Panda 4.0 Suggestions
-
My site was hit pretty negatively by Panda 4.0 and I am at a loss for the best way to address it. I have read like every article that I can and I know there is some duplicate manufacturer product descriptions but I don't hear many other ecoms complaining about Panda so I figure it must be something else. Also, the pages that seem most negatively affected are category and product list pages. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks!
-
THanks for all of the answers, does anyone have recommendations for good companies that do consulting for Panda related issues?
-
Thanks for the answer, that is kinda what I figured too. I know I have to re write the content in order to be more competitive but I assumed there has to be something else that is effecting me as well.
-
Here is a Matt Cutts video where he explains why you need more than duplicate content.
Interesting to watch because you can see, just a few years ago, in 2009, Matt did not have all of the gray hair. That is what all of this Panda and Penguin stuff has done to him.
-
Duplicate product descriptions alone are probably not why you got hit by Panda 4.0. Matt Cutts is on record saying that duplicate product descriptions are not a big deal for ecommerce sites.
-
EGOL is correct, Gordian.
Start fixing those. One the content is brand new and reindexed, it's a waiting game from there onwards. It might make you wait for the next update or you might need to look at your site structure further to find other culprits.
There's really not much Panda 4 did differently. It only improved the original Panda so the same stuff applies so hopefully, you'd get back when you fix the current issues.
-
Hundreds of other sites are using the same content.
The same product descriptions that you are using appear on Heavyweight sites like... NewEgg, Yahoo Shopping, Ebay.
Get rid of ALL of that content written by other people.
Write original content or die.
-
Have you read this post yet? Sounds like what happened to eBay is much like what happened to you. You may want to keep up with what eBay will do to rebound and take cues from that going forward. Just a thought.
Panda 4.0, Payday Loan 2.0 & eBay's Very Bad Day
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 Panda July 2016
Hi Does anyone know what impact the recent slow Panda roll out may have? Obviously content, but would it perhaps include engagement/user behaviour factors regarding your on page content too? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Was there a recent secret Panda update? Help.
Our site http://www.entrepreneurhandbook.co.uk has had a fairly significant drop in organic traffic this past week. Going from 3.8k to 3.k Can't see any reported updates on the major SEO websites, we'd had steady growth all year then appear to have back-peddled. One post in particular, our UK venture capital list was page1 for a number of VC related keywords such including 'venture capital' (google.co.uk) but it's completely dropped out of the index for that one and others. Does anybody have any ideas? We haven't done any link building at all, we've focussed entirely on on-site SEO and high quality in depth articles/posts/lists and historically we've always seen small increases at every algo update. 2CG25iv
Algorithm Updates | | entrepreneurhandbook0 -
Recovered from penguin/panda but which one?
So the good news is that for the first time since April 24th, one of our websites is back in the search results as of around December 12 but I am still unsure as whether it was panda or penguin (or both) that was impacting the site?? Note this was not a manual penalty. I diagnosed it as a penguin issue (drop on April 24th, aggressive on-page optimisation, around 10% of links from spammy directories like addyourfreelinks.com with anchor text built by a questionable agency), but on further advice it was thought that panda was also an issue because it is a hotel microsite so there was duplication with our own brand site and across third party travel sites and there were a number of pages with bare content. I figured it was a good time to clean everything up to address both. Here is a summary of actions taken: submitted disavow file on October 24th with all questionable links including actions taken and comments. Since then I have cleaned up some content so it is less aggressively targeting certain keywords. Amended several third party listings with duplicate content No follow,indexed pages that were directly duplicated with our brand site and over the last month have built a few good quality links. Cleaned up 404's in webmaster tools over the last week I have searched to see if there were any algorithm updates around December 12 but cannot find any mentions. Thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | jay.raman0 -
Panda / Penguin Behavior ? Recovery?
Our site took a major fall on March 23rd, ie Panda 3.4 and then another smaller one on April 24th, ie Penguin. I have posted a few times in here trying get help on what items to focus on. Been doing this for 13 years, white hat, never chased algos but of course learned as I went. As soon as the fall hit one expert said it was links, which I kinda doubted because we never went after them but we have some but only a handful in comparison to really good authorative links. I concentrated on cleaning up duplicate content due to tags in a blog that only had 7 posts (an add on section to the site) then focuses efforts on just going through and making content better. Had other overlapping content that I would guess would pass inspection but I cleaned it up. After 6 weeks no movement back up, another expert here said yes, he saw some bad links so I should check it out. So back to focusing on links, I actually run a report and discover questionable links, and successfully get about 25 removed. Low numbers but we have only about 50 that were questionable. No contact info on the other directories so I guess we are stuck. Here is where I just go in circles... When our site fell on March 23rd we had 13 of our main pages still ranking at number 1 and 2 on each keyword phrase. Penguin hit and they fell about 10 spots. EXCEPT, one... This one keyword phrase and page stayed on top and ranked at #1 throught he storm. (finally fell to #4 but still remains up there). The whole site is down 90%, we only have 3 fair keyword phrases really ranking out of 250. The mystery is that the keyword phrase that was ranking was the one that supposedly had way over the % of anchor text, 7% of our links go to that page. The other pages that fell on Penguin had no pages linking back. I have been adding blog posts to our site, I post one an in a few days it gets indexed, have one of those ranking at #2 for the keyword, moved up from #4 a week after posting it in the blog. (google searches shows 80K) Just seems like the site should bounce back if new content is able to rank, why not the old? Did other people hit by Panda and Penguin see a sitewide fall or are they still ranking for some terms? I would love to see some discusson on success stories of bouncing back after Panda and Penguin. I see the WP success story but that was pretty sudden after it was brought to Google's attention. Looking for that small business that fixed something and saw improvement. Give me hope here please.
Algorithm Updates | | Force70 -
Was I hit by panda or penguin?
My site, graciousbridal.com was hit pretty hard by google at the end of April. I actually noticed our traffic decreasing around February, then towards the end of April, it got really bad. Our sales this may were half of what they were in may 2011. We have never done any black or gray hat seo, wouldn't even know how to. I know in the past we did blog commenting, but changed up our keywords so it wasn't all the same, maybe we didn't change it enough?? We have another very similar site that I'm now wondering if we were penalized because they are too similar. We always have changed up the copy, but they have most of the same products. This second site barely gets traffic or sales and has about half of the items graciousbridal does. But, I'm wondering now if it's to similar and that is why we were penalized. I can't figure out what we did wrong to have this big of a drop. I really need help with this as this is supposed to be our busiest season of the year. Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated..
Algorithm Updates | | Craig2100 -
How important are links after Panda
I have noticed that the sites in my niche that were at the top of the SERP's are still at the top of the SERP's after panda. I have also heard people theorizing that links are no longer important, its now all about bounce rates, time on site, etc. Is there any consensus about how important links are after Panda? thx Paul
Algorithm Updates | | diogenes1 -
Panda Update: Need your expertise...
Hi all, After Panda update our website lost about 45% of it's traffic from Google. It wasn't an instant drop mostly it happened gradually over the last 5 months. Our keywords (all of them except the domain name) started to lose positions from top #10 to now 40+ and all recovery attempts we have done so far didn't really help. At this moment it would be great to get some advice from the top experts like you here. What we have done so far is that We have gone through the all pages and removed the duplicate / redundant ones. We have refresh the content on the main pages and also all pages now have an canonical tags. Our website is www.PrintCountry.com. Thank you very much in advance for your time.
Algorithm Updates | | gbssinc0 -
Recent changes to suggested search algorithm?
Our company recently had a "company name + scam" listing as #2 in suggested search, and yesterday, it miraculously disappeared. Has anyone else noticed similar changes in suggested search results? I hope it stick, I'm just trying to understand exactly what caused that 1 listing to vanish.
Algorithm Updates | | CareerBliss0