Google Panda 2.5 Update?
-
On Sunday 18th Sept I noticed a huge drop in our rankings for keywords that we were doing extremely well. Majority of the keyword SERP positions for our main targetted keywords were #1 and #2. These have all drop the bottom part of first page.
Other new keywords we were targetting had climbed very well (some hovering just below top 10 and some in top 10 of Google UK SERP. These have all completely dropped off.
Although analysing the site thouroughly (both on-page and link profile) it doesnt appear to have any issue significant enough to cause a penalty.
From Monday 20th Sept (everybody back to work) the threads here http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=5760 and http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4364389.htm seem to be buzzing over unexpected SERP drops and increases.
By that I assume Panda 2.5 or at least some form of update taken/taking place? If anybody know of the reent heavy fluctuations which seem to have started in the weeken or have experienced unexpected positions increaes/drops, I would be very interested to hear/read from you.
Cheers,
Mo Raja
-
Mo said: "A neglected website of mine with lots of (not so great) content rocketted onto top of second page from absolutely nowhere. Other sites with good link profiles seem to have dropped. "
I've seen the same thing. Two sites in the same niche - one main commerce site and one supporting information/community site. The latter has been largely neglected over the last 18 months. Few updates, no link building.
The former is constantly updated with good, substantial content, is supported by social media activity and has good new links built constantly. It is a strong brand in its niche. The info site, on the other hand, is not strongly branded.
The weak, neglected site is now outperforming the main commerce set for our trophy keywords and for several other volume, high conversion phrases. Some significant drops for the commerce site.
For us the change happened on the confirmed Panda 2.5 day at the end of the month.
-
Noticed more and more position shifts the week and also reading similar reports from others. This is for Google UK by the way, not google.com.
A neglected website of mine with lots of (not so great) content rocketted onto top of second page from absolutely nowhere. Other sites with good link profiles seem to have dropped. Whether it's Panda or not, something 'content' related seemed to have happened (or happening) in Google UK.
-
Barry Schwartz wrote about this yesterday on Search Engine Roundtable at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-25-14051.html. Some people had seen changes and he contacted Google, and they said "There was no update in the past couple days. The most recent update was in August, when we rolled out the algorithm change internationally to most languages."
So, you're not alone in seeing changes, but it's not an algo change according to Google.
-
Thanks for the responses so far. I'm pretty sure there is some sort of an update but as it was only just this weekend there may be more and more noises being made as more people notice huge shift in SERP ranks. Here's some interested threads where people are noticing shifts http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4364389.htm and http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=5760.
@Aaron, nothing was changed on-page (apart from a few new pages being added). No low quality sites linking to it (at least no new low quality links obtained for around 6 months). I genarally have a habbit of thouroughly scrutinising each potential link partner checking even historical on-page and off-page data. Link building strategy in general was going really well and as mentioned, we were #1 for some important keywords. Other new 'target ' keywords were climbing pretty well and many were hovering just below first page.
Our main competitors have benefitted from this but have noticed some new faces on Google UK SERP since the weekend. The new sites now outranking us are more niche (for example www.keyword.co.uk rather than www.example.co.uk/keyword) but have a more spammy looking link profile made up of blog comments, spinned articles etc. Our off page is pretty strong as the landing pages have 60%+ page authority according to OSE with fairly high unique root domain links.
Everything has been checked in our end including on-page, off-page and GWT.
-
I'm sure what Robert meant to say is that it would depend on the environmental changes on your site as well as of the sites that are now beating you?
Have they initiated a linking program so that they have higher Authority? Did they change their on-page strategies? Has your page been mistakenly linked to by a bunch of low quality sites?
It is also possible that Google did tweak their algo, even if it wasn't a "Panda" tweak. Google themselves admit to changing the algo up to once a day.
If everything has stayed the same on your page as well as competitors, then it was probably a Google update...
-
I checked out your threads and a few of the sites that were wondering about Panda issues and just do not see it as a Panda issue. (If Google announces something today please disregard
I looked at several where they mention their sites and could see how they could fall as they were not even paying attention to the basics of on page optimization and links were not in the least associated with content. So, I think those type sites tend toward what I have just discovered is Pandamonium: A group hysteria around what Google is doing that helps to evade what we, as SEO professionals, are not.....
Sorry,
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 Analytics (Not Provided) Count will Increase 100% by Oct 2014 ? - Your Advice ?
What will you Do if you cannnot find your Top Keyword in Google Analytics "not provided"
Industry News | | Esaky
Check here for more details: http://www.notprovidedcount.com/0 -
Google Trusted Stores
Hello, So we sell millions of dollars a month in merchandise - most of that comes from eBay transactions. We do have a script that posts to eBay and we do download our transactions from eBay and process the orders from our admin. Now I feel we will do a lot better in the SERPs if we have the trusted stores quality signal. However; it comes down to this. The conversion pixel. Since the don't pay through the site - do you think we can get away of sending a email to a second conversion page for eBay transactions? Have any of you noticed a boost in SERPs once you were approved with the Trusted Stores? Any advise?
Industry News | | joseph.chambers0 -
Penguin 2.0 Update - Just Hit - Google Messes up again, can anyone on SEOMOZ please tell me why or how some of these websites are ranking?
I am getting a bit tired now writing all of this so please excuse grammar and spelling mistakes, I wanted to post this up quickly tonight so I could possibly get some feedback by morning. So I feel I figured out some of the new update that just hit and I am sure the update will continue to keep coming and rankings will most likely change for a while, but I do have a few questions in the mean time if they stay. Please look below, why would some of those sites be ranking? Some sites utilize no onpage SEO, some no backlinks, one of the sites is a single page site and every page is a broken link even the contact us page and it's rank 1..... I am not 100% sure that Google got this one right. I see many instances below where other sites are much higher quality and have more authority. It's as if Google took terrible sites and said here is a site for you, now deal with it and I hope it works out at the top. I do see several sites that belong on the first page, but I see others that are very questionable. This is how the following is written below. Before the url is the anchor text density % for the site. This indicates the percentage of the amount of times the anchor text was backlined versus other anchor texts they used. Issues with the sites. Most of these sites don't utilize onpage SEO and it's clearly not a factor for onpage density purposes, there is a site with 37% keyword density on it. Some sites even have broken links. Please note: I already know that there is a lot of data that is analyzed to determine rankings more than this, but PA/DA is suppose to be a major factor according to everyone that believes in SEOMOZ.org. So I am taking in account for many of those factors being calculated due to this. These are just some random keywords I picked, because I know you need to analyze other SEO firms after and update to figure out what lasted and what didn't. All of my sites lasted due to ethical tactics, but I had some rankings move down and others go up, very odd. Keyword Analyzed: CHEAP SEO Not Knowng http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585 92-DA 75-PA - A lot of content 4715 words on the page including comments. not known http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-cheap-seo-or-link-building/45932/ 87DA 63 PA Words on page 3673 Not known www.cheap-seo-solutions.com 26 DA -- 38 PA 1112 words on page 9.52% www.cheapseocompany.com 34 DA ---- 41 PA 10 + anchor texts but 623 words on page 10.26% seocheap.net 35 DA --- 45 PA 10 + anchor text 855 words on the page I am not 100% sure why this is ranking lol, the services page isn't even working it errors out. The onpage SEO is sloppy and the writing looks forced. Why is this even ranking? The site also looks low quality. The density is higher than SEOMOZ even and it has less words. In this case DA + words carried this site up, not the anchor ratio being low. 6.17% http://www.cheapseo-services.com cheap seo Page Authority DA 28 -- PA 38 276 Words No onpage, 35 duplicate pages, free template, etc.. etc.. 10% www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-seo-cheap DA 94 --- PA 56 only 5 anchor texts used on this page. 8651 Words I am willing to bet if you diversified this with about 5 more anchor texts this could be number 1 easy. This only has 5 total diverse anchor text backlinks for this page. Keyword Analyzed: Affordable SEO Services Rank 1 47% www.affordableseoservicesx.com/ 24DA PA36 New site It still has broken links all over the page The Contact us page doesn't even work lol. Great going Google on ranking such a high quality 1 page website. 471 words How is this site ranking? How could Google even rank this site? Rank 2 The Term isn't mentioned at all accept in title and header not known mbseoservice.com/ da 20 pa 32 PR 0 Just has affordable seo services in title anchor Possible New Site 627 words Rank 4 12.77% affordableseoservices.net 22 DA 35 DA - Proof Exact match domains still work great with high diversity rates, low word amounts, bad DA, etc..... 348 words Rank 5 4.24% www.howardsemgroup.com DA 39 PA 49 893 words. Rank 6 2.49% www.i4.net/ 59 DA and 66 PA 588 words Rank 7 4.71% www.bluefrogseosolutions.com/ DA 31 PA 42 527 Words This site looks like it was created in 1998 and never updated. Low quality site IMO Rank 8 Not Known www.mainstreethost.com/ 76 DA 81 PA possible co occurrence added in with main domain name /url 281 Words not 1 exact anchor text match Rank 10 2.7% bestcheapseoservices.com/ 18 DA 29PA This is just a blog site, come on Google... 4379 Words
Industry News | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
Is Google Making Life Harder For Aggregators?
Theres been a bunch of updates recently which have hurt aggregators: Reducing the number of search results to 7 for branded search queries The DMCA update which penalises those with trademark related takedown requests against them. At least 2 'domain diversity' updates, the most recent last week, which seeks to reduce the ability of sites to dominate SERPS e.g. a site which may have 2 search results on page 1 now may have 1. Plus Its commonly believed that Google favours big brands over smaller brands e.g. Marriott over examplehotelaggregator.com. Is this a deliberate ploy against aggregators in favour of brands i.e. does Google believe a brand site is a better search result than an aggregator? A brand site returned above an aggregator for a branded term may be seen by Google as a better fit, a better search result that should be higher. But is that true? Consumers like to see unbiased reviews and lowest prices and that isnt always available at the brand site. Thoughts please.
Industry News | | AndyMacLean0 -
Google driving me Nuts - How do you combine 2 accounts?
I know this must be driving a lot of other people mad as I see loads of people who now have 2 registered accounts at google plus due to their seemingly terrible ability to merge or connect accounts. We have a work email address set up through google, then I have a personal Gmail address. In Google Plus now I have 2 profiles - even though I have not signed up to google plus with my work email, I cannot add this email to my Google + account set up on personal email as it just tells me to log into that account taking me to a page to set up a profile for that account. Has anyone managed to solve this problem - it is happening to everyone in the company, driving us all nuts and our IT guys have no idea how to solve it. Were trying to use G+ for the purposes of SEO & Marketing, but if they make it this cumbersome for people to use, then they are going to die a quick death - after a few weeks of use and noticing the huge number of dead accounts, only live accounts being SEO/Internet Marketing related, and huge number of duplicate accounts, I think their user figures are hugely suspect! Rant over - anyone know how to merge accounts?
Industry News | | James770 -
Hello, Actually I have bit of doubt. If I create Google plus business page. Will it helpful or effects for my website ranking?
If I create Google plus business page. Will it helpful or effects for my website ranking?
Industry News | | jaybinary0 -
How to remove a Google algorithmic penalty
My site has a Google penalty. I seem to be stuck in the 64th position for a Google search for my sites name. All my keywords that I used to rank well for are now well above the 60th search place in Google. I have resolved the issue I recieved the penalty for and I have asked Google for reconsideration. That has been about 3 months ago. The penalty is still firmly in place. I was wondering if anyone else has had a Google algorithmic penalty removed and if so how did they accomplish this?
Industry News | | tadden0