Traffic dropped 75% - Panda 2 Penalized?

[AlexGop]

Hello everyone,

My e-commerce website traffic dropped by 75% overnight,  on April 12th. The website has been around since 2003 and growing every year. Over the years gained some great placement for some competitive keywords and stayed on page 1 for some time. After the Panda update, some of our major keywords dropped from page 1 to page 10. The first Panda update had a slightly negative effect on us, by bumping up all the brand's websites (brands we carry) placing the brands in the first couple positions (giving them 2-3 first spots) pushing us down. However, the Panda 2 killed us.

I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on my situation.

Did anyone ever have luck or would recommend contacting Google, and asking them for advise or reasons why the site was dropped.

The website in question is www.instyleswimwear.com

Thanks in advance,
Alex

[AlanBleiweiss]

You're welcome Alex.

Actually my recommendation is to not noindex category or pagination pages.  They each need a unique title, meta description & h1 tag, and categories need quality descriptive content on the 1st (default) page in the pagination sequence.

I would not have that content repeat on subsequent pages in category pagination sequence - allowing each of those to stand alone as supporting pages - the unique products on each should be enough to communicate uniqueness of content if you've got thumbnails and captions for each.

I would use noindex/follow on all other filter types though, or block those filters from search bots altogether (it's easier to do noindex/follow).

[AlexGop]

Alan,

Thanks for your help.  Recent post by Dr. Pete had some great pointers as well.  In reference to the pagination and category pages, do you recommend NOINDEXing them?

[AlanBleiweiss]

Alex

content scraping is a challenge, to say the least.  going after scrapers is monumental.  I bet they scraped by sucking up the feed that bizrate uses.  The best defense against such action is to provide a different description to bizrate than that which you use on the site.  Yes, it's more work, however it can help a lot.

Whether Google recognizes bizrate for what it is or not, I honestly don't know. I do know that the overriding scrape issue and the potential that bizrate's pages are battling yours dictates the two different description solution.

[AlexGop]

Alan,

Thanks so much for taking the time to check out my site. I didn't think of searching exact match on descriptions. But now that I did, I see the same site (with different domain) scraped my site and using my product descriptions.

hoodieswebsitedesigner.com, <cite>coolauthentichoodies.com, etc.</cite>

In addition, I found another online store that are steeling our descriptions, <cite>summerfashionshop.com</cite>

And finally, as you have pointed out, Bizrate also shows up, however these are our listings on Bizrate.

Having all this data, what can I do about Google seeing my site as the content owner. And also, does Google realize that Bizrate uses our descriptions, since they are linking back to our product pages?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Alex

[saibose]

Great Insight Alan. Awesome observation! Ecommerce websites are faced with faceted navigation, duplicate content and canonical URL issues. Thats why ecommerce websites are more prone to relegation on Google updates.

Something has to change drastically on the way ecommerce websites exist. Otherwise, Google may end up delisting or relegating a huge number of such websites.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Alex,

I've had the opportunity (misfortune?) to perform audits on a few ecommerce sites that saw a major hit due to Panda.  I can tell you that Google set up a mechanism for submitting your site to let them know.  You won't however, get individual site reconsideration, you'll simply be giving them an opportunity to include your site in their ongoing evaluation process.  And be able to commiserate with others.

Taking a quick look at your site here's a few factors:

**1. Duplicate product descriptions. **

I pulled up a random product on your site and did an exact match search for the first line in the product description. I got your site among some bizrate.com listings, and a couple rogue sites.

Having a truly unique description for every product page is critical.  It should be at least a few paragraphs long.  Yes, that's a massive time-suck.  However it's one of the most significant factors in the long list of factors.

2. Topical Confusion

With so many sorting options included in primary navigation (New Arrivals, full catalog, Sale, Final Sale links up top as well as the entire left sidebar navigation that's site-wide), you're not doing anything to help Google comprehend content relationships that are unique on the site.  Many of these pages are purely pagination with no unique content other than product images, a one word product name, and price.  There's no way any of that content can stand out as truly strong content pages uniquely identified to a particular set of important phrases.

There's also no navigation breadcrumbs, which would reinforce topical relationship focus and separation.

3. Inbound Link Profile

A quick check in OpenSiteExplorer.org shows the majority of links contain "swimsuit" anchor text.  Overall, there are hardly any phrases built around variations such as "bikinis" or "women's bathing suits" or any of countless other variations - without that breadth, your site is too heavy on too few variations.

That's just an overview that should get you going in the right direction, however it's just what stood out in a quick review.