SEO sites were blasted by Panda
-
Just noticed that lots of SEO sites were blasted by Panda...
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=webmasterworld.com&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=seomoz.org&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=digitalpoint.com&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=forums.seochat.com&geo=all&date=2011&sort=0
-
Interesting thread. So now after the more recent Panda update, is that another dip I see in those same graphs There's gotta be something with wrong with the data. Most of the data I've seen from Google Trends and Compete is laughable.
So any further updates? How has Panda affected SEO websites? And why? Is it all the incestuous linking? Thinking out loud here... is it possible that Google has some way to benchmark what the mean/median/average links there are per industry and THEN it uses those to figure out what a websites link count is worth? (Know what I mean?) eg. SEO industry mean = 300 real links, so above 300 higher authority, but dentist websites mean = 60 real links, so different way to measure authority? Point is, links and their worth could also be classified and measured by industry.
-
waiting for the new profile photo
-
If it turns out to be right, I'm going to get myself a deerstalker hat, start smoking a pipe, and walk around calling everybody Watson.
-
Yeah, looks like Google Trends data is not to be trusted (like most other G products). I just looked at those graphs for some heavyweight trusted authority sites including the BBC and guess what - same big traffic drop LOL
Steve O, I think you may be on to something.
-
I have not heard of any sites that were hit by Panda being released from the problem. If people were getting out they would be yelling YEEEEHHAAAA! in the forums. So, until that happens you can only guess at what might be holding your site back.
I would focus for now on an overall improvement in content quality. That is always a great investment.
-
I am Managing SEO for Multiple Websites, One Health Website Traffic Goes Down Up to 60 % , Before Panda We are getting 3500 Daily Visits and Now It's 1700 Per Day, Help me Out, What Steps Should I Follow to Get my Traffic Back ..
-
Our Site learnhub.com & Jumbotest.com saw 30% increase in Traffic after panda update.
-
Interesting thread! Has anyone got any third party to confirm? SEOmoz have anything to add?
-
Eureka! (Possibly... I think/hope).
Trends uses four sources right?
Sooooo, if you think about it, all it would take is for Trends to stop using just one of those sources and wham! There it is, the drop!
Now, I noticed people recently saying that GA had removed benchmarking, which will be replaced by something better later. Since GA benchmarking is part of the permission-al "opt in" data that makes up Trends, and the fact that it disappeared at the same sort of time... logically you could conclude that Trends suddenly stopped getting data from that source.
That would explain everything!!
I should have been a detective
-
I think maybe they do spot but its not in their best interest to just release it to the world for free
-
Why did they all move the same direction on the same date - the panda date?
-
I'd like to say "you can only trust numbers if you have access to an individual site's anlaytics. Except every analytics program is suspect.
Oddly because they're all suspect, I use data for finding trends in the data. Which brings us full circle to Google Trends. Apparently Google can't even spot accurate trends.
-
"Especially Compete"... haha, worse then Alexa?
-
Yeah even if the numbers are way out with the different source, you'd expect to see some reflection with the trending. I wonder what's wrong with Trends then.
-
Yeah, all of these data providers are a little suspect. Especially compete!
-
Thanks Steve, I don't see an end-of-February drop for any of those sites in that data.
-
Yeah they do admit they estimate, based on their sampling. But I believe they mix panel with tool bar and ISP data, so I would have assumed their estimates would be kind of close but maybe not then lol.
Where do you use? I guess none can be trusted really can they?
-
I've never trusted compete.com data - every test I've done with their data has ranged from "wildly under-reported" to "wildly over-reported", with the occassional "lucky guestimate" thrown in.
-
Some of those same sites through compete.com:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/webmasterworld.com+seomoz.org+digitalpoint.com/
As they use a combination of data sources I guess we'll have to stick with them...
-
Damn, so Trends should be avoided due to false information for a while or...?
-
Thanks for looking into this, Tom.
I have been doing a little research myself..... I can find lots of sites that show massive traffic losses on the dates of panda updates. However, I am not finding any sites that show substantial traffic gains - at exactly the same time - which is what we would expect to find. Right?
So, I am now starting to think (like others in this thread) that the data being presented in Google Trends is suspect.
-
Hmm - not sure I'm trusting those graphs. SEOmoz didn't see any change one way or the other with Panda...
-
Perhaps someone from Moz can fill us in...
-
lol.... you are checking all of the low quality sites... J/K
There are lots of sites that do not show a drop at end of February.
A lot of sites are down at end of April because of college courses ending.
-
Maybe they changed their metrics? Every site im checking o google trends is showing a huge decline in the number of visitors.
For instance I tryed
Yahoo (not as big as the others but stil...)
They all have a similar graphic as the ones mentioned on this post, so if the visitors are leaving from everywhere , where are they going? To splogs? hehe
-
yeah unless we can get input from site owners, I am not convinced those are reflective of actual traffic. Just not sure.
-
WOW!!! That's a hell of a find. It's not like it could be some huge coincidence either, that many sites all hit at exactly the same time. How do we find out more?
-
I hope not!
-
Interesting theory! I just checked us on in trends. It says we got whacked too. Still I'm seeing pretty good traffic to our site. I wonder if those graphs are not as bad as they look.
-
So perhaps this is Google's way of leveling the playing field and taking away some of the advantage that sites with knowledgeable SEOs have?
-
SEO sites get lots of links from SEO blogs. Very incestuous linking in this niche.
-
Do you think it could be to do with the backlink pattern? I mean, if Google can tell that there are an abundance of manufactured links then this would make sense.
-
Maybe any site that smells like it has been touched by an SEO got whacked?
I checked other SEO sites and all that I have checked have been whacked.
-
And so much for BlackHats having an upper hand in the game
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=blackhatworld.com&geo=all&date=2011
Or those who believe it's all about backlinks
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=backlinksforum.com&geo=all&date=2011
-
Very interesting!
I just spent time looking at my competitors. Some of the really big guns took a drastic hit as well.
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
-
Weebly vs Wordpress for SEO?
Hi Mozzers, Wordpress has become a pain in the butt as far as plugins slowing down site speed and snippets of codes breaking here and there. My goal is to decrease the constant maintenance that needs to be done on Wordpress. I am curious what do you guys think of Weebly as an "SEO platform" vs wordpress? I only hear good things about Wordpress for SEOs but what about Weebly? Please share your thoughts and why one or the other is better for SEO purposes? P.S: if you have any experience with Weebly, feel free to let me know how did that go for you and if you were satisfied with it. Thanks!
Industry News | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Where to Look for a Standard 9-5 SEO Job
Hello, I'm looking for a standard 20-30 hour a week SEO job. I'd like to make $30/hour. My resume is here. So far I'm making a list of all the SEO companies in Boise, Idaho. Then I'm going to also call up the larger companies in my local area. I'm interested in knowing how to best look for a job, and if there are any national companies where I could do work locally for. Let me know what other information I can provide.
Industry News | | BobGW0 -
Best SEO way to implement multi language store
Hi, I have a magento 1.7 multilanguage store with the following structure: www.example.com/nl and www.example.com (Dutch) www.example.com/uk (English) www.example.com/de (German) As you can see the dutch language basically has two url and this gives problems according to Roger. Both urls show the same page and therefor duplicate content. Should i 301 www.example.com to www.example.com/nl ?
Industry News | | mikehenze
And would this not cause problems with the indexing because www.example.com is shown when searching for my keywords. I need to have all three languages to be indexed good and used only for the correct countries.0 -
Get Google To Crawl More Pages Faster on my Site
We opened our database of about 10 million businesses to be crawled by Google. Since Wednesday, Google has crawled and indexed about 2,000 pages. Google is crawling us at about 1,000 pages a day now. We need to substantially increase this amount. Is it possible to get Google to crawl our sites at a quicker rate?
Industry News | | Intergen0 -
When will Rand put out "Art of SEO 2nd Edition"? (ANSWER: IN ABOUT 2 WEEKS)
First edition was printed in the end of 2009. Great Book. Needs updating of course. I would buy the next edition if it was updated in an awesome way that I know Rand and the others would do.
Industry News | | stubby0 -
Chrome blocked sites used by Googles Panda update
Google's Panda update said it used Chrome users blocked sites lists as a benchmark for what they now term poor quality content. They said the Panda update effectively took about 85% of them out of the search results. This got me thinking, it would be very nice to discover what are the exact sites they don't like. Does anyone know if there is an archive of what these sites might be? Or if none exists, maybe if people could share their Chrome blocked sites on here we might get an idea?
Industry News | | SpecialCase0 -
What is the best method for getting pure Javascript/Ajax pages Indeded by Google for SEO?
I am in the process of researching this further, and wanted to share some of what I have found below. Anyone who can confirm or deny these assumptions or add some insight would be appreciated. Option: 1 If you're starting from scratch, a good approach is to build your site's structure and navigation using only HTML. Then, once you have the site's pages, links, and content in place, you can spice up the appearance and interface with AJAX. Googlebot will be happy looking at the HTML, while users with modern browsers can enjoy your AJAX bonuses. You can use Hijax to help ajax and html links coexist. You can use Meta NoFollow tags etc to prevent the crawlers from accessing the javascript versions of the page. Currently, webmasters create a "parallel universe" of content. Users of JavaScript-enabled browsers will see content that is created dynamically, whereas users of non-JavaScript-enabled browsers as well as crawlers will see content that is static and created offline. In current practice, "progressive enhancement" in the form of Hijax-links are often used. Option: 2
Industry News | | webbroi
In order to make your AJAX application crawlable, your site needs to abide by a new agreement. This agreement rests on the following: The site adopts the AJAX crawling scheme. For each URL that has dynamically produced content, your server provides an HTML snapshot, which is the content a user (with a browser) sees. Often, such URLs will be AJAX URLs, that is, URLs containing a hash fragment, for example www.example.com/index.html#key=value, where #key=value is the hash fragment. An HTML snapshot is all the content that appears on the page after the JavaScript has been executed. The search engine indexes the HTML snapshot and serves your original AJAX URLs in search results. In order to make this work, the application must use a specific syntax in the AJAX URLs (let's call them "pretty URLs;" you'll see why in the following sections). The search engine crawler will temporarily modify these "pretty URLs" into "ugly URLs" and request those from your server. This request of an "ugly URL" indicates to the server that it should not return the regular web page it would give to a browser, but instead an HTML snapshot. When the crawler has obtained the content for the modified ugly URL, it indexes its content, then displays the original pretty URL in the search results. In other words, end users will always see the pretty URL containing a hash fragment. The following diagram summarizes the agreement:
See more in the....... Getting Started Guide. Make sure you avoid this:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355
Here is a few example Pages that have mostly Javascrip/AJAX : http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab https://www.pivotaltracker.com/public_projects This is what the spiders see: view-source:http://catchfree.com/listen-to-music#&tab=top-free-apps-tab This is the best resources I have found regarding Google and Javascript http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/ - This is step by step instructions.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=81766
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
Some additional Resources: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-for-making-ajax-crawlable.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-allow-google-to-crawl-ajax-content
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=357690 -
What is the best site-map software?
I am in the beginning stages of building a website and would like to know the site-mapping software for organizing my company's ideas. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Industry News | | canadianplum0