Does this look like a Penguin drop to you?
-
Hi Folks,
This is my first post here. Psyched to be part of this great community.
I have a site that's seen a steady drop in Google organic traffic since September of last year. Slow at first, then picking up speed in late January, then in a free-fall in May. Things are finally flattening out, but I'm left with 30% of my former traffic. See graph.
I've been thinking that this was caused by Penguin. Back in 2006-2009, I used free directory submission services, and it looked like I was finally getting penalized for it.
However, from the research I've done so far, it looks like websites hit by Penguin see a decrease in traffic over a couple days, not six months. Should I concern myself with disavowing those spammy directory links, or focus my energy elsewhere?
There are other plausible explanations for the decline. I haven't posted much content on the site in recent years, and have let my blog go fallow. Obviously, this needs to be fixed. My question is, in addition to my content development and quality linkbuilding efforts, should I be worried about those spammy links?
For the record, this is a high-quality informational site with lots of high-quality links mixed in with the spammy ones.
Thanks for any insight you can offer.
-
Still not convinced. Here's an example of a Penguin 2.0 traffic drop graph from 22 May. Much sharper drop away than yours.
-
Ouch. I'd say my drop looks consistent with that pattern, though much less dramatic.
-
Sure thing. Here it is.
I think the drop looks less dramatic in this shot--it's harder to see the change in trend--but over a three-day period from May 21-23 the traffic dropped by about 20%, discounting the gradual steady decrease in traffic happening at the same time.
-
This attachment shows what happened to one of my sites that was hit by a Penguin update. This is what I would expect to see (I've seen similar graphs from many others who were also hit).
-
I still don't see it. Can you post a graph showing just the two weeks either side of 22/23 May? Penguin traffic drops are, in my experience, usually pretty steep. This still looks too gradual.
-
David, the steep decline in May was over the 22nd and 23rd, so it does look like Penguin 2.0 nailed me. See screenshot of a more zoomed-in traffic graph.
It sounds like Penguin is at least partially the cause of my problems. Time to start disavowing.
-
Hard to give an answer without seeing the traffic graph for the time periods you mentioned the drops. If the drop in May was around the 22nd to 25th, it likely was a Penguin update. We got hit by it at that time.
Other things could've been dragging the site down over the last year and then Penguin may have hit and caused the free-fall. Definitely get rid of the directory links and any other links you think Google might penalize you for in the future.
-
Unless you can be sure that you have been actually hit by a penalty (manual or algorithmic) I would also take time to look at:
1. Google update collateral damage - your link profile could be full of devalued links which takes time to filter through.
2. on-page SEO is weak - page load speed, chained 301's, possibly indexed duplicate tag/query string pages etc etc (i've had over 50% improvement on organic traffic ensuring this area is spotless and as optimised as possible)
-
Interesting. I haven't been tracking my keyword rankings systematically, but the ones I keep my eyes on have dropped since last year.
-
Can't say I'm any kind of expert, but I have been dealing with Penguin penalties on a couple of sites and I can tell you that your traffic graph looks nothing like the Penguin penalties I've seen.
If you had been hit by Penguin back in late September you'd have lost 80% of your traffic over two or three days. Penguin penalties seem to apply very quickly.
This looks to me more like progressive slow discounting of your site in the search rankings (have you been tracking your keyword rankings?) which would be more likely to be cause by bad backlinks or association with spammy sites (by being in the same IP range). I think these are Panda rather than Penguin.
However, I have not seen the impact of the most recent Penguin "tweaks" that Google has been rolling out this year. The easiest way to check is to overlay the dates of the Penguin and Panda updates on your traffic graph. Any impacts will usually be seen within 48 hours of the update (when Google next indexes your site).
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
-
A semi client of mine reached out to me recently that another site scraped his whole site and traffic dropped significantly.
Someone that reaches out to me on occasion for help but is mostly an SEO DIYer recently had his site copied completely and his traffic dropped significantly immediately after. I have never had a client experience this in the past. Does anyone have suggestions or expertise on this? See his question and what he has done below. Jeremy This site scraped my credit site. Its appearance coincides with a dramatic sitewide decrease in Google traffic.I submitted a takedown request by paying this company $200. No results yet. My hosting company also placed blocks on the site HTML which pings my server for CSS and picture files. My Google Webmaster tools account shows inbound links coming from the copycat. Is there something more I should be doing? Copy Site: http://masqueros.com/Real Site: https://www.savvyoncredit.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
Google Penguin penalty is automated or manual?
Hi, I have seen some of our competitors are missing from top SERP and seems to be penalised as per this penalty checker: http://pixelgroove.com/serp/sandbox_checker/. Is this right tool to check penalty? Or any other good tools available? Are these penalties because of recent Penguin update? If so, is this a automated or manual penalty from Google? I don't think all of these tried with black-hat techniques and got penalised. The new penguin update might triggered their back-links causing this penalty. Even we dropped for last 2 weeks. What's the solution for this? How effectively link-audit works? Thanks, Satish
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Looking for feedback on Scrapebox
Hello, I have been doing some research this morning and have come across Scrapebox, does anybody use them? What do people think of the comment poster? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mblsolutions1 -
I need a lot of content completed in a short amount of time. Suggestions on where to look?
I'm looking for writers to write content for 1000+ key words. 300-400 words per keyword. I would like this done by the end of July. Any suggestions or recommendations on where to find a team that can produce quality content in that amount of time? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cloudhasher0 -
Page keeps dropping
Hello All, I have a page (http://www.caravanguard.co.uk/touring-caravan-insurance/) we have seen it drop a bit over recent months and now we have been appearing low on page two (Google UK) for the term "Caravan Insurance". Now I do not expect to rank above some of the big players in our market and the aggregators, but we do feel we have good content and have tried to act as white as we can in terms of SEO, link building and alike, but we are still slipping. My main issue is this - one minute we have the link appearing in the serps and then the next it drops from the serps altogether. At this point i often resubmit for indexing in webmaster tools and a few minutes later its back.... is this just likley something I am seeing local to me due search becoming more personal (I have toggle hide private results too) or is there a cause to its sudden disappearance and reappearance? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TimHolmes0 -
Link profile heavy with press release syndication links caused drop at Penguin 2.0
I'm wrestling with something that I'm hoping members of the community can provide input on.... I've working with an enterprise level client that is in the business of data capture and distribution. I've diagnosed a clear drop of traffic on May 22nd, i.e a loss of search visibility post Penguin 2.0. Their link profile is big! Discussions with internal stakeholders who have been with the company 10's of years confirm that no "link building" service providers have ever been hired and no over-zealous employee is ever likely to have tried to "do" link building internally. They are just one of those lucky companies that by their nature publish information that people want to link to and share. As a first port of call I've grouped links by anchor text and can see groups of hundreds of matching anchors based on their brand URL and specific page titles. The matching anchors have resulted from big take up of interesting data that they have marketed via press releases. NOT for link purposes. My question is this.... Does the community think or have evidence (or can point me toward any case studies) that show that Press release syndication alone could result in: a) a penguin penalty or...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | QubaSEO
b) a devaluing of press release type links during Penguin 2.0 that could have resulted in a loss of search visibility and give the impression of a penalty Your thoughts are much appreciated!0 -
SERP dropping along with competitors - Google algorithm mix up?
I am hoping someone will have some insight as our recent ranking drop has been driving me crazy trying to figure out what happened. Our site is www.dgrlegal.com. We've been building links by creating quality content and getting others to link to it. We've seen our rankings rise to 3 for a number of keywords. Suddenly around March we saw a pretty drastic drop but only for certain keywords (maybe a Penguin hit?). For example, "new jersey process service" still has us ranked 3rd but "new jersey process server" sees us much lower around 19. I've noticed several competitors have dropped while one has risen so is this negative SEO? Probably not as our backlink profile doesn't seem suspicious but it has me very confused. We've received no warnings or notices from Google. The only thing I see is that our indexed pages went from 13 to 98 in January and have been now steadily increasing to 129, although I thought this would be a positive. Any suggestions or thoughts? I thought maybe things would shake out but it hasn't happened as of yet - we just keep dropping.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amandadgr0