by day.
The strange thing as well is all the social media, bing and yahoo traffic has also dried up!
Has anyone else had something smiler?
-
What's the exact day of the drop? Normally, I wouldn't really be concerned with a drop in webmaster tool impressions especially after a bump up, but since you mentioned you lost traffic on Bing, yahoo and social, it does raise some flags.
IF that happened around the final 3 days of the month, then you were affected by the update I mentioned which nobody seems to be talking about....
Anyway, did you check crawl errors on GWT? Did you crawl the site separately ? Did you see any problems with the index/noindex/etc?
As for injected codes, the easy way is to load pages (that you lost traffic on) in google. Check the saved cache. If you got some injected codes, they'll show up there.
There's really not much we can do but assume things. I do hope you could find the reason for the problem.
-
Thanks for your reply Chris661 and DennisSeymour. Where to turn that is the question. Its all rather confusing.
-
in webmaster, my impressions went up considerably, then it went down .see pic http://i.imgur.com/NZnK7Vt.png
-
We did not move to https.
-
We did not do anything apart from removing some more links
-
(Maybe check your htaccess/robots/were you hacked? Injected by an invisible code? Check Google cache) What should I look for for a hacked or injected code?
Yes we are using the universal code.
Thanks for your suggestions..
Taiger
-
-
We also saw an increase in traffic and rankings around 10/17 and were feeling pretty cocky. One tracked keyword jumped from 7 to 1 and in the last 3 days has come down to 5. Traffic also reduced and I think it coincides with the 3 day thing Dennis mentioned. I just attributed it to the Penguin update "settling". But now Dennis makes me want to do better on page!
Impressions are up looking prior to 10/17 so I think that is a good thing overall. Have not had any similar drops on social or Yahoo/Bing.
-
There was an update 3 days ago. It's not reported but it looks like a big one. Maybe that's it?
I dont think it was Penguin, as my sites that little links but great onpage SEO and branding got some huge increases.
Im still checking the others to identify the common thing.
In your case, it's sounds weird that you will drop even for bing and yahoo AND social. So that's probably not because of google.
- Check webmaster tools - impressions, how much has changed?
- Crawl your site - check problems
- Did you move to https?
- What else, besides link removal, did you do?
- Maybe check your htaccess/robots/were you hacked? Injected by an invisible code? Check Google cache
- Check analytics code are you using the universal code? Or whatever stat tracker you are using, be sure that it's compatible.
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
-
Please have a look at my website. I am stuck here.
Here might be the reason. I had loads of unnecessary content so I given them the noindex tag. I tried to change the robot.txt file but that shouldn't be a problem in SEO. First my site had a country specific domain and then a year later I changed it to .Com, as to target globally (Mainly US). My site is ranking well in that specific country (never been close to page 1) on page 3 almost every time. It's not ranking in other countries, despite the fact that I've not targeted it to any specific country since the domain was changed. A month ago, I deleted 404 pages and all the thin content which was indexed in the SERP and also deleted the duplicated contents and as well as the copied contents. Meanwhile I've also tried changing the headings in some of the products articles as they were causing the duplicate heading issue. I've recently switched my hosting from the UK based server to the Us based server because the last hosting has bad downtime. So far until now nothing seems to be working in my favor. I'm just tired of resolving issues and in return finding a zero result. This is my devil site: 10stuffs.com plz check it out and tell me why my site is not ranking at all and what sould I do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anshu14320 -
Starting over after a Penguin Penalty
Hi, Has anyone tried starting a new domain after being hit with a Penguin penalty? I'm considering the approach outlined here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2384644/can-you-safely-redirect-users-from-a-penguin-hit-site-to-a-new-domain. In a nutshell, de-index the OLD site completely via Google's Removal Tool, and then relaunch old content under new domain. This seems to have merit, unless Google keeps a hidden cache of content (or uses other sources like Wayback Machine). My concern is doing the above listed approach, but Google still passes the old links to the new domain. We have great content, but too much spam (despite me removing a lot of the links + disavow). Any feedback based on experience would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14401 -
SEO transfer to new website
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference? If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Souk0 -
Website completely delisted - reasons?
Hi, I got a request from a potential client as he do not understand why his website cannot be found on Google. I've checked that and found out that the complete website is not listed (complete delist) at all - expect just one pdf file.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler
I've checked his robots.txt - but this is ok. I've checked the META Robots - but they are on index,follow ... ok so far. I've checked his backlinks but could not found any massive linking from bad pages - just 6 backlinks and only four of them from designdomains.com which looks like a linklist or so. I've requested access to their GWT account if available in hope to find more infos, but does anyone of you may have a quick idea what els it could be? What could be the issue? I think that they got delisted due to any bad reason ... Let me know your Ideas 🙂 THANX 🙂 Sebi0 -
Panda recovery. Is it possible ?
Dear all, To begin, english is not my native language, so I'm very sorry if I make some mistake. On the 23th march 2012, Panda penalized my website (a coupon website) Avec-Reduction (dot com for the url). At this date, I have lost more than 70% of my traffic. The structure of the website was like an e-commerce website. Categories -> merchant page -> coupon page. The content was to thin for Google, I'm agree wit that. So, in may, I have made a new version. Here you can see the most important modifications : A smallest header (-100px height). 2 columns website (the oldest website had 3 columns) I have deleted the category menu with the list of all categories and the alphabetical menu. less ads on the website (since few days I have also deleted the 2 adense blocks) The coupons was promoted with the thumbs of the merchant on the home listing. Now I have few top lists in text only. I have deleted all the categories pages (one page by category of merchant, with the listing of all the merchants of the category). Now I have only one page for this. Same thing with the alphabetical pages. All these deleted pages have a 301 redirect. The 2 new pages (categorie page and alphabetical page) are on noindex. I have deleted all the promo codes pages, all the coupons are now on the merchant page (301 redirect used). I have create an anti-spam system for the review codes (I have a lot of spam on these forms, even if I cleaned every day/2days). Now, I have no spam. Visitors have now the possibility to put a note and a review for each merchant. This fonctionality is new, so not a lot of reviews for the moment. All the merchants pages without promo codes have a noindex on the robot tag. Since july, I have the possibility to use the "title" of each promo code. I can personnalised the promo code. On the same time, to have more content, I have the possibility to add sales or great promos for each merchants, not only promo codes. Affiliate links are created on JS which open a new window (a redirect page with noindex). That's the end of the most important changes on my website. I have a better speed page (/2 since july) because I have optimized my images, CSS, JS... At the end of july, I had health problem and the website has no update until the first days of october. Now, the website is updated every day, but between july and october I have no panda recovery. I have no duplicate content, I try to add the most content I can. So I don't understand why Google Panda penalized me again and again. Some of my competitors have a lot of keyword stuffing (4, 5, 6, ... 10 lines of KS on each merchant pages). Some of them have only affiliate merchants, automatic script to put coupons on websites), few "same" websites... I have less than 30% of affiliated merchant, I validate all the coupons or promo manually, I personalized all my coupons... So I don't understand what to do. I will appreciate all help. If you see problems on my wesite or if you know tips to have a panda recovery, I will be very happy to have informations. Many thanks for all. Sincerely, Florent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Floroger0 -
Google Penguin Winners and Losers?
Hi All, Just wondering out of the SEOmoz community who has come out on top after Penguin and who has been hit and why. Personally my site has come out on top. I started workig on the site back in December and NOTHING had been done, no link development, no onpage, nothing, a virginal website. The site was chock-a-block with issues both technically and in content. After 4 months of hard work, we have climbed from 100+ to top ten on most of our phrases and post Penguin we have climbed even higher as some of our competitors were dragged down into the murky depths. So I think thats a win (for now). My focus has been on Guest posting, social outreach, reviews and getting my on page right (still a ways to go, but our CMS is clunky to say the least). A little humour attached 😉 (Why has no one yet stuck Matt Cutts head on a Penguin?) Are you a Penguin Winner or have you experienced the wrath of the penguin. keep-calm-and-deoptimise.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aran_Smithson0 -
Am I overlooking something basic?
How is this site: http://inhabitat.com/ hoarding all of their pagrank on their homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | altecdesign0 -
Google does not target my website properly!
Hello everyone, My website : www.pentrucadouri.ro, despite is a .ro with romanian content and is hosted in Romania appear for google.ro as a english targeted website.Google see internal pages as romanian ones but main page as english . In order to change this , I added : Also few days ago I uploaded a geositemap and I submitted this to google. Do you have suggestions ? Website ranks 2nd for "cosuri cadou" on google.com and 3rd on bing, but on google.ro ranks 11 . Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VertiStudio0