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
-
Google-selected canonical: the homepage?
Hi guys,
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
I checked the product pages on our website with Google Search Console (URL Inspection), and the majority appear as
"URL is not on Google"
Coverage: "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical", and
Google-selected canonical: the homepage of the website (for all product pages) Our product pages are not identical to the homepage (content-wise), besides the top menu, header and footer, so how could I use the canonical tag in this case? I wouldn't want that the product pages to be seen as duplicates of the homepage. Thanks!0 -
Building a new site and want to be found in both Google.co.uk and Goolge.ie. What is the best practice?
We are building a new site which is a .com site and the client would like to be found in both Google.co.uk and Goolge.ie. What is the best practice to go about this? Can you geo-target two countries with the one site?
Local Website Optimization | | WSIDW0 -
Virtual Offices & Google Search
United Kingdom We have a client who works from home and wants a virtual office so his clients do not know where he lives. Can a virtual office address be used on his business website pages & contact pages, in title tags and descriptions as well as Google places. The virtual office is manned at all times and phone calls will be directed to the client, the virtual office company say effectively it is a registered business address. Look forward to any helpful responses.
Local Website Optimization | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
Pete0 -
Local SEO HELP for Franchise SAB Business
This all began when I was asked to develop experiment parameters for our content protocol & strategy. It should be simple right? I've reviewed A/B testing tips for days now, from Moz and other sources.I'm totally amped and ready to begin testing in Google Analytics. Say we have a restoration service franchise with over 40 franchises we perform SEO for. They are all over the US. Every franchise has their own local website. Example restorationcompanylosangeles.com Every franchise purchases territories in which they want to rank in. Some service over 100 cities. Most franchises also have PPC campaigns. As a part of our strategy we incorporate the location reach data from Adwords to focus on their high reach locations first. We have 'power pages' which include 5 high reach branch preferences (areas in which the owners prefer to target) and 5 non branch preference high reach locations. We are working heavily on our National brand presence & working with PR and local news companies to build relationships for natural backlinks. We are developing a strategy for social media for national brand outlets and local outlets. We are using major aggregators to distribute our local citation for our branch offices. We make sure all NAP is consistent across all citations. We are partners with Google so we work with them on new branches that are developing to create their Google listings (MyBusiness & G+). We use local business schema markup for all pages. Our content protocol encompasses all the needed onsite optimization tactics; meta, titles, schema, placement of keywords, semantic Q&A & internal linking strategies etc. Our leads are calls and form submissions. We use several call tracking services to monitor calls, caller's location etc. We are testing Callrail to start monitoring landing pages and keywords that generating our leads. Parts that I want to change: Some of the local sites have over 100 pages targeted for 'water damage + city ' aka what Moz would call "Doorway pages. " These pages have 600-1000 words all talking about services we provide. Although our writers (4 of them) manipulate them in a way so that they aren't duplicate pages. They add about 100 words about the city location. This is the only unique variable. We pump out about 10 new local pages a month per site - so yes - over 300 local pages a month. Traffic to the local sites is very scarce. Content protocol / strategy is only tested based on ranking! We have a tool that monitors ranking on all domains. This does not count for mobile, local, nor user based preference searching like Google Now. My team is deeply attached to basing our metrics solely on ranking. The logic behind this is that if there is no local city page existing for a targeted location, there is less likelihood of ranking for that location. If you are not seen then you will not get traffic nor leads. Ranking for power locations is poor - while less competitive low reach locations rank ok. We are updating content protocol by tweaking small things (multiple variants at a time). They will check ranking everyday for about a week to determine whether that experiment was a success or not. What I need: Internal duplicate content analyzer - to prove that writing over 400 pages a month about water damage + city IS duplicate content. Unique content for 'Power pages' - I know based on dozens of chats here on the community and in MOZ blogs that we can only truly create quality content for 5-10 pages. Meaning we need to narrow down what locations are most important to us and beef them up. Creating blog content for non 'power' locations. Develop new experiment protocol based on metrics like traffic, impressions, bounce rate landing page analysis, domain authority etc. Dig deeper into call metrics and their sources. Now I am at a roadblock because I cannot develop valid content experimenting parameters based on ranking. I know that a/b testing requires testing two pages that are same except the one variable. We'd either non index these or canonicalize.. both are not in favor of testing ranking for the same term. Questions: Are all these local pages duplicate content? Is there a such thing as content experiments based solely on ranking? Any other suggestions for this scenario?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA1 -
Structured Data Schema for Local business
Hi Where should you add ‘local business’ schema, the 'Home Page', ‘About Us’ page, 'Contact Us' page etc etc ? I presume the page with the address such as 'contact us' page but if say the address is on every page say in a footer for example is it ok to add address schema to every page ? I know someone who did this and havn't got any rich snippets out of it so presume best to focus on one primary page such as 'contact' or 'about' type pages ? Also: If your business serves multiple areas can you add schema for the other areas too or is it only for your primary business address ?
Local Website Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence
For example if your business address is listed in say ‘Wandsworth’ but you visit & serve customers in ‘Clapham’, ‘Balham’ & other regions of South West London, anyway of adding local business address structured data to your site for these areas too (to help target local searches including these other regions) Many Thanks
Dan0 -
Killing it in Yahoo/Bing...Sucking it in Google. What gives?
Our website http://www.survive-a-storm.com has historically performed well in Google for the search terms "storm shelters" and "tornado shelters." Our geographic focus is nationwide, but we are particularly interested in ranking up for Oklahoma. Right now we are hovering at about the third position in Yahoo/Bing, and in some geographic areas (i.e., as selected in Google's search settings) we are doing reasonably to quite well for these terms in Google (i.e., first page). In Oklahoma, though, we are holding steady around positions 20-25. We have just changed the title tag on our home page, cleaned up a bit of on-page optimization, and are going to work on getting some more optimized content on the page. We are outperforming the competition on Domain Authority (38) and Page Authority (46), and as far as I can tell, other key metrics are respectable. Our social isn't bad, but could always use improvement--which we are working on. Any idea why we might be lagging so badly in Google? Any help would be appreciated!
Local Website Optimization | | Survive-a-Storm0