Panda'd - and I think I know how to fix it...
-
Hi,
I have a non-core site that seems to have been affected by a Panda refresh in late December http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change#2012
Anyway, I couldn't figure out for the longest time why this site, which is full of high-quality, expert-level content would get dinged -- i made several moves to try and eliminate duplicate content -- even though I couldn't find evidence of the duplicate content, but it's a wordpress site so there's lots of opportunities to accidentally introduce it through archives, tags and whatnot.
The classic SEO mistake I was making was I was forgetting about a type of post we were doing to facilitate one of our email campaigns. On most, sites there's always something you aren't optimizing, and that's the stuff that can really create unintended issues in google, because the decisions made on those pieces, is often more operational toward the other campaigns, than strategic to search.
these posts, are thin little articles, written by humans, but the text is actually submitted to another external site, published there and then recreated as content that the email campaign links to. These posts are segregated from the normal feed on the wordpress site, and the last time I had reviewed this content, we were not using a method for creating that involved publishing it to facebook first.
But, OK, so I'm going to stop indexing this content, that's a given. I believe that is the Panda issue -- I could be wrong, but it makes sense, since otherwise the site is maybe the least likely site to be affected by Panda that I've ever been involved with.
Do I do anything else, after fixing a Panda issue? Is there a reconsideration request for this or something. Should I send a singing telegram to Cutts?
I researched a few articles, and there wasn't much on what to do after you fixed it, but to wait. Just wondering if anyone else who fixed a Panda thang, utilized any communication channel to let google know. thanks!
-
I would be interested to hear of the sites that have resolved the problem with Panda. I can hardly find any examples of Panda recovery examples.
-
Previously you would wait until the next Panda refresh to see if your website was unflagged from the algo penalty. A few months ago, they made Panda a rolling algorithm so you should see whether your site is fixed after its next crawl/reindex.
No need for a reconsideration request but a singing telegram would probably get Cutt's attention if your site doesn't rebound in a week or so
Cheers, Oleg
-
Well, skipping ahead to the "what to do now?" question, I'd say you are correct in that there is nothing to do but wait. If it was a manual penalty, you would have a notice in your Webmaster Tools indicating it as such.
If it is algorithmic (and it sure sounds like it is from what you've described) then all you can do is wait. This process can take anywhere from a week to 2 months and seems to be a bit of a crap shoot. I will say, from my experience I've seen these types of fixes get resolved in more the 2-3 week range but have heard of it taking longer. A singing telegram might be nice but I think Matt would most likely just cross his arms and give off a simple fake smile, thank them and close the door.
This is oddly symbolic to the way the Google Webspam Team punks us SEO guys on the reg.
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
-
Is it OK that the root didn't have any internal links?
Hi guys; In a website with more than 20,000 indexed pages, Is it normally that homepage (root) didn't have any internal links, while other important pages have enough internal links? Consider that in a top menu in header of all pages, I added homepage link, so the home page link repeated on all indexed pages, but google didn't count it and the website technology is angular js thank you for helping me
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cafegardesh0 -
Do you know if there is a tool that can tell you if a url have backlink?
Hi, Do you know if there is a tool that I can check backlinks for thousands of URLs Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut0 -
Why isn't Google indexing this site?
Hello, Moz Community My client's site hasn't been indexed by Google, although it was launched a couple of months ago. I've ran down the check points in this article https://moz.com/ugc/8-reasons-why-your-site-might-not-get-indexed without finding a reason why. Any sharp SEO-eyes out there who can spot this quickly? The url is: http://www.oldermann.no/ Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
INEVO, digital agency0 -
Soft 404s for unpublished & 301'd content
Hi, One site I work with unpublished a lot of thin content. Great idea, right? These unpublished pages were then 301'd up to the main category page that they previously existed in. Now Google Webmaster Tools calls them out as soft 404 errors. This seems unexpected since the pages were 301'd. Here is my question; Is this a serious problem that may affect the site's overall organic results and if so what should I do about it? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Brand sections performing badly in SERP's but all SEO tools think we are great
I have had this problem for some time now and I've asked many many experts. Search for Falke in Google.co.uk and this is what you get: http://www.sockshop.co.uk/by_brand/falke/ 3rd Our competitor
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpbarber
http://www.mytights.com/gb/brand/falke.html 4th Our competitor http://www.uktights.com/section/73/falke 104th this is us ????? 9th for Falke tights with same section not our falke tights section? All sites seem to link to their brand sections in the same way with links in the header and breadcrumbs, Opensite exporler only shows 2 or 3 internal links for our compertitors, 1600+ from us?
Many of our brand sections rank badly Pretty Polly and Charnos brands rank page 2 or 3 with a brand subsection with no links to them, main section dosn't rank? Great example is Kunert, a German brand no UK competition our section has been live for 8 years, the best we can do is 71st Google UK, 1st on Bing (as we should be). I'm working on adding some quality links, but our comtetitors have a few low quality or no external links, only slightly better domain authority but rank 100+ positions better than us on some brands. This to me would suggest there is something onpage / internal linking I'm doing wrong, but all tools say "well done, grade A" take a holiday. Keyword denisty is similar to our competiors and I've tried reducing the number of products on the page. All pages really ranked well pre Penguin, and Bing still likes them. This is driving me nuts and costing us money Cheers Jonathan
www.uktights.com1 -
How to fix issues from 301s
Case: We are currently in the middle of a site migration from .asp to .net and Endeca PageBuilder, and from a homebrewed search provider to Endeca Search. We have migrated most of our primary landing pages and our entire e-commerce site to the new platforms. During the transition approximately 100 of our primary landing pages were inadvertently 302ed to the new version. Once this was caught they were immediately changed to 301s and submitted to the Google’s index through webmaster tools. We initially saw increases in visits to the new pages, but currently (approximately 3 weeks after the change from 301 to 302) are experiencing a significant decline in visits. Issue: My assumption is many of the internal links (from pages which are now 301ed as well) to these primary landing pages are still pointing to the old version of the primary landing page in Google’s cache, and thus have not passed the importance and internal juice to the new versions. There are no navigational links or entry points to the old supporting pages left, and I believe this is what is driving the decline. Proposed resolution: I intend to create a series of HTML sitemaps of the old version (.asp) of all pages which have recently been 301ed. I will then submit these pages to Google’s index (not as sitemaps, just normal pages) with the selection to index all linked pages. My intention is to force Google to pick up all of the 301s, thus enforcing the authority channels we have set up. Question 1: Is the assumption that the decline could be because of missed authority signals reasonable? Question 2: Could the proposed solution be harmful? Question 3: Will the proposed solution be adequate to resolve the issue? Any help would be sincerely appreciated. Thank you in advance, David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FireMountainGems0 -
I don't get it... A Grade, etc
I have an A grade for a specific keyword, my competitors ranked above me have poor grades.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerwp
My "Root Domains Linking to the Page" is higher than competitors ranked above me.
Yet I'm ranked 7th on google.
Even worse the 3rd place ranked URL has very poor page authority and linking. What is giving these poor sites such great rankings? Jxluy8Z.png0 -
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