Hit by Panda 4.1 and it couldn't be more wrong!
-
Hi,
I'm scratching my head with this one, I have a website with around 40 pages of unique content produced by a professional copywriter who works magazines and PR agencies - each page has around 750/1000 words - according to Google the reading age is intermediate as you would expect from a good copywriter, I have anchor points jumping around the page to information the user shows an interest in - this happens I have video recording and heat maps.
I also receive 100s and on some pages 1000s of social shares from Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and G+. I wanted to build a site the way Google wants you to so I have done no link build at all, everything focused onsite so I just spent the last 2 months making the whole site responsive for mobile and tablet devices - I also spent time getting the load time down and 'was' in the process of hooking into a CDN for extra performance.
Ive done everything I can to make the site just good and its reflected in the social sharing and natural links from sites such as huffington post.
On the 23rd my sites rankings which were solid for over 2 years have crashed, but what's worse is ive been dropped and replaced with sites using the same tactics as the Payday Loan industry, and it seems great favouritism has been given to sites containing Adsense - I can see ranking one page sites with less than 300 words content and 3/4 ad units above the fold and sites which have taken chunks of content off Wikipedia and rank.
Thumbs up Google, great job.
-
Thanks for letting me know others are experiencing the same. If I find anything interesting I will be sure to let you know on this thread - Likewise if you notice anything interesting would be appreciated if you could come back and share also.
-
Hi there, I know that I can't help but just wanted to let you know that we are in a similar situation. We have an e-commerce site (so slightly different) but we have no dodgy back links, have been as clean as possible and each and every description we write is original. We have a lot of content and none of it is duplicated anywhere on web.
On Sep 23 we dropped from #1 or #2 down to page 2. Yet in our place are some sites with copied content. The top 2 spots seem to have gone to newer sites which do have original descriptions which has me wondering if we should be changing our product descriptions on a regular basis (any ideas?)
One last note if this is also about customer behaviour we have pretty good interaction, a lowish bounce rate and good engagement for a retail site.
So like you I am at a loss to see why we have been penalised by an change which is supposed to help small sites with original content and good engagement!
-
Hi JVRudnick,
No worries, see the above post and thanks for showing an interest in my problem/discussion.
-
No worries,
I can share here for you to look at and to help others who may also be interested (or disagree).
So the domain is Followuk.co.uk and seems the whole site has taken a hit but to make this more targeted im looking at the page Followuk.co.uk/bank-holidays - and the target term for this page is -> Bank Holidays 2015 in Google UK and although this may seem a small term this term and its variations receive millions of queries a month.
I could except the drop if it was related to the link profile as currently a little weak but according to my analytic's traffic dropped on the 23rd (inline with the panda rollout) which targets thin/low quality sites if im correct.
Now where it becomes interesting is im not complaining about not being higher up, but the fact I WAS on page 1 and had been for over 2 years, on the 23rd the page was demoted to page 6/7 while thin/low quality sites have been given higher positions or stayed neutral.
In this case the Panda update looks to be doing more damage then good for example take the second result - http://www.year-planner-calendar.wanadoo.co.uk/2015-public-holidays-bank-holidays-bank-holiday-dates.htm
Surely this comes under the types of sites Panda is looking to target -> thin, low quality, advertising heavy, spammy etc - BUT Google's algo thinks this is the second most relevant 'quality' site it should show to it's millions of users querying those terms and its not the only site like that in the top 10.
And I just want to say I dont think I should be number 1 or 2, 3 because there are better sites which deserve those positions but do I think I should be in the top 10... Yes.
I would love to know if Google thought the above was the right thing for the algo to do because to me looking at it as if I was an outsider (which I try) this is a straight out.
Fail.
-
LIke iQ above, yes, I'd like to see the URL too...if you'd PM me too I'll take a look/see and get back to you as well...
Jim
-
Do you fancy PM'ing me details of your site & search terms for me to take a look? I would be interested to see cases like this.
-Andy
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
-
For an e-commerce product category page that has several funnels to specific products, for SEO purposes does it matter whether the category page's overview content is above or below those funnels?
We manage an e-commerce site. On a category page, there are several funnels to specific products. We moved the category overview content below those funnels to make it easier for users to quickly get to products. Seems more user friendly to me, but could that move of the main content to the lower part of the page be a negative ranking factor?
On-Page Optimization | | PKI_Niles0 -
What are good tests to propose different SEO agencies when you're trying to vet them?
We are trying to narrow down our SEO agency list and I was told to propose 5 different tests. I'm not sure where to start. I also want these tests to help me understand what these companies can do for mine.
On-Page Optimization | | NBJ_SM0 -
Why would a competitor brand appear in our meta? - (i've never seen this before)
Why would competitor sweetwater appear in americanmusical.com meta? For example, Google: site:americanmusical.com ext:pdf rebate You will see this result: PDF]Nord Stage 2 EX $500 Rebate Form - Sweetwater <cite class="_Rm">https://www.americanmusical.com/ItemFiles/Rebate/NordStage2EX_05312017.pdf</cite>Your page is not mobile-friendly.May 31, 2017 - REBATE DETAILS: To receive your $500 rebate, send your completed form with a copy of your invoice or receipt and UPC codes to either the.
On-Page Optimization | | seo20170 -
Review rich snippet with reviews hosted on customer feedback company's website?
Is it possible to enable rich snippets for reviews that are not visible on the page in question? A restaurant's Wordpress website mentions the average rating but the actual customer feedback and reviews are displayed on a page on the website of the feedback company. Would it be enough to implement a small widget (displays star rating, number of reviews and links to the review page) and add microdata/J-SON to convince search engines that the reviews are legit? Thanks in advance! Bas
On-Page Optimization | | SEO-Bas0 -
Hiding body copy with a 'read more' drop down option
Hi I just want to confirm how potentially damaging using java script to hide lots of on page body copy with a 'read more' button is ? As per other moz Q&A threads i was told that best not to use Javascript to do this & instead "if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable <DIV> tags it's totally fine" so thats what i advised my clients dev. However i recently noticed a big drop in rankings aprox 1 weeks after dev changing the body copy format (hiding alot of it behind a 'read more' button) so i asked them to confirm how they did implement it and they said: "done in javascript but on page load the text is defaulting to show" (which is contrary to my instructions) So how likely is it that this is causing problems ? since coincides with ranking drop OR if text is defaulting to show it should be ok/not cause probs ? And should i request that they redo as originally instructed (css & collapsible divs) asap ? All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Number of pages crawled in dropping from 4 to 2
The report on our campaign shows that up to 2 pages are being crawled now from 4. However, our site has more pages than this. We recently inserted code to allow crawlers. what can we do to resolve this? please assist.v
On-Page Optimization | | seoworx1230 -
Only 1 Page Being Crawled
I have a website I'm tracking www.alhi.com. But my report is saying that only 1 page is being crawled each update. My campaign is set up for the sub domain www.alhi.com, so I'm not sure why I would have this issue. Can you help? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeslieVS0 -
Is 1 design better than another?
I'm tracking two of my sites joeandcindy.com and minnesotashortsaleteam.com, both sites were done in wordpress however by different web designers. the Minnesota short sale site has gotten high rankings for several key terms without doing any link building or really any other off site optimization. I'm getting ready to have another site built and I'm wondering if there is something simple in the basic architecture of the site that is superior with the minnesota short sale site vs the joeandcindy.com site. If you could take quick glance and point me in the right direction I would appreciate it. Thanks www.Joeandcindy.com www.Minnesotashortsaleteam.com
On-Page Optimization | | jjwelu0