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,
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
-
Yelp (recrawl Google/Bing)
If Google and Bing show an older version of a site's Yelp rating in the search results, what options are there to help ensure Google and Bing recrawl the Yelp page? Additionally, it appears third-party sites such as MapQuest show Yelp ratings and appear in Google search results; is it possible to request MapQuest to recrawl Yelp and then ask Google to recrawl MapQuest? Any advice would be much appreciated!
Industry News | | Mack_1 -
Google penalty removal expert questions
We have searched online for a Google penalty “expert” (individual or company) and have located what appear to be “experts”. Please provide feedback on the following 2 individuals/companies we have found that can help with penalty removal. Have you or one of your clients used either of the “experts” below? What were the results? How many disavows and reconsideration requests did you/they have to make? 1.www.penaltypros.com . To give a quote and to see what your links are they use links from Google Webmaster Tools only. Penaltypros.com disavows first and then removes bad links second. This is opposite of what Google and Seo’s recommend but penaltypros.com claims 100% success using this non-traditional approach. See imgur.com link for screenshot. 2.http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/ To give a quote and to see what your links are they use links from https://ahrefs.com/ only. Please provide any and all feedback on the above 2 “experts” and also post the websites, individual names, company names of those that you consider Google penalty removal “experts” so that we may obtain a quote from them. Lp9F3FI
Industry News | | RetractableAwnings.com1 -
Paid links from directory listing and business listing sites are good or bad according to Penguin 2.1 update?
Hi Friends, Recently on October 4<sup>th</sup>, 2013, a new spam filtering algorithm got live named Penguin 21. / Penguin 5. The update goes after sites that may have purchased paid links. I would like to know is it safe, if we submit website details with links in paid directories, eg: https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/ (yahoo directory) and quality business listing sites provided the categories are related to our website. Our competitor sites having the backlinks from those kind of directories and they are performing (ranking) well in major search engines. May I know how Google treat these kinds of links according to this recent algorithm update?
Industry News | | zco_seo0 -
Any Information on Panda Update #21?
A site we've been working on and doing well with (relatively new) got hit pretty hard on November 4th and 5th. Since then, traffic is down considerably and we're trying to diagnose what specific triggers may have caused such a change.
Industry News | | d50-Media0 -
How good is Guest post after Penguin Update ?
Hello 🙂 , You agree or not but 90% of guest posting is done for Link Building, we have seen several blogs on SEOMoz or more trusted SEO Sites that talk about Guest blogging. Everyone recommends guest posts with good content (Unique ofcourse) , valued content & linking to related websites. I have been doing Guest posting for many of my clients but from last 2 months, we got good success too (That is most of our content was approved) . Our writers did great job writing quality content, authoritative subject, providing do's & don'ts, tips, pros - cons etc. Though I have been trying to link to our direct URL instead of anchor text, or long words or name of our business not our main kws, just to be on safe side from Google. Sites where we posted guest post were minimum home page rank of 2 & seomoz's domain authority 30+ , so we know that our guest posts are not on junk sites or blogs. To be honest we have received around 35 guest blogs in one month (All unique content, never spun) linked on above topics, anchor links like I said above - other than that we have not done too fancy for link building, we paid attention to our social media, brand building, inbound marketing recommended by rand fishkin http://goo.gl/64VB5 & we never participated to buy link, buy guest post, buy any likes on fb etc... Still our ranks are not improved actually our ranks has dragged back, we have been doing SEO from last 4 yrs but we never did black hat, our website content is 10 times better than websites in front of us, our titles are unique and advice to human, but our competitors ahead in ranks talk to engines. Our website is up & running from 1993. That is too old and our service is top class. We used to rank well in most competitive words for yrs but new websites came in and started to outrank us. Now situation is this that - websites ahead of us are brands or microsites. I understand Google favors brands but that doesn't mean we are doing anything against Google. We have been practicing guest blogs from yrs but frequency was less. Now question is - Is Guest post worth, bz it is for link (ofcourse with good content) and Google say don't work for link. This is big dilemma We make good content and we need credit for that and link is credit which everyone wants. After penguin update things has started more worse than before. So modified question is - Is guest post worth after penguin update ? Thank you for taking time to read this & I look forward for ongoing discussion on this & I hope leading industry people will participate here, especially those talks and post about guest blogs. -Sunny.
Industry News | | sunny.popali0 -
Google to Target Overly SEOd Sites
I just watched the video from Barry Schwartz talking about the new Update to come with the Google Algo. Video of his Friday Post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJqSPT2NXdA I have also started reading on Webmasterworld on this topic: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4429947.htm What do you think Google has in the list of changes?
Industry News | | Ben-HPB0 -
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 -
How to achieve the highest global and local relevance in google?
Let's say I have a company that has its main business in Europe for thefollowing languages: English German Portugese French Italian And let's say some other markets (e.g. the Portugese one in south america) is also important. The question now is how should we structure the Domain if we want onlyone top level domain (www.company.com)? a) By using subdomains to target users with Google Webmaster Tools for the relevant country: portugal.company.com/pt (same content) brasil.company.com/pt (same content) germany.company.com/de england.company.com/en etc. or b) by using virtual folders www.company.com/pt www.company.com/de www.company.com/en
Industry News | | imsi
etc. or c) something completely different I do not know about? What do you reckon is best? I appreciate all suggestions!0