Google traffic drops (October 24th 2014) - Penguin 3.0?
-
Hi All
My client's site http://www.carismaautodesign.com took a bit of a knock around 24th October 2014. Google organic traffic down by ~32%.
I am trying to understand if site has been hit by a Penguin refresh (3.0) - and if so why?
If it was, it would appear to be a false negative as the site and backlink profile is clean.The content is perhaps the only area in question... as it's more of a brochure site, therefore content is relatively thin and promotional rather than in-depth/editorial.
For example, the gallery pages are very similar in structure, with the images and specification text being the only variation, click on any of the vehicle interiors to see what I mean - http://www.carismaautodesign.com/gallery/mercedes/viano/
You will see the specification text is unique per vehicle interior, but not hugely; Then how could it be? The interiors all contain the same elements just a variation in seating, leather colour, stiching, wood finish etc.
Question: Do you think...
a.) This IS NOT a Penguin issue but something else (please ellaborate)
b.) This IS a Penguin issue but a false-negative, so do nothing, this will bounce back with next Penguin refresh
c.) This IS a Penguin issue related to content. Merge all gallery pages into one page per vehicle (i.e. one Mercedes Viano Interior page, with all 19 interior galleries as part of the page - thus building one stronger page with more intro text and simple bulleted specification per gallery)
d.) This IS a Penguin issue related to something else (please ellaborate)Thanks,
-
Reviewing your client's backlink profile, I simply don't think the site has enough inbound links to trigger a Penguin hit. Sites that get hit by Penguin usually have very obvious patterns of link/anchor text manipulation, and I just don't see it. When it comes to Penguin-impacted sites, I usually see tens of thousands of inbound links coming from just a few hundred domains and an overcrowding of money keyword anchor texts.
Looking over the anchor texts, I see very few money keywords (what Penguin typically goes after). I would be very surprised if this was a direct Penguin issue.
Perhaps competitors that were previously held back by Penguin have recovered and are now ranking above you? I find that the Google penalty checker by Fruition.net is very useful for detecting whether a site was positively, negatively or directly impacted by a particular Google update.
-
Searchers need content. Ask for product reviews and get them on page. This will help your content issue. If you add product reviews make sure you use an aggregate app that actually puts the reviews on page so that they can be crawled. This is great unique content.
-
Thanks for your suggestions.
-
Hi Monica
No messages in GWT.
There is a a possibility that when Penguin 3.0 rolled out it gave other sites with better link profiles a boost over your site. A site with a stronger link profile and better content will out rank you even if their DA is lower.
I think this is most likely combined with the Panda 4.1 rollout perhaps targeting the thin gallery pages.
The challenge we have is how to write engaging relevant/semantic content around 19 variations of the same product, when the gallery content is "brochure style" built for users, not search engines.
-
For the competition of the key terms you are trying to rank for, I don't believe you have a strong enough link profile. I also think some great content would improve your rankings.
Penguin 3.0 targeted "link neighborhoods". There is a chance you are suffering for someone else's bad link profile. You can check your linking root domains in Open Site Explorer.
Panda 4.1 is still technically rolling out. You can be hit with Panda effects still, even though the update rolled out 9/25. There are also small algo updates that happen all the time. Do you have any messages in GWT? If you don't then I wouldn't necessarily jump on blaming algo updates for the traffic and rankings loss.
There is a a possibility that when Penguin 3.0 rolled out it gave other sites with better link profiles a boost over your site. A site with a stronger link profile and better content will out rank you even if their DA is lower.
-
Sorry that was my mistake, I was only testing the Gallery Page and only quickly looked over it - sorry about that.
I fully agree with you that links are not the issue as i can't see enough 'spammy' links pointing to your site for Penguin to punish you. But just to completely rule out Penguin, have you done a full back link audit with Webmaster tools?
It does look like it is content related though, Panda was updated around the end of September but this is a roll out rather than an instant hit, it may have taken time for it to take effect
check out the Panguin Tool - This cross references your site traffic with ALL Google updates it could give you a better picture.
If your links are clean good quality and relevant there should be no reason why you would have a Penguin Penalty. Do you have any messages in WMT?
I would concentrate on building the site content though, from what i can see and what you've said it's quite thin and you will definitely see benefits if you build it up.
-
So from what I can see you don't have that many backlinks and the one ones you have are mostly from one website. But with a DA of 42 the inbound links seem relevant and good quality.
Where are you seeing this data?
http://www.carismaautodesign.com has:
178 links from 37 RD's (Moz's Open Site Explorer Data)
282 links from 115 RD's (Ahrefs Data)
406 links from 88 RD's (Majestics Data)With links from some DA 90+ domains include ft.com, telegraph.co.uk, nydailynews.com, autoexpress.co.uk to name but a few.
I don't think links is the issue here, which makes me think content perhaps is, but as far as I can see, there was no content related Google updates (which would affect this site) around the time of the drop?
Thanks,
-
Ok yeah I see.
So from what I can see you don't have that many backlinks and the one ones you have are mostly from one website. But with a DA of 42 the inbound links seem relevant and good quality.
You do need to work on a backlink strategy though as i don't believe you have enough to have a big enough effect to see a boost in rankings. The more good quality links you have the more chance you have of ranking - That's the Penguin side of things.
As for Panda - Each page does seem to have its own unique content, although the layout is the same, this shouldn't have much of a negative effect as long as the content on each page is original.
What I can't see though is keywords.
for example your Mercedes Gallery page (http://www.carismaautodesign.com/gallery/mercedes/) has no content at all. Google can't read Images so this is very thin content. You could have a paragraph at the top talking about what the user might find on the page.
Even the 'News' page is all image based.
My advise would be to get writing content, original relevant good quality content, use your News page as a sort of Blog and use links within that to link to other pages on your site.
Sorry I may have missed a lot of points but i hope this kind of steers you in the right direction
-
Hi there,
Thanks for contributing.
Yes (good point made), I had checked keywords and yes they have all dropped. Some keywords more dramatic than others, see graph for example of "Volkswagen Transporter Conversion" which dropped from #20 down to #37 in google.en-UK and google.en-US.Bing no where near so dramatic and some keywords even increased during this time.
-
You can't really tell if you have a penalty based on traffic alone, before you start jumping to the worst case scenario check your keywords.
If you have a penalty your keywords would have dropped dramatically. But if your keywords are still ranking retentively normal than you might want to explore other options for your traffic loss.
Also Penguin doesn't look for content that's Panda's job, Penguin is more looking for spammy links that aren't relative or natural.
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
-
50% Visibility drop following June 2021 Google Update
Hello everyone,
Algorithm Updates | | yacpro13
We've observed a 50% drop in our Visibility score in the last week. This is our biggest drop ever, which coincides with June Google updates. We're an established ecommerce website located in Canada. This has obviously severely impacted sales. I'm frantically searching for information regarding fixes / implementations to recover asap, but if anybody could point us in the right direction, that would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Google Algo Update
Hi I'm trying to look into how the update in Oct - Nov affected our site. It's positive with us ranking for more keywords, but I wondered if anyone knew what had changed. For example, one of our pages ranked for 291 keywords in October, now it ranks for 406 keywords. We've done nothing to this page in that time. I just want to try and understand what's happening with the algorithm a little more (although I'm sure everyone does :). Does anyone have any insights? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Penguin update
When Google Penguin update will run again. The last time was in October 2013 and I'm still really curious now. Or have they stopped this and this is now continuously just like the panda?
Algorithm Updates | | NECAnGeL0 -
Google Algorithm change this month - theories ?
Hi Moz fans! If you've not had the chance to check out moz cast go check it out it seems Google has been busy and so much so it broke Moz cast. There has been some discussion on seo round table about the changes and something seems to be going on. I wanted to find out how you guys are all finding it have you had a change in rankings? Any theories on what you think Google is up to? Personally I've seen rather a few of my sites go up in the rankings last week or so. As always look forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings on it Moz.
Algorithm Updates | | GPainter3 -
If Google Trends Doubles?
If google shows a search trend doubling in a time frame, does that mean the amount of searches doubled? As in: 2006 was ranked at a 50 on trends and the 100 is 2013 and in 2013 10,000 searches were made, does that mean around 5,000 searches were made in 2006?
Algorithm Updates | | JoshBowers20120 -
How can I check Googles Page Cache ?
Hi I use to have a handy tool in Firefox (Google Toolbar) that was very handy for checking page ranks and what date a page had been cached. For a while with the newer versions of Firefox I cannot seem to locate this useful tool, Can anybody recommend any useful tools for checking the above. Thanks Adam
Algorithm Updates | | AMG1000 -
Lost 50% google traffic in one day - panic?
Hi girls + guys, a site of us were hit by a google update or a google penalty. We have lost 50% google traffic in one day (25th april, 2012). (Total visitors in average per day: 6k, yesterday: 3k) It's a german website, so I think google.de (germany) was updated. Our rankings in google.at (austria) are also affected, but it's not that bad as in google.de. We have not done any specific on page seo activities in the last two months. GWT doesn't have any message for us (no critical errors). After my first analyse I can say this: google has indexed 17k pages (thats fine) we are on 1st place with our domain name the last three days, the google traffic went up (+20%), but yesterday it was 50% below average (so -70%) last week we had a very good day, we had twice the traffic than normal, but this calmed down the following days we have lost number no. 1 places at two high traffic keywords. We had these no 1 rankings for years. We have been outranked by two of our competitors, but they have not done any onpage changes. We have lost a lot of positions at a lot of keywords. But there are also keywords which moved up. We have good content, useres are visiting 5 pages in average. No virus, no hacker (no hidden cloaking page) it's an old domain (2002) Lot of (good) inbound links Lot's of likes, g+. Good twitter activty. So, all in all I think it's more likely a ranking algo change than a penalty (a penalty for what reason?) My specific question(s): Is there any "check list" which could help me to find out the reason for this mess? What is the best strategy to regain the positions? New HTML code? New On page seo? (seomoz grades most of our important pages an A) Any idea would be appreciated! Best wishes,
Algorithm Updates | | GeorgFranz
Georg.1 -
Working in the world of Google Farmer Update
So I know have seen how my websites have taken a nose dive from the google farmer update most likely with traffic significantly hit. Example site is callcatalog.com. What recommendations are there to deal with the new world order? How can we look at optimizing, changing, modifying our process to improve rankings and traffic?
Algorithm Updates | | seo_ploom0