ECommerce site being "filtered" by last Panda update, ideas and discussion
-
Hello fellow internet go'ers!
Just as a disclaimer, I have been following a number of discussions, articles, posts, etc. trying to find a solution to this problem, but have yet to get anything conclusive. So I am reaching out to the community for help.
Before I get into the questions I would like to provide some background:
I help a team manage and improve a number of med-large eCommerce websites. Traffic ranges anywhere from 2K - 12K+ (per day) depending on the site. Back in March one of our larger sites was "filtered" from Google's search results. I say "filtered" because we didn't receive any warnings and our domain was/is still listed in the first search position. About 2-3 weeks later another site was "filtered", and then 1-2 weeks after that, a third site.
We have around ten niche sites (in total), about seven of them share an identical code base (about an 80% match). This isn't that uncommon, since we use a CMS platform to manage all of our sites that holds hundreds of thousands of category and product pages. Needless to say, April was definitely a frantic month for us. Many meetings later, we attributed the "filter" to duplicate content that stems from our product data base and written content (shared across all of our sites). We decided we would use rel="canonical" to address the problem. Exactly 30 days from being filtered our first site bounced back (like it was never "filtered"), however, the other two sites remain "under the thumb" of Google.
Now for some questions:
Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content?
Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"?
Why has only one site recovered?
-
Thanks for your responses.
@EGOL - I would agree that merging the sites would be ideal given that they share such a large database. Unfortunately, this isn't an option for our company (at this point-in-time). Acquiring new content for our product pages has been tossed around, but would be a HUGE undertaking, so its on the "back burner" for the moment.
@Ben Fox - We came to the conclusion that it was content because it was the only clear "offender" on the list of potential problems. However, the fact that only 3 of our sites got penalized perplexes me as well. It would have made more sense had all of our sites suffered a penalty (luckily only 3 did). One response I got from another forum was: since google removed enough duplicate content (3 sites in our case) it deemed that the others were "original".
We didn't point canonicals to any one site (like 9 going to 1). We only added the rel=canonical to our manufacturer category pages (a small percentage of pages). Since some of our domains sell products that aren't "niche specific" we told these pages to send preference to their proper niche domain (hope that made sense).
For discussion purposes, here is a response I got from another forum:
Why has only one site recovered?I suspect/assume the other sites will bounce back the same way after their own 30 day penalties expire.>Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content????? maybe removing the first site allowed the scoring penalty applied to the other sites to shrink in size. as each site was removed, the penalty applied to the others correspondingly shrunk. ?????>Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"?No. 30 day is a common penalty.Does anyone agree with these? I've heard of the 30 day penalty before. If this is the case, then a warning from Google would be nice.
-
Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content?
Google can be slow to detect duplicate content and sometimes tolerates it.
Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"?
Only google knows.
Why has only one site recovered?
Only google knows.
Google sees a lot of sites with same content and you say that these are "med-large" sites. If I was google I would say... "these are dupe content, we aren't going to index all of them, our searchers don't want to see ten sites with same stuff".
If these were my sites I would merge all of them into one single site. If the content on that site was unique to me I would probably then put all of my efforts into promotion and informative content for the product lines.
If the content was on other sites that I don't own then my efforts would go mainly into making unique product content and informative content for the product lines.
Google has been squashing duplicate content for years. If you have it and you place links between the sites it is very likely that at least one of your sites will be demoted in google or filtered - probably filtered. They don't want to spend their resources indexing ten duplicate sites. They would rather display unique sites to their searchers.
-
How did you decide that it was content causing the issue if only 3/10 of your sites were affected?
Also when you added the rel=canonical did 9 of your sites point to a primary site and was this the site that recovered?
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
-
Penguin 3.0 Site Dropped after Update
Hi We was hit by the Penguin update a long time ago and we lost a lot of traffic/positions because of this. For a long time we worked really hard to identify all off our links that may have caused us to recieve this penalty. After Months of work we submitted the disavow file and reconsideration request and in June 2014 we recieved confirmation from google in webmaster tools that the manual spam action had been revoked. over time we then started to recieve more traffic and better positions in the serps, however since penguin 3.0 we have dropped again for a range of keywords. many going from page 1 to 2 or page 2 to 3/4 Any ideas what we should do here , any help will be really appriciated as I'm totally confused We havent done any link building at all since the penalty / recovery
Algorithm Updates | | AMG1000 -
Why Google loves MOZ for "Directory Submmission Service" ?
I have just for "directory submission service" in Google.com ( Geo Location USA ). I got two results from moz community for same thread. Does Google don't understand 301 redirect from seomoz.org to moz.com ? What about Domain Clustering ? PFA: SERP Screenshot kn8evtt.png
Algorithm Updates | | SanketPatel0 -
Are Some Websites "White Listed"?
I track several niches that I am not in so I am not to biased with my own, and I noticed one site despite its rather mediocre quality, never moves. I have seen other websites rise and fall in rank, a few with pretty good content. He writes reviews, but very obviously never touched the products he reviews. However I see some other sites with real photos, and good advice for making a decision - they will sit on page two or three. I havent done a lot of research other than the size of the sites, and the links, and they are about equal. Sometimes the ranking site is smaller (its about 90 pages in google). The other sites I have seen have more content on one topic as well, which is interesting google opts for his one page "once over" review over something more in depth and authentic. It got me thinking about whether some sites are white listed by google, as in hand picked to rank despite what else is out there. Is this possible?
Algorithm Updates | | PrivatePartners0 -
Recovered from penguin/panda but which one?
So the good news is that for the first time since April 24th, one of our websites is back in the search results as of around December 12 but I am still unsure as whether it was panda or penguin (or both) that was impacting the site?? Note this was not a manual penalty. I diagnosed it as a penguin issue (drop on April 24th, aggressive on-page optimisation, around 10% of links from spammy directories like addyourfreelinks.com with anchor text built by a questionable agency), but on further advice it was thought that panda was also an issue because it is a hotel microsite so there was duplication with our own brand site and across third party travel sites and there were a number of pages with bare content. I figured it was a good time to clean everything up to address both. Here is a summary of actions taken: submitted disavow file on October 24th with all questionable links including actions taken and comments. Since then I have cleaned up some content so it is less aggressively targeting certain keywords. Amended several third party listings with duplicate content No follow,indexed pages that were directly duplicated with our brand site and over the last month have built a few good quality links. Cleaned up 404's in webmaster tools over the last week I have searched to see if there were any algorithm updates around December 12 but cannot find any mentions. Thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | jay.raman0 -
SEO updates and rank changes
We have been updating page titles and meta descriptions for a client (not changing ANY links and the content we are replacing is "fluff," no major keywords or any relevant information) yet in the past few weeks, rankings have plummeted. I used the SEOMoz grader to check and make sure we have the keywords in there, in the right places for the updated page source info, and we're getting A's yet for those same keywords, the website is nowhere to be found. For example for the phrase "organic t shirts," we get an A for this page: http://greenpromotionalitems.com/organic-t-shirts.htm but when searching organic t shirts, no Green Promotional Items... Ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | laidlawseo0 -
Panda 2.3 features
So, its official that Panda 2.3 is out.. Has anyone found the fine print on what this "version" focused on?
Algorithm Updates | | malachiii0 -
Yet another Panda question
Hi Guys, I'm just looking for confirmation on something..... In the wake of Panda 2.2 one of my pages has plummeted in the rankings whilst other similar pages have seen healthy improvements. Am I correct in thinking that Panda effects individual pages and doesn't tar an entire site with the same brush? Really I'm trying to see if Panda is the reason in the drop on one page or whether it could be something else. The page in question has dropped 130 positions - not just a general fluctuation. Thanks in advance for your responses!!!
Algorithm Updates | | A_Q0 -
Google said that low-quality pages on your site may affect rankings on other parts
One of my sites got hit pretty hard during the latest Google update. It lost about 30-40% of its US traffic and the future does not look bright considering that Google plans a worldwide roll-out. Problem is, my site is a six year old heavy linked, popular Wordpress blog. I do not know why the article believes that it is low quality. The only reason I came up with is the statement that low-quality pages on a site may affect other pages (think it was in the Wired article). If that is so, would you recommend blocking and de-indexing of Wordpress tag, archive and category pages from the Google index? Or would you suggest to wait a bit more before doing something that drastically. Or do you have another idea what I could to do? I invite you to take a look at the site www.ghacks.net
Algorithm Updates | | badabing0