Was I hit by panda or penguin?
-
My site, graciousbridal.com was hit pretty hard by google at the end of April. I actually noticed our traffic decreasing around February, then towards the end of April, it got really bad. Our sales this may were half of what they were in may 2011. We have never done any black or gray hat seo, wouldn't even know how to. I know in the past we did blog commenting, but changed up our keywords so it wasn't all the same, maybe we didn't change it enough?? We have another very similar site that I'm now wondering if we were penalized because they are too similar. We always have changed up the copy, but they have most of the same products. This second site barely gets traffic or sales and has about half of the items graciousbridal does. But, I'm wondering now if it's to similar and that is why we were penalized. I can't figure out what we did wrong to have this big of a drop. I really need help with this as this is supposed to be our busiest season of the year. Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated..
-
Hi James, Thanks for responding. We hired an SEO person to help us at the beginning of last year, that ended up not working out. I know she was working on link building, and it seems like she must have left comments on irrelevant blogs.. What do you recommend in this situation, focus time on getting high quality links or trying to get the bad ones removed? And is blog commenting still okay to do on blogs that are relevant to our industry, or does google see that as spammy? Thanks! Audrey
-
I had a quick look over your link profile, I feel you have been hit by Penguin.
I notice you have been doing some ok link building in terms of using varied anchor text in your link profile,
But I also notice you have been targeting some lower quality directories for your dedicated page "<a class="clickable title link-pivot expanded" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">personalized wedding favors"</a>
For example I notive you have a link on this directorie: coloradosph.org
http://coloradosph.org/index.php?s=A&c=363&p=17
Google has totally de indexed the URL for this low quality directory, If you take a similar sample accross more of these directories I see more like this.
Also in regards to your "Blog Comments" I notice some poor quality links from this area example:
this looks like it is a blog comment on a link network [comment made 28th Feb 2011), I mean their are 100s of other spammy comments this isn't really going to do any thing apart from have a negative impact on your SEO.
http://mommies.genuineinteractive.com/blog/post/Connecting-with-Alpha-Moms.aspx
To future proof your strategy you need to target higher quality link building strategies and do not let the lower quality stuff work.
Google has been very harsh after the last update, work done by agency's 5 years ago can get hit I have seen it over and over, from my experience "Quality" will be the winner in the end
-
Penguin was released on April 24th 2012. If you GA show a decrease on that date, then it's Penguin.
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
-
Panda...Should I consolidate...Like this...
I'm torn. Many of our 'niche' ecommerce products rank ok, however I'm concerned that duplicate content is negatively effecting our overall rankings via Panda Algo. Here is an example that can be found through quite a few products on the site. This sub-category page (http://www.ledsupply.com/buckblock-constant-current-led-drivers) in our 'led drivers' --> 'luxdrive drivers' section has three products that are virtually identical with much of the same content on each page, except for their 'output current' - sort of like a shirt selling in different size attributes: S, M, L and XL. I could realistically condense 44 product pages (similar to example above) down to 13 within this sub-category section alone (http://www.ledsupply.com/luxdrive-constant-current-led-drivers). Again, we sell many of these products and rank ok for them, but given the outline for how Panda works I believe this structure could be compromising our overall Panda 'quality score', consequently keeping our traffic from increasing. Has anyone had similar issues and found that its worth the risk to condense product pages by adding attributes? If so, do I make the new pages and just 301 all the old URLs or is there a better way?
Algorithm Updates | | saultienut0 -
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 -
Do we take a SEO hit for having multiple URLs on an infinite scroll page vs a site with many pages/URLs. If we do take a hit, quantify the hit we would suffer.
We are redesigning a preschool website which has over 100 pages. We are looking at 2 options and want to make sure we meet the best user experience and SEO. Option 1 is to condense the site into perhaps 10 pages and window shade the content. For instance, on the curriculum page there would be an overview and each age group program would open via window shade. Option 2 is to have an overview and then each age program links to its own page. Do we lose out on SEO if there are not unique URLS? Or is there a way using metatags or other programming to have the same effect?
Algorithm Updates | | jgodwin0 -
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 -
Help for a webstore with Google Warnings for Watermark Images and Panda
I have not had too much experience with helping websites that have been hit by Panda - any tried and tested formulas I can pass to website owner would be great. He does not want to reveal domain name - its in the area of children/baby products 'Web site featured on page 1 of Google search results for many years (website 5 years old- Australian domain) . In April/May 2014, Google suspended our Google Shopping account because we used watermarks on all our images. We were advised that the suspension would remain in place indefinitely or until such time the watermarks were removed. We wrote back to Google to explain that these watermarks were put in place by our store back 2005 with the sole purpose of protecting our intellectual property. Needless to say, their attitude was unwavering. And as a result, revenue plummeted. However, the perfect storm was about to hit our store without warning. In the same month, Panda 4.0 was unleashed and our store was hit once again. This update alone reduced visitor numbers by around 50% overnight. The Panda 4.0 algorithm update was designed to target poor quality, duplicate content and unfortunately we had some of it. We have now begun creating original content with many of the new products we're uploading onto our web site. It's slow and tedious. We have modified our web site to now include a tag on a the home page (this was missing). We have removed many duplicate links from our footer (it was too big and contained hundreds of links that were also repeated from the header). We introduced a blog and we have engaged the services of a local seo company to disavow any bad backlinks and add missing or improve existing content to category and brand pages. No improvement in our situation is yet visible and with Christmas just 3 months away, poor sales during our 'bread and butter' period will mean even tougher times for our store in 2015. ANY PANDA EXPERTS who can help please email me felicity@gardenbeet.com - looking for independent freelancers rather than agencies
Algorithm Updates | | GardenBeet0 -
Im I being hit by hummingbird?
Hello, Our website is a private equity firm database, privateequityfirms.com. We rank well for a number of private equity definitions and terms and have been increasing rank in those terms but unfortunately we have been losing ranking in our main keyword and url "private equity firms" .We have ranked as high as 3rd under wikipedia in recent months. The only real changes we have made are too the sitemap that is auto generated every time some thing is changed in the database. Does anyone have any ideas what is going on? im i being hit by hummingbird. Thank you! MozAnalyticsPDF115_zpsddec64fa.png
Algorithm Updates | | Nicktaylor10 -
Has anyone recovered from Panda?
My two websites were unaffected by the original and 2.0 panda updates, but istring in June my traffic has been down around 30%. In analyzing it appears that my long tail searches have been greatly impacted. So it looks like I am a victim of the mighty panda.My main site, www.uncontesteddivorce-nyc.com is in my opinion a decent looking site, with unique content and no ads, etc., but for whatever reason it has been negatively affected. There might be some duplication of content between certain pages and also my links are all or practically all directory links, though a lot are pretty heavy duty directories. I see a lot of stuff written giving advice on how to recover from Panda. Has anyone actually done so? How did you do it? thx Paul
Algorithm Updates | | diogenes1 -
Classifieds and Google Panda
It seems Google's Panda update is targetting low quality sites with little unique content (I know there's more to it than that). It makes sense that they may want to do this but what about classified sites. They may use some scraped content as well as unique ads, and the ads may lack content as they rely on the users writing the ads. However, they are helpful to the people that use classifieds. Because of these factors, these sites are suffering with the release of the latest Panda update. Any advice for classified sites and how they can combat the rankings drops???
Algorithm Updates | | Sayers0