Penguin or coincidence?
-
We have several country specific sites set up as folders of our main domain. We use hreflang tags to get the relevant site served in each country, with mixed success. In about 60% of searches the US site appears.
Beginning in late October our rankings for the US have slowly, but reasonably steadily dropped. Each week we'll see 10 or so keyword rises and 15-30 keywords drop. Generally by 1-3 places. This is much more movement than we were seeing in the months prior to this.
Is this a result of penguin, or just coincidence? The US subfolder is the only one which has seen drops overall, the rest have actually improved slightly during this time period. I would expect any impact due to Penguin to effect the whole domain?
I've been checking through our backlinks and we do a have a handful of bad links, along with a 100 or so which look a little odd and not completely relevant. I have contacted sites and had some of these removed, and created a disavow list with the worst of the rest. I haven't asked for the site to be re-considered yet.
We haven't had any message in webmaster tools re: bad links or similar.
Cheers.
-
Looks like Page Rank for all our key product listing pages has taken a hammering. They're all getting a PR of 1, even though our domain authority remains ok (it has dropped too, but not as dramatic).
-
What we're seeing is a lot of yo-yo'ing. This week we had 30 SERP drops and 17 rises, which has been typical for last month. Prior to that we'd see about half of this.
e.g. 'home security cameras' SERPs since mid-Oct has been: 4, 4, 8, 4, 7, 6. This is pretty typical of what I'm seeing. We've not made any real content or site changes in this time.
Traffic wise there has been a 3.5% dip in search over the last few weeks. So not huge.
-
There was an algo update at the end of october that wasnt really reported on. About 3 days before the end of the month.
If it started there, then I dont think that's penguin. That's something else.
I can't really help with that if it did happen within that time frame. I don't have enough data to say what to specifically check so be sure to do the usual onpage audits/speed/links and go from there. If it happened to your subfolder, then I would worry about the whole domain. I would however, check the whole search results for the affected sub+keywords, what changed, where the competitors are, were videos added, are there more "authority" sites showing, were those ranking and linking to me affected and so on.
Good luck!
-
Until and unless someone directly from Google chimes in, it's always guess-work because we don't have access to their many algorithms, let alone the database that shows how an individual site is assessed by them.
In your case, it MAY be a Penguin issue, however if you're seeing a steady decline, that's not likely to be Penguin. Penguin is most often seen as an immediate major drop over a single day or a very short time-period.
On the other hand, I've seen countless sites that have had ongoing declines, and in every case, that's been due to a cascading trigger effect situation.
For example, if a site is weak overall, and then an algorithm update (one of their many algorithms, including but far from limited to Panda, Penguin, Above the Fold, EMD...) might flag a site as "deserves to have ranking drops". Then once that happens, as the full spectrum of their other algorithms then get updated, that "now flagged" site is more vulnerable to those other subsequent algorithms that get refreshed.
If you go back far enough in the Google Analytics timeline for Google organic visits, you can often see where a decline first began and pinpoint it to being "near enough" to a known Google update as that "trigger" point. Yet you can't always because they make hundreds of updates every year, and most are not announced or given a name.
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
-
Community Discussion: What changes are you seeing as a result of Penguin 4.0?
We've been waiting on the latest Penguin rollout so long it would have been appropriate for Google to launch it with a creepy meme titled "I'm baaack." But now that it's here, what changes are you seeing to the websites you monitor or manage? We'd very much enjoy hearing you stories, thoughts and proposed courses of action below in the comments. If you need to get up to speed on Penguin 4.0, Dr. Pete's post, Penguin 4.0: Was it Worth the Wait?, is a great place to start, as is the latest Whiteboard Friday by Rand: Penguin 4.0: How the Real-Time Penguin-in-the-Core-Alg Model Changes SEO. RS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ronell-smith3 -
Penguin and 301 redirects...
Hi, I have several questions about starting a new domain due to Penguin. The site is: http://bajajlaw.com. Quick backstory: This site was hit every time Penguin rolled out. No clean-up was done until October 2015. At that time, I took over the project. My efforts include: (1) Remove'em, (2) manual removal, (3) and the Disavow Tool. The HP went from being at around #50 for the target KW (San Diego criminal defense attorney) to about #25. Never really moved higher than that. However, I redid the content for the internal pages (DV, Theft Crimes, etc.) and they are all ranking fairly well (first page or top of 2nd). In short, the penalty only seems to affect the HP, not the internal pages. Instead of waiting for Penguin to roll-out, client wants to move forward with new domain. My questions are as follow: 1. Can I use the same content for the internal pages and 301 from the old internal pages to the new? 2. Should I 301 from the old to the new domain for the HP, or not? 3. If I do a 301 from an internal page to a new internal page, does that have the same effect of doing a 301 from the old HP to the new HP? I have read various opinions on this topic. I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who has experience doing this sort of thing. Thanks. P.s. I'm inclined to wait for P4 to rollout, but given that nobody seems to know when that might be, it's hard for me to advise client to keep waiting for it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Penguin 3.0 - Very minor drops across the board. Don't think its a penalty, any ideas?
Hey All, I just can't figure this out. My site has been ranking well for years, i've never done anything suspicious with it and since the penguin update, my rankings have dropped across the board but only by about 4 - 8 places each, some terms have went up from nowhere to page 8 etc. I don't think i've been hit with a penalty, so I don't know what the problem is or how to recover from it. Does anybody have any ideas on what could be wrong? Update: Perhaps some sites that were linking to mine have been hit with a penalty? Update 2: I just found myself somehow in some spammy link network for 600 sites that looked identical, I don't know how or why my website is in this! I have disavowed all of these links 5 days ago, no change to rankings. pY80Dzi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Penguin 2.1\. Bad links removed - do I need to wait for next Penguin upgrade to see recovery?
Hi - I have read conflicting advice about this issue - after taking action and removing bad links following a Penguin 2.1 hit, will the site need to wait for the next Penguin upgrade before the link clean-up has any effect? Or will the cleaning of the links be acknowledged and "rewarded" with a ranking improvement before that (assuming all bad links were cleared out)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevieD0 -
What Does Penguin Recover Look Like?
Is a recovery from Penguin immediate once Google recognized that you've fixed the problem or is it a slow and steady recovery? I think we may have fixed our issue which is why we're seeing an immediate spike in traffic from Google organic search results. Our daily traffic was up more than 100% in a single day. Is this a recovery? At which speed have other sites you manage recovered? EoZJDZ2.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | voicesdotcom0 -
Exact Match Domains Post Penguin
I was wondering if it is still worth it to use exact match domains to rank for a desired keyword after the last penguin slap and if so, what would be the best strategy. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | comancsm1 -
Help, really struggling with fixing mistakes post-Penguin
We had previously implemented a strategy of paying for lots of links and focusing on 3 or 4 keywords as our anchors, which used to REALLY work (I know, I know, bad black hat strategy - I have since learned my lesson). These keywords and others have since plummeted up to 100 spots since Panda 3.3 and Penguin. So I'm trying to go in and fix all our mistakes cuz our domain is too valuable to us just to start over from scratch. Yesterday I literally printed a 75 page document of all of our links according to Open Site Explorer. I have been going in and manually changing anchor text wherever I can, and taking down the very egregious links if possible.This has involved calling and emailing webmasters, digging up old accounts and passwords, and otherwise just trying to diversify our anchor text and remove bad links. I've also gone into our site and edited some internal links (also too weighty on certain keywords) and removed other links entirely. My rankings have gone DOWN more today. A lot. WTF does Google want? Is there something I'm doing wrong? Should we be deleted links from all private networks entirely or just trying to vary the anchor text? Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LilyRay0 -
Penguin Rescue! A lead has been hit and I need to save them!
I had a meeting today with a prospective client who has been hit by Penguin. Their previous SEO company has obviously used some questionable techniques which is great for me, bad for the client. Their leads have dropped from 10 per day to 1 or 2. Their analytics shows a drop after the 25th, a back link check shows a lot of low quality links. Domain metrics are pretty good and they are still ranking ok for some keywords. I have 1 month to turn it around for them. How do you wise people think it can be done? First of all I will check the on-site optimisation. I will ensure that the site isn't over optimised. Secondly, do I try and remove the bad links? Or just hit the site with good content and good links to outweigh the bad ones. Also, do you think G is actually dropping rankings for the over optimisation / bad links or are the links are just being discredited rsulting in the drop in rankings. 2 very different things. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpsonGareth0