Google Panda 4.0 update - Good for Small businesses?
-
Hi guys,
We recently did a post on Google Panda 4.0 release. Check this here.
Have you seen any notable changes in rankings for your website? Do you think that this update will benefit small businesses/websites?
Looking forward to your comments.
-
One of our sites had issues previously, bad links. We went through the disavow procedure months ago, but no change in rank until yesterday - up about 28 spots, broke the #50 barrier, all since the update.
-
Yeah, I always thought it was funny when Google's snippet tester would show it was clearly working, and then you see the link on a SERP, and guess what? No snippet, no authorship lol.
Best of luck, looks like things are stabilizing a bit for you.
-
Have you seen this? Ouch. http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2014/05/21/panda-update-4-0-winners-and-losers-google-usa/
-
Oh yes - the site i mentioned that had recovered massively is also now displaying the product and review schema, that wasn't previously displaying - even though rich snippets testing said it was all fine. I hadn't considered that the two could be linked. Duh, thanks.
-
Thanks for your input guys. We have noticed in many communities that most of webmasters/SEOs have seen improvements in their rankings so far from the update.
eBay has seen drop in rankings. I wonder if this has something to do with their study last year showing that paid search don't work for brand terms :|. haha
-
After looking hard at rankings after every algo update, we always see strange results while Google is still "rolling it out". I wouldn't take much to heart while they get the algo in place. It would be better to let things stablilze, then go back and see what rankings changed. I think the week of the update is the worst time to analyze what is going on.
From Matt Cutts blog:
https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/468891756982185985"Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today." Rolling out, starting today are the things that stand out to me from that statement, meaning "its not done yet" lol
I will say that we have seen our rankings improve, with multiple links now showing on the front page for our main keywords. Whereas authorship was not displaying, it now is, combined with our schema reviews.
-
We've seen one of our sites jump from low 40's to 11 overnight after months of being low.
We're UK based as well, more a directory style site then e-commerce.
-
Great article, and very much on time. Thanks for sharing. I have checked some of our sites and at the moment I cannot see any changes or major drops. We seem to be doing it right so far
It would be good to review the traffic in a week. Please get in touch with us on @<a class="view_profile profile_link js-avatar_tip ss_tip tip_left" data-tip="View 's Profile" data-sstip_class="twt_avatar_tip" data-screen-name="FingoMarketing">FingoMarketing </a>
-
We're in the UK and 2 of our ecommerce sites that had been suffering have seen improvements this morning. One of them particularly has improved in rankings massively for many, many queries.
Also noticed that some queries are dropping forum threads as results.
-
Not so far, no.
In fact, from our early analysis, small biz is hurting. A search for "Melbourne pizza" shows 4-5 news articles and only the local block of businesses.
Other searches show more directories than ever and a lot more gumtree/craigslist.
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
-
Question about partial duplicate content on location landing pages of multilocation business
Hi everyone, I am a psychologist in private practice in Colorado and I recently went from one location to 2 locations. I'm currently updating my website to better accommodate the second location. I also plan continued expansion in the future, so there will be more and more locations as time goes on. As a result, I am making my websites current homepage non-location specific and creating location landing pages as I have seen written about in many places. My question is: I know that location landing pages should have unique content, and I have plenty of this, but how much content is it also okay to have be duplicate across the location landing pages and the homepage? For instance, here is the current draft of the new homepage (these are not live yet): http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/ And here are the drafts of the location landing pages: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/denver-office http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/colorado-springs-office And for reference, here is the current homepage that is actually live for my single Denver location: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/ As you can see, the location landing pages have the following sections of unique content: Therapist picture at the top testimonial quotes (the one on the homepage is the only thing I have I framed in this block from crawl so that it appears as unique content on the Denver page) therapist bios GMB listing driving directions and hours and I also haven't added these yet, but we will also have unique client success stories and appropriately tagged images of the offices So that's plenty of unique content on the pages, but I also have the following sections of content that are identical or nearly identical to what I have on the homepage: Intro paragraph blue and green "adult" and child/teen" boxes under the intro paragraph "our treatment really works" section "types of anxiety we treat" section Is that okay or is that too much duplicate content? The reason I have it that way is that my website has been very successful for years at converting site visitors into paying clients, and I don't want to lose aspects of the page that I know work when people land on it. And now that I am optimizing the location landing pages to be where people end up instead of the homepage, I want them to still see all of that content that I know is effective at conversion. If people on here do think it is too much, one possible solution is to turn parts of it into pictures or put them into I-frames on the location pages so Google doesn't crawl those parts of the location pages, but leave them normal on the homepage so it still gets crawled on there. I've seen a lot written about not having duplicate content on location landing pages for this type of website, but everything I've read seems to refer to entire pages being copied with just the location names changed, which is not what I'm doing, hence my question. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | gremmy90 -
Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?
We are are a managed IT services business so we try and target people searching for IT support in a number of key areas. We have created individual location pages (11) to localise our service in these specific areas. We put these location links in the footer which went to the specified IT support pages respectively. Now we have created a general 'managed IT services' page and are thinking of linking to these specific pages on there as well as it makes sense to do it. Would having these 11 links in the footer as well as on the 'managed IT services' page be spamming? or would it be good practice? If this is spamming, which linking location should hold preference. Would appreciate the feedback
Local Website Optimization | | AndyL93
Thanks
Andy0 -
What is the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Do I really have to update the subtype if there isn't a suitable alternative?
Could someone please elaborate on the SEO effect of schema subtype deprecation? Does it even matter? The Local business properties section of developers.google.com says to: Define each local business location as a LocalBusiness type. Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible; for example, Restaurant, DaySpa, HealthClub, and so on. Unfortunately, the ProfessionalService page of schema.org states that ProfessionalService has been deprecated and many of my clients don't fit anywhere else (or if they do it's not a LocalBusiness subtype). I find it inconvenient to have to modify my different clients' JSON-LD from LocalBusiness to ProfessionalService back to LocalBusiness. I'm not saying this happens every day but how does one keep up with it all? I'm really trying to take advantage of the numerous types, attributes, etc., in structured data but I feel the more I implement, the harder it will be to update later (true of many things, of course). I do feel this is important and that a better workflow could be the answer. If you have something that works for you, please let us know. If you think it's not important tell us why not? (Why Google is wrong) I understand there is always a better use of our time, but I'd like to limit the discussion to solving this Google/Schema.org deprecation issue specifically.
Local Website Optimization | | bulletproofsearch0 -
SEO Client not rankings in Google
Hello, I have a client that has continued to be problematic for my team and I. They have fair to middling rankings in Yahoo and Bing, but none in Google. I realize that they are three separate search engines each with their own criteria, but this client is the only one experiencing this problem. There is no significant duplicate content that can find, same with restrictions in the robots.txt file. These seems to be no reason why all my tools say that this client has no presence at all in google, especially when the client gains most of their traffic through Google. Can anyone assist me in finding out what is going wrong? Client website for reference: http://www.volvethosp.com/ Best, BeyondIndigo
Local Website Optimization | | BeyondIndigo0 -
Multi Location business - Should I 301 redirect duplicate location pages or alternatively No Follow tag them ?
Hello All, I have a eCommerce site and we operate out of mulitple locations. We currently have individual location pages for these locations against each of our many categories. However on the flip slide , this create alot of duplicate content. All of our location pages whether unique or duplicated have a unique title Tag, H1, H2 tag , NAP and they all bring in the City Name . The content on the duplicated content also brings in the City name as well. We have been going through our categories and writing unique content for our most popular locations to help rank on local search. Currently I've been setting up 301 redirects for the locations in the categories with the duplicated content pointing back to the category page. I am wondering whether the increase in number of 301's will do more harm than having many duplicate location pages ?.. I am sure my site is affected by the panda algorithm penalty(on the duplicated content issues) as a couple of years ago , this didn't matter and we ranked top 3 for pretty much for every location but now we are ranking between 8 - 20th depending on keyword. An Alternative I thought, may be to instead of 301 those locations pages with duplicate content, is to put No Follow tags on them instead ?... What do you think ?. It's not economically viable to write unique content for every location on every category and these would not only take years but would cost us far to much money. Our Site is currently approx 10,000 pages Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated ? thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Search Result Discrepancy: Keyword "Dresses" shows international sites in the search results of Google.co.in.
Hi All, What would be the reason that Google shows international websites in the first page results while there are huge local players available. Eg: Dresses - Keyword that shows results with almost all the results from International websites whereas the local big players in the same category are not shown. This is not the case for other keywords like Women dresses, Clothing, Shoes etc., Is it a bug or any particular reasons? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Myntra0 -
Is it possible to target a keyword which is english but targeted to google.com.tr user
Hey I want to know, is it possible to target a keyword which is english, but target market .com.tr For that purpose must we take backlink from site written english but target to turkish ?
Local Website Optimization | | atakala
Or site written english but target to anywhere? I know this question is a bit confusing but my boss want me to that.0 -
How to rank in Local Google Without physical address and phone number?
Can We Rank Well in Local Google without Physical address and Phone Number??? If Yes. How??
Local Website Optimization | | Dan_Brown10