Reality of Panda 3.9 Refresh
-
I have had a 10 page website(registered in 1999) rank for my top keywords(top 5) for over 4 years. No changes have been made to the website. (Static website).
July 11, 2012, most of the keywords, and all the major keywords were dropped from Google. They remain steady in Bing and Yahoo.
I saw that some people referred to a Panda 3.9 refresh on that day, but also saw that Google(Matt Cutts) denied the refresh.
Given the simplicity of the website and the strong backlinks, which remain, what are other reasons I could see a drastic drop in 1 day.
Any ideas on where to target my search for solving this very serious issue? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
-
Thanks for all the feedback. After some serious review, I am convinced that Google somehow began indexing our HTTPS pages and dropped all our HTTP pages. As this is a .net website with a web.config file, what would you all recommend I do to make the google bot read the http pages instead of the https pages.
Would you add robot.txt file to the web.config file or handle it another way.
Again, thanks for all the assistance.
-
Check WMT for any notices too. Check for any new spammy links pointing to/from the site.
Neg seo has been talked about a lot lately.
-
Nothing "naughty". I have done some guest articles on various blogs related to the industry over the past 4 months but they are all legit unique articles and on sites with a domain authority or 30 or higher so that should not have been the issue. Also, they were not paid articles, they were free articles.
Our chief competitors have been actively promoting theire sites and increasing the sizes of their websites. We have been limited. We also do not do any PPC, but all our top competitors are doing PPC. That should not be an issue, but maybe things are changing. I am not sure on that point.
Thanks for the feedback.
-
I have only been with this company since July 2011, but I believe they were hit by the Penguin update of March 2011. Since then it has been steady. During that update, they lost their local listings but retained there national rankings. Since that time, the rankings have remained in the top 5 for our major keywords.
-
HI,
I guess there are updates happening all of the time with Google algorithms where they're always trying to improve the quality of results.
So my questions to you are:
Are you sure that you've not been doing what google might consider "naughty tactics"?
Have you had anything flagged in your Webmaster Tools account?
How far down the listings dod you drop and how are the competitors ranking. Are there any similarities between your site and the main competitors. IE if they didn't suffer, what are you doing differently?
I know it's not really an answer for you but some food for thought that I hiope helps.
Best of luck
Steve
-
Did any of your rankings dropped during the Penguin update? Panda update?
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
-
Panda, rankings and other non-sense issues
Hello everyone I have a problem here. My website has been hit by Panda several times in the past, the first time back in 2011 (first Panda ever) and then another couple of times since then, and, lastly, the last June 2016 (either Panda or Phantom, not clear yet). In other words, it looks like my website is very prone to "quality" updates by big G: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Still trying to understand how to get rid of Panda related issues once for all after so many years of tweaking and cleaning my website of possible duplicate or thin content (301 redirects, noindexed pages, canonicals, etc), and I have tried everything, believe me. You name it. We recovered several times though, but once in a while, we are still hit by that damn animal. It really looks like we are in the so called "grey" area of Panda, where we are "randomly" hit by it once in a while. Interestingly enough, some of our competitors live joyful lives, at the top of the rankings, without caring at all about Panda and such, and I can't really make a sense of it. Take for example this competitors of ours: http://8notes.com They have a much smaller catalog than ours, worse quality of offered music, thousands of duplicate pages, ads everywhere, and yet... they are able to rank 1st on the 1st page of Google for most of our keywords. And for most, I mean, 99.99% of them. Take for example "violin sheet music", "piano sheet music", "classical sheet music", "free sheet music", etc... they are always first. As I said, they have a much smaller website than ours, with a much smaller offering than ours, their content quality is questionable (not cured by professional musicians, and highly sloppy done content as well as design), and yet they have over 480,000 pages indexed on Google, mostly duplicate pages. They don't care about canonicals to avoid duplicate content, 301s, noindex, robot tags, etc, nor to add text or user reviews to avoid "thin content" penalties... they really don't care about anything of that, and yet, they rank 1st. So... to all the experts out there, my question is: Why's that? What's the sense or the logic beyond that? And please, don't tell me they have a stronger domain authority, linking root domains, etc. because according to the duplicate and thin issues I see on that site, nothing can justify their positions in my opinion and, mostly, I can't find a reason why we instead are so much penalized by Panda and such kind of "quality" updates when they are released, whereas websites like that one (8notes.com) rank 1st making fun of all the mighty Panda all year around. Thoughts???!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
E-Commerce Panda Question
I'm torn. Many of our 'niche' ecommerce products rank well, however I'm concerned that duplicate content is negatively effecting our overall rankings via Panda Algo. Here is an example that can be found through quite a few products on the site. This sub-category page (http://www.ledsupply.com/buckblock-constant-current-led-drivers) in our 'led drivers' --> 'luxdrive drivers' section has three products that are virtually identical with much of the same content on each page, except for their 'output current' - sort of like a shirt selling in different size attributes: S, M, L and XL. I could realistically condense 44 product pages (similar to example above) down to 13 within this sub-category section alone (http://www.ledsupply.com/luxdrive-constant-current-led-drivers). Again, we sell many of these products and rank ok for them, but given the outline for how Panda works I believe this structure could be compromising our overall Panda 'quality score', consequently keeping our traffic from increasing. Has anyone had similar issues and found that its worth the risk to condense product pages by adding attributes? If so, do I make the new pages and just 301 all the old URLs or is there a better way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saultienut0 -
Lol - 3 pages of videos on SERPs
Google: "back to school supplies haul" I thought this was really epic and first time I've ever seen such a results page. No ads, no text results. Anyone else seen this? -First post on new Moz design.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | William.Lau0 -
Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
Hey Mozzers, I'm working with a client who wants to redo their web presence. They have a a main website for the umbrella and then 3 divisions which have their own website as well. My question is: Is it better to have the main site on the main domain and then have the 3 separate sites be subdomains? Or 4 different domains with a linking structure to tie them all together? To my understanding option 1 would include high traffic for 1 domain and option 2 would be building Page Authority by having 4 different sites linking to each other? My guess would be option 2, only if all 4 sites start getting relevant authority to make the links of value. But right out of the gates option 1 might be more beneficial. A little advice/clarification would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Does this make sense to recover from panda?
Hello guys, our website was pandalized on 9/27/2012 and we haven't been able to recover since then. I've fixed as much as possible when it comes to poor content, and we have been getting high quality links consistently for the past 3-4 months. Our blog had some duplicate content issues due to categories, tags, feeds, etc. I solved those problems before the past 2 refreshes without success. I'm considering moving the blog to a subdomain, more than PR, I'm interested in recovering from panda, and let the blog grow on its own. What do you think about that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DaveMri0 -
Mission Possible? You have 3 hours to do Local SEO. Which top 5 sites do you go Social Bookmark, Local Search Engine Submit and Directory List.
Mission Possible? Here is a test. Suppose you had 3 hours (okay 7) to go and submit links, etc, on Social Bookmarking, Local Search Engines and Directories, which top 5 or more of each would you do? (Assuming your on-page is already sweetened). I just got 2 more clients and I need to get started on a few things for each. Thankful for all your advice.............
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Panda/Penguin & Ecommerce Sites in similar niches
Hello, We have a few online stores that are in similar niches. How do we make sure that we don't get penalized for this (Panda/Penguin) We have the sites interlinked, but our newest one is not going to be linked to the others. Also, will rewriting descriptions help if the product is on more than one site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Shall I fix "most Common Errors" for a website that ranked top 3 on Google (difficult KW)?
How can SEOmoz "most Common Errors*" under "Crawl Diagnostics" advice can be right for a good site organic? Site is well ranked top 3 on Google (difficult KW). If I go ahead and fix these errors, I might hurt my SEO , no? like: Too Many On-Page Links 302 (Temporary Redirect) Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters) Missing Meta Description Tag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Elchanan0
