Google Panda 4.0 update - Good for Small businesses?
-
Hi guys,
We recently did a post on Google Panda 4.0 release. Check this here.
Have you seen any notable changes in rankings for your website? Do you think that this update will benefit small businesses/websites?
Looking forward to your comments.
-
One of our sites had issues previously, bad links. We went through the disavow procedure months ago, but no change in rank until yesterday - up about 28 spots, broke the #50 barrier, all since the update.
-
Yeah, I always thought it was funny when Google's snippet tester would show it was clearly working, and then you see the link on a SERP, and guess what? No snippet, no authorship lol.
Best of luck, looks like things are stabilizing a bit for you.
-
Have you seen this? Ouch. http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2014/05/21/panda-update-4-0-winners-and-losers-google-usa/
-
Oh yes - the site i mentioned that had recovered massively is also now displaying the product and review schema, that wasn't previously displaying - even though rich snippets testing said it was all fine. I hadn't considered that the two could be linked. Duh, thanks.
-
Thanks for your input guys. We have noticed in many communities that most of webmasters/SEOs have seen improvements in their rankings so far from the update.
eBay has seen drop in rankings. I wonder if this has something to do with their study last year showing that paid search don't work for brand terms :|. haha
-
After looking hard at rankings after every algo update, we always see strange results while Google is still "rolling it out". I wouldn't take much to heart while they get the algo in place. It would be better to let things stablilze, then go back and see what rankings changed. I think the week of the update is the worst time to analyze what is going on.
From Matt Cutts blog:
https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985"Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today." Rolling out, starting today are the things that stand out to me from that statement, meaning "its not done yet" lol
I will say that we have seen our rankings improve, with multiple links now showing on the front page for our main keywords. Whereas authorship was not displaying, it now is, combined with our schema reviews.
-
We've seen one of our sites jump from low 40's to 11 overnight after months of being low.
We're UK based as well, more a directory style site then e-commerce.
-
Great article, and very much on time. Thanks for sharing. I have checked some of our sites and at the moment I cannot see any changes or major drops. We seem to be doing it right so far
It would be good to review the traffic in a week. Please get in touch with us on @<a class="view_profile profile_link js-avatar_tip ss_tip tip_left" data-tip="View 's Profile" data-sstip_class="twt_avatar_tip" data-screen-name="FingoMarketing">FingoMarketing </a>
-
We're in the UK and 2 of our ecommerce sites that had been suffering have seen improvements this morning. One of them particularly has improved in rankings massively for many, many queries.
Also noticed that some queries are dropping forum threads as results.
-
Not so far, no.
In fact, from our early analysis, small biz is hurting. A search for "Melbourne pizza" shows 4-5 news articles and only the local block of businesses.
Other searches show more directories than ever and a lot more gumtree/craigslist.
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
-
I have followed all the steps in google speed ranking on how to increase my website http://briefwatch.com/ speed but no good result
My website http://briefwatch.com/ has a very low-speed score on google page speed and I followed all the steps given to me still my website speed doesn't increase
Local Website Optimization | | Briefwatch0 -
Should Multi Location Businesses "Local Content Silo" Their Services Pages?
I manage a site for a medical practice that has two locations. We already have a location page for each office location and we have the NAP for both locations in the footer of every page. I'm considering making a change to the structure of the site to help it rank better for individual services at each of the two locations, which I think will help pages rank in their specific locales by having the city name in the URL. However, I'm concerned about diluting the domain authority that gets passed to the pages by moving them deeper in the site's structure. For instance, the services URLs are currently structured like this: www.domain.com/services/teeth-whitening (where the service is offered in each of the two locations) Would it make sense to move to a structure more like www.domain.com/city1name/teeth-whitening www.domain.com/city2name/teeth-whitening Does anyone have insight from dealing with multi-location brands on the best way to go about this?
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency1 -
How does Google read multiple Geo Shape Schema Mark Up?
Hi Guys, I posted a question recently about "Can I have multiple areaServed mark up on one domain?" and the responses I got was no. My client work predominantly in the South East of England in specific towns, so I wanted to be able to list all the areas they service. However, after being told no, I went ahead anyway and put in multiple areaServed markup on the page to see if this generates any errors and it isn't when I run it through the Structured Data Testing Tool. I don't get any errors by doing this, so hurray! But... What I want to understand (which I can't find the answer anywhere), is if this is okay, and how will Google read my markup? Will Google see that we are in multiple areas across the SE of England and push my content up before other sites, or is this just going to confused Google? By putting in all these areas into the website as multiple locations, will Google identify that person X in area Y fits the areaServed mark up I've added and push my content to them? Overall... has anyone else used multiple areaServed markup and can validate that this works? hHpEyQf
Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
How accurate are google keyword estimates for local search volume?
We've all used the Google Adwords Keywords Tool, and if you're like me you use it to analyze data for a particular region. Does anyone know how accurate this data is? For example, I'd like to know how often people in Savannah, Georgia search for the word "forklift". I figure that Google can give me two kinds of data when I ask for how many people in Savannah search for "forklift". They might actually give me rough data for how many people in the region actually searched for the term "forklift" over the last 12 months, then divide by 12 to give me a monthly average. Or they might use data on a much broader region and then adjust for Savannah's population size. In other words, they might say, in the US people searched for "forklift" and average of 1,000,000 times a month. The US has a population of 300,000,000. Savannah has a population of about 250,000. 250,000 / 300,000,000 is 0.00083. 1,000,000 times 0.00083 is 208. So, "forklift" is searched in Savannah an average of 208 times. 1. is obviously much more accurate. I suspect that 2. is the model that Google is actually using. Does anyone know with reasonable certainty which it is? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | aj613
Adam0 -
Google My Business
I have a question about Google my Business. Currently I have a business that's been verified. I would like to add another business with the same address. The businesses are different (name, website, phone number) but the primary address is the same. Is this something that can be done? Thanks for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
Pete0 -
Multi Location business - Should I 301 redirect duplicate location pages or alternatively No Follow tag them ?
Hello All, I have a eCommerce site and we operate out of mulitple locations. We currently have individual location pages for these locations against each of our many categories. However on the flip slide , this create alot of duplicate content. All of our location pages whether unique or duplicated have a unique title Tag, H1, H2 tag , NAP and they all bring in the City Name . The content on the duplicated content also brings in the City name as well. We have been going through our categories and writing unique content for our most popular locations to help rank on local search. Currently I've been setting up 301 redirects for the locations in the categories with the duplicated content pointing back to the category page. I am wondering whether the increase in number of 301's will do more harm than having many duplicate location pages ?.. I am sure my site is affected by the panda algorithm penalty(on the duplicated content issues) as a couple of years ago , this didn't matter and we ranked top 3 for pretty much for every location but now we are ranking between 8 - 20th depending on keyword. An Alternative I thought, may be to instead of 301 those locations pages with duplicate content, is to put No Follow tags on them instead ?... What do you think ?. It's not economically viable to write unique content for every location on every category and these would not only take years but would cost us far to much money. Our Site is currently approx 10,000 pages Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated ? thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Updated site with new Url Structure - What Should I expect to happen ?. Also it's showing PR 1 for my urls on Opensite explorer
Hi All, We updated our website with a new url structure. Apart from the root domain , everyother page is showing up in opensite explorer with a page rank 1. Although we only went live with this yesterday, I would have thought that the 301's etc from the old urls would be coming through and the PR would show ?.. I am not familiar what to expect or what alarms bells I need to watch out for when doing this type of thing although I would probably expect a small drop in traffic ?..I don;t know what the norm is though so Any advice greatly appreciated? thanks PEte
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120