Penguin 3.0
-
I saw slight drop yesterday after the penguin rollout, about 3 - 4 spots lower on targeted KW's. However, I'm still on first page for those KW, just near the bottom as opposed to near the top.
I'm wondering if anyone else experienced, or has experienced with past Penguin updates, a "slight" dip in rankings.
What actions did you take, if any? I'm inclined to simply focus on building better links rather than disavow given the lack of severity.
With that said, I would love some feedback or suggestions from anyone who experienced what I would consider a "less severe" penalty (3 - 4 spots, still on first page).
-
Thanks for the feedback. I'm happy to see that my site benefitted from Google refining P3 or that a Panda refresh potentially helped rankings.
Either way, it was a great learning experience that resulted in me improving the back link profile while improving the onsite user experience.
Thank you again for all your feedback.
-
Interesting. Thanks for the update.
Something doesn't make sense though. If Penguin 3.0 affected you, then cleaning up the links would not make a difference until Google reran the algorithm. The way that Penguin works is that Google gathers data about your link profile and then takes some time to process that data and then when they run Penguin you see the results of whether or not they trust your links. So, your recent bounce up is probably not because of your link cleanup because they are still working on the data that was gathered in mid September.
I have seen a number of sites that have been bouncing up and down over the last few weeks. It's like Google is testing and refining Penguin. As such, you may see things drop again...or perhaps you may not.
To confuse matters, there appears to have been a big unannounced Panda refresh in the last few days too and many sites saw a big jump (or drop) with this.
Things are definitely very volatile right now. Let us know if things change but hopefully you continue to do well!
-
UPDATE - Cleaned up links and now see rankings restored to their pre-P3 numbers.
Thanks again to everyone who responded.
If anyone has any questions about what/how I did it, feel free to PM me.
-
I've responded to the OP in private, but felt it was important to update this question in case it will help others who read this question.
The backlink profile of this site had a lot of unnatural links - low quality directory links, low quality guest posting/articles, and profiles set up for the purpose of getting a link - all anchored with a keyword for which they wanted to rank. A natural link is one that is not a self made link (with a few exceptions). If you're trying to figure out whether a link is unnatural, I wrote an article on Moz that may help: http://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines
Is this a Penguin hit? Probably. It is exactly the kind of backlink profile that Penguin goes after. Why was it only a few spots and not a few pages? That's hard to say. I only spent a few minutes and focused on the unnatural links, so it's possible that there were natural links there that I didn't see. It's also possible that Google really does want to show this site as the best answer to users' queries and didn't demote it completely. It's also possible that some of the unnatural links weren't picked up by Penguin as many of the low quality articles weren't on my blacklist. They may be on a private blog network perhaps. Actually, that's another good point...if you have private blog network links then it's possible that they were affected by Penguin and you have lost link equity from them and perhaps this is not a direct Penguin hit after all. At this point, we are in early days with Penguin 3.0 so it's hard to say what is happening. But, what I can say is that a link cleanup needs to be done for sure.
-
Hi,
Can you PM me your PM name? I tried both your actual name and name listed above, but neither worked.
NVM - I figured it out. PM sent.
-
Hi,
Thanks so much. PM sent. I really appreciate it.
-
If you've truly been earning links and not making your own then likely you need to just keep doing what you're doing. I'm happy to take a quick look if you'd like to pm me your site, just to be sure. It may not be right away though. I wish Google didn't update Penguin on the weekend!
-
Thank you.
Most of what I have read online regarding Penguin penalties involves a substantial hit. However, I have seen some folks discussing slight drops. As Andy said above, that could be due to competitors cleaning their profiles and moving up. It's so hard to say with a 3 - 4 spot drop, especially when you're still on the same page.
What actions, if any, do you recommend?
By building, I meant earning.
-
Excellent point! I didn't even think of that. So you think such a slight drop is not likely any sort of Penguin penalty, but rather that my competitors received a boost from cleaning up their profiles Hadn't even considered that.
Thank you for your response and for your original post alerting us that Penguin had rolled out.
-
The majority of people in the SEO world believe that if Penguin hits you, it hits you HARD. But, I don't agree with this. John Mueller from Google has said that it can affect a site incrementally. I've seen sites that took a dip with a Penguin update of only a few positions, or perhaps from page 1 to page 2. With this update so far I'm seeing some sites that improved from page 2 to page 1.
However, it's also possible that your drop is because you've got competitors who are recovering after doing a thorough link cleanup and now appearing above you.
"I'm inclined to simply focus on building better links rather than disavow given the lack of severity. "
Are you building links or earning links? If you're building links what kind are you building? These could be the problem. A lot of what people used to call "natural" is no longer considered natural. If you've been making your own links then it's possible a disavow is in order.
-
Depends on the SERP page, some of our keywords move around like that on a daily basic as they are a active SERP results.
It doesn't sound like you have been penalised with such a small drop. Probably more likely others have benefited by having old penalties lifted. I would just carry on with what you are doing and building better links
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
-
Penguin 3.0 Site Dropped after Update
Hi We was hit by the Penguin update a long time ago and we lost a lot of traffic/positions because of this. For a long time we worked really hard to identify all off our links that may have caused us to recieve this penalty. After Months of work we submitted the disavow file and reconsideration request and in June 2014 we recieved confirmation from google in webmaster tools that the manual spam action had been revoked. over time we then started to recieve more traffic and better positions in the serps, however since penguin 3.0 we have dropped again for a range of keywords. many going from page 1 to 2 or page 2 to 3/4 Any ideas what we should do here , any help will be really appriciated as I'm totally confused We havent done any link building at all since the penalty / recovery
Algorithm Updates | | AMG1000 -
Penguin Strategy Idea
Hello, So while I sit and wait for Penguin to hopefully ease up on my site, would it be smart to create a new site and then forward the old penguin hit site to it after the dust clears and any issues are better? I have heard some people say you never recover from an algo penalty? While others say to wait it out. So just curious what you think? Would you ditch a site that is not super followed or popular? in the attempt to create a site with no bad backlinks and start fresh? Thank you for your thoughts
Algorithm Updates | | Berner0 -
3 Subdomains - Can their authority or ranking affect each other?
HI, We have 3 different subdomains that target completely different industries.
Algorithm Updates | | danialniazi
a.example.com - school reviews
b.example.com - healthcare reviews
c.example.com - car reviews Q1: If any of the above subdomains gets demoted or penalized by Google would that affect the other subdomains? Q2: Moving forward with all the new changes in SEO, penalties, etc; would it be wise to utilize 3 subdomains for different industries or should we consider getting separate domains?0 -
What our next step after hitting by Penguin 2.0
Hi Everyone, Any idea about what the next step after hitting by Penguin 2.0 We go for more link building or content optimization or some thing else..?
Algorithm Updates | | lucidsoftech0 -
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 to Link a Network of Sites w/o Penguin Penalties (header links)
I work for a network of sites that offer up country exclusive content. The content for the US will be different than Canada, Australia, Uk, etc.… but with the same subjects. Now to make navigation easy we have included in the header of every page a drop down that has links to the other countries, like what most of you do with facebook/twitter buttons. Now every page on every site has the same link, with the same anchor text. Example: Penguins in Canada Penguins in Australia Penguins in the USA Because every page of every site has the same links (it's in the header) the "links containing this anchor text" ratio is through the roof in Open Site Explorer. Do you think this would be a reason for penguin penalization? If you think this would hurt you, what would you suggest? no follow links? Remove the links entirely and create a single page of links? other suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | BeTheBoss0 -
Food for thought: The Penguin Catch-22
I've been reading about and helping a lot of people who were hit by the Penguin update over the last couple of days, and the update seems to be accomplishing what Google intended it to accomplish... it's scaring people straight. I've picked up two new clients this week who now only want to practice "Good SEO" and "Do it the right way." This is a good thing for me and for the quality of the net, don't get me wrong. It does make me a little nervous though that the SEO industry is going to be tarnished a bit. Google is making a pretty clear statement with Penguin, which I think boils down to "Don't do anything other than create good content, provide accurate descriptions, and establish good connections to SEO your site... or beware ." (other than technical stuff - 301/ canonical / crawler management / etc). So riddle me this Batman... As a proud Journeyman, how is the followed backlink on my SEOMoz profile page going to appear to Google? This is an SEO site with SEO content and SEO tools and SEO in the URL. The site listed below the first followed URL on my profile is an SEO site that's in development. So there's a link to my site and every bit of context around it screams SEO. But... it is a very nice link indeed, I really do like it, and this is a white-hat kind of place. Do you think Google will start penalizing sites with inbound links from pages that are related to SEO, even if the page promotes respectable tactics? If so, I'll be having nightmares about a very round Danny DeVito with a pointy nose and creepy hands chasing me through the sewers for weeks to come...
Algorithm Updates | | Anthony_NorthSEO1 -
Any insight on what factors Penguin is looking at?
Anyone have insight into what specific factors penguin is targeting and how it works? Matt Cutts seemed to infer that the site was targeting things such as spun content, keyword stuffing, etc. but most of the sites that have been hit that I've seen aren't doing any obvious content spamming like that. For example: Is penguin looking primarily at onsite or backlink factors? Does Penguin just discount spammy backlinks, or does it apply an additional penalty to sites that have poor quality backlinks? Anyone noticing specific onsite or offsite factors that correlate with whether a site has been hit or not?
Algorithm Updates | | AdamThompson3
