Lost and confused after Penguin!
-
I own an EMD which was hit by google penguin.
I lost my #1 position to Google US SERP and went to #5 for the keyword which applies to the EMD.
What I have tried so far is deleting the exact anchor text links from the footers of my c-block sites.
That did not seem to help because i did not gain any position from that change.
I also altered my meta title, description and keywords because they were spamming a bit. Things did not improved.
My Links w/ Exact Anchor Text is at 5%,
Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text at 3%
The web pages that are above me are to 0% to both categories because they are not showing up with their main page.
What is going on?
The thing that confuses me the most is that i am also targeting for two other markets, Australia and Canada. In Canada I have maintained my #1 and to Australia I lost my first position falling to #2.
I did not receive any message to my webmaster tools account and never made any black hat link building.
Is the EMD fact the problem, but why not for other markets except US?
Penguin has run to other markets(CA, AU) as well becuase i have seen a drop to other keywords and also to my traffic.
Really what do you think?
-
My gut reaction is similar to Stefan's - a #1 to #5 drop may not be Penguin-related. If you saw a clear drop from 4/24-4/25, though, then that's a different matter. Penguin 1.0 did seem to hit all on one day across all countries and TLDs.
If it was Penguin and you made fixes, keep in mind that they may not have any impact until the next data update, so it depends on when those fixes happened. Penguin 1.1 rolled out on 5/25. If it was Penguin, the data still isn't very conclusive - some people are saying it's mostly on-page keyword issue and others that it's link/anchor-based. I do think toning down the exact-match anchor text is a good bet and definitely take care of any blatant on-page keyword stuffing as well.
If Google just turned down the dial on your EMD, so to speak (and maybe the US took a bigger hit just because of competitiveness), there's not a lot you can do, to be brutally honest. It's not a Capital-P penalty and changing your domain probably won't help - they've just adjusted the volume.
-
Hey Reymond,
Thank for the reply.
From my experience on penguin, concerning EMDs, I agree with you on the devaluation of certain links which used to give me the #1 in US, but what about the #1 in Canada?
Tricky situation!
-
Hi,
This could definitely be penguin if your traffic went down after April 24th or after the 1.1 update (don't remember the exact date, but it was about 2 weeks ago). I had a number of sites have a simalar drop of a few positions from 1 to 8 or 9 or some such. Some have come back over the last few weeks others haven't.Based on what you have said, your link profit is fine, so my guess would be that google simply discounted some of the links back to your site. By this I mean that some links that it used to count as good links it no longer counts as good links. That would explain part of the drop.
As for your competition who has a much worse link profile than you beating you, all I can say is I feel you pain. I am also being beaten in one of my big keywords by a page with awful design, spelling and grammar mistakes all over the place and no back links. For now, I would say just be patient. Google is going to be fine tuning things for the next few months - I still see big changes every week in the SERPs in my field. So taking drastic measures now may do more harm than good.
Good luck.
-
Hi Stefan,
Before penguin the EMD was at #1 solid. The other websites that came above after the 24th of April were not even the 1st page of SERP.
That is why I think it is the penguin.
-
Hi,
I don't think it's because of the penguin you went from #1 to #5. From what I understand a penguin hit is much worse.
Could just be that Google doesn't give as much value to an exact match domain or it could be just natural fluctuations? I know our keywords move up and down a few places every week.
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
-
Google panda, penguin or Patience needed?
Dear friends, On 3rd of May, i suffered a Manual google unnatural outbound link penalty. I recovered from the said penalty on 27th of June. However, i have noticed that my traffic has been dropping since 23rd April. I am confused where to target my work. Should i work on thin content and is it an algorithmic Panda problem (but my keywords are still ranking good) or is it a Penguin problem (I had 6 domains with payday loans backlinks and i have dosavowed 32 backlinks recently) What should be my plan of action here and what would you recommend? An image is attached herewith for your reference, PHd8BzX.png
Algorithm Updates | | marketing911 -
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?
Algorithm Updates | | seowoody
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,0 -
Penguin hit | Immediate?
Last year we fell off google rankings fairly quickly (mid-2013), out of the blue. We thought it was Penguin; but after looking at Analytic data of organic google visits; there seems to be no drastic loss of traffic at any time. Our site's loss of traffic is a gradual decline, not immediately noticeable, as in this video (~33:00 minutes in ). If there is no drop in organic google traffic that's noticeable, can I safely assume our drop in rankings wasn't due to an algorithm update?
Algorithm Updates | | godreamvacations0 -
Did we just have a rolling Penguin update?
I just had a page/keyword that had an algorithmic penalty jump in rank significantly. Once was ranked 3, ranked 80+ since October 2012, overnight it jumped to 31.
Algorithm Updates | | EugeneF0 -
My Site PR lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic !
My Site PR5 lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic ! What might be the problem ? Nov 29-2012 my site was hacked very badly and google Blacklisted me for the first time and if you see now " it says, Past 90 days nearly 19 times my site was acted as medium to spread virus" Even thought we checked our FTP, Cpanel or Home Directory - Everything seems good. My domain which was hosted - has other domains in the same network and some are porn - those sites are injecting malicious code ! May be that's the reason or please give me some idea how to improve it !
Algorithm Updates | | Esaky0 -
How does Google treat anchor tags on badges after penguin update?
We have a website builder that creates sites in sub-domains (i.e. yoursite.breezi.com) on every site we have included a badge that has anchor text and an image. My question is given the fact that we will include this on many if not most of the sites created inside our builder how will google treat backlinks with the same anchor tag/text from non relevant sites after the penguin update? I am concerned about the backlinks from non-theme related sites and it's SEO implications. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | breezi0 -
Food for thought: The Penguin Catch-22
I've been reading about and helping a lot of people who were hit by the Penguin update over the last couple of days, and the update seems to be accomplishing what Google intended it to accomplish... it's scaring people straight. I've picked up two new clients this week who now only want to practice "Good SEO" and "Do it the right way." This is a good thing for me and for the quality of the net, don't get me wrong. It does make me a little nervous though that the SEO industry is going to be tarnished a bit. Google is making a pretty clear statement with Penguin, which I think boils down to "Don't do anything other than create good content, provide accurate descriptions, and establish good connections to SEO your site... or beware ." (other than technical stuff - 301/ canonical / crawler management / etc). So riddle me this Batman... As a proud Journeyman, how is the followed backlink on my SEOMoz profile page going to appear to Google? This is an SEO site with SEO content and SEO tools and SEO in the URL. The site listed below the first followed URL on my profile is an SEO site that's in development. So there's a link to my site and every bit of context around it screams SEO. But... it is a very nice link indeed, I really do like it, and this is a white-hat kind of place. Do you think Google will start penalizing sites with inbound links from pages that are related to SEO, even if the page promotes respectable tactics? If so, I'll be having nightmares about a very round Danny DeVito with a pointy nose and creepy hands chasing me through the sewers for weeks to come...
Algorithm Updates | | Anthony_NorthSEO1 -
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