How long to recover from Panda Update
-
Hi there,
I think I was affected by the recent Panda update as I had a lot of duplicate content for my product descriptions (about 300). I'm going through and rewriting these to be both helpful and unique. I was ranking quite nicely for a big spread of keywords, but have been seeing my rankings drop day after day since the update.
Is it possible to see my rankings improve again after Google re-crawls my site, or would a penalty have been applied to my site preventing me to re-gain my positions for sometime. It's probably worth noting that I have a lot of unique and helpful content, it was just my product pages that had duplicate content, but I've seen my rankings across the board drop.
Any discussion and insight would be much appreciated.
-
Weekly sounds about right. Dont forget to take a look at your places listings, and other elements while you are in the mood to update and improve!
I understand how frusterating it can be optimizing an ecom shop or store. Lots of pages, lots of time, lots of typing. Just got done doing a site that had over 3000 pages. Keep your heart in it, and you will see the results you want. I took a look at the site, seemed like you were going in the right direction.
-
Thanks Andy, and everybody else. I think I have a clear action plan to move forward now. Get the product descriptions unique - and written to be more helpful and better for converting customers, adding more to the blog (bit thin at the moment with just news rather than useful info) and creating great resources to help customers (+ giving the site linkable assets)
Many thanks
-
Hi David, I think I have it set to weekly. I was guestimating it might take a month for it to start resolving itself. Gutted really as I was just about to invest time in more content and outreach. Ohwell.
-
Once its all fixed, you should see start seeing changes in about a month or so. There really isnt any specific timeline, and all you can do is get the errors fixed, and resubmit the sitemap and use the "fetch as google" option in Google WMT. Sometime changes can happen in a week, all depends what your crawl frequency is set to. In your sitemap, do you have it set to daily, weekly, or monthly?
-
I would defiantly say its something to do with Panda
Your drop as seen on the graph, is your search visibility and while its not a great indication on its own, it still pretty useful. Your drop in % terms in the same as Ebay's.
Generally speaking people are saying Ebays drop is down to poor quality content, so if David is right about Matt Cutts saying its not affecting product descriptions I would take a look at your blog and add more content (however that does all seem unique).
I will still work on the product descriptions and making them more useful for the user, plus you win twice, higher ranking and more customer converting and they are getting the advice they need without leaving your site
-
Hi David,
I appreciate your input. I only made that assumption as the drop coincided with the update - literally the same day of the update after having massive gains for weeks (and months) prior. A lot of my rankings that dropped were for category pages and my homepage that are unique and actually quite useful for readers.
Do you think you could pinpoint the reason for the drop if it isn't due to duplicate content?
-
Thanks Andy, that's the app I'll be using.
I've seen a drop across the board for keywords, but not a complete failure. Yes this time of year is when I make the money. I've just started so put some of the fluctuations down to that too. Just need to keep plugging away at it I guess.
-
I'd be surprise if you were hit by Panda for duplicate content on product descriptions. Matt Cutts is on record saying it's not a big deal for ecommerce sites.
-
Hi Sean
I used to have a shopify store as well and there are plenty of apps, try this one I have used previously and liked:
http://docs.shopify.com/manual/more/official-shopify-apps/product-reviews
Investing in product descriptions and unique content will pay off in the long run.
I've noticed you have got some great content on your category pages (hopefully these still rank as its the time of the year when I guess you get a lot of sales) so its just the product pages which will require work.
-
Hey Andy,
Thanks for your response. Yep, you hit the nail on the head. Duplicated from the manufacturer to save time as I wanted to launch quickly. Invested my time in creating new content rather than revisiting my product descriptions. I'm pleased I'll be able to recover.
I will look to get product reviews implemented ASAP.
Many thanks,
Sean -
Hi
Yes it is possible to recover, but it wont be an overnight solution.
You are doing the right thing and tackling the issues of duplicate content. I think this update will have affected quite a few e-commerce sites as a lot I see always use the manufacturers description (duplicating content) usually for the reasons is easier and cheaper.
And good way of improving might be to ask previous people to write product reviews on the page. This is a good way of generating good unique content.
Not sure what platform you use or whether its custom built, but there is usually some good apps that will automate this process, sending emails to customers after a certain time to come and leave a review.
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
-
Never recovered from loss of visibility in Google, what did we miss?
Hello, I hope someone can help me, or can recommend someone who could look into this in more detail a a consultancy service or something. Our client https://bit.ly/2IjLD7X experienced a bad drop in visibility early 2017 which we didn't manage to recover from. We had a problem with one main category page that wasn't indexed anymore (it was #1 for a major keyword in the Netherlands). We were able to fix the problem eventually (had to do with the .be being indexed instead due to no hreflang) but never really recovered with that page, only the entire site around that time saw a major drop in visibility. The client went to another agency (a renowned agency in the Netherlands) but after over half a year they haven't been able to recover. Organic visits are still down 45% compared to the same period last year. Another major Dutch keyword they ranked #1 for is now #9 for instance. So basically two SEO agencies (we and the other one) have tried everything we could think of for the past year, but none of us seem to know what the problem is and the owner is quite desperate (it's a small store with only 3 employees and his monthly revenue is only half of what it once was. I'm afraid a quick look into the site won't help anyone find the issue, so if someone has a good idea of how we can help this previous client I would love to hear so!
Technical SEO | | WebdesignTilburg0 -
What are the things that need update? before Appying SEO
Hello Everyone, I need Start work on for this site www.tajsigma.com, I want to know Did i need Add any things for Good ranking. what are the things that need update in This site For SEO??
Technical SEO | | falguniinnovative
i know Basic Things robots, title, discription , But i want know Any Additional Things that I need to apply?? can anyone help, please Thanx in advance0 -
What was the Google 'update' on 31st March?
Hi all. I looked back and saw that there was an update shown in 'Search Analytics' in Webmaster Tools a few weeks before the Mobile algorithm update. Not been able to find any mention of it and what it did so thought I'd check in here. ps. Also, this is a 90 day stretch and shows that our rankings have taken a hit since the mobile algorithm update. Interesting stuff (see image below) 4rJMU9e.jpg?1
Technical SEO | | RobFD0 -
Should we change the publish date in WordPress when updating a post?
Hi everyone, We're going through some of our old posts in our WordPress blog and updating them, adding new information, new links, and photos. My question: If we update the posts significantly, should we also update the "published" date to today? If we only correct some typos or a dead link, we don't touch the date. However, if we've done some real work on the post, we'd like to update the published date in order to bring it to the top of our blog feed and draw new attention to the post. However, I'm a little nervous that this could be seen by Google as spammy, as it's not technically a new post and the URL already exists in Google's index of our site. Here's an example of a post that was published several years ago and then updated a few week's ago with new information (and a new date stamp): http://www.eurocheapo.com/blog/barcelona-tip-five-cheap-eats-under-e6.html Any thoughts on this? Thanks, Tom
Technical SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Open Site Explorer doesn't update correctly
We have been using OSE for a little over 2 Months now and our link demographics haven't changed although we have been getting lots of backlinks from other blogs and webpages. Google Webmaster Tools displays these links but OSE, even after the updates, doesn't.
Technical SEO | | wellbo
Our domain is about 1 Year old and has had indexed content on it since June this year. Google Webmaster Tools shows 24 Links to our domain but OSE only 3. The domain is http://www.wellbo.de0 -
Google Places - need to update
I've got a client who verified their Google Places listing years ago, and noone knows who so I can't access it. The business is now moving and I need to update the address. What should I do? thanks
Technical SEO | | garymeld0 -
Best practise for updating software guide
Heya! I write a guide for a specific piece of Internet-based software which is about to undergo a major patch release. No-one's going to be using the old version, so my old-version articles are essentially going to be useless, as are keywords related to the old version number. Given that, I'm intending to update all my guides to be current with the new version. However, obviously I want to keep the Google juice for the old guides, as they rank pretty well. The three options I'm considering: Simply retitle the old guides to the latest version number - "How to use Blue Widget 2.0" becomes "How to use Blue Widget 3.0". Disadvantage - my URLs still include the old version number, 2.0. Write updated guides as seperate articles and 301 redirect the old articles to them. I've done this before with some success. So, I'd 301 the URL for "How to use Blue Widget 2.0" to the url for "How to use Blue Widget 3.0", my new article. Disadvantages - possible loss of link juice? Also, I believe redirects can be kinda tricksy. Just leave both the old and new versions up there, with a link from the old version saying "outdated, check the new version". My belief is that this would be the worst idea. Should I do one of them, or something else? And why?
Technical SEO | | Cairmen0