Phantom 3 Update?
-
My site got demolished by this update and I really don't know why and would appreciate if any Mozzers could help me out to understand this. I just found out about this update that happened today and I am kind of shocked and at a loss on what happened.
If someone would PM me, I would really appreciate it
Thanks!
-
Hi Steven,
It's very hard to find definitive info about this update since, to my understanding, Google is yet to even confirm that it happened but from what I can gather, it was another revision of onsite quality. Search Engine Land has about the most helpful article I've managed to find on it yet.
To save you some legwork, one of Search Engine Land's previous posts on the topic (linked to in the one above) also provides a link to two Google resources on this topic. Note that they're old links more related to Panda but it does talk about what Google views as "quality" which is what this Phantom update is focussed on.
More guidance on building high-quality sites
Search Console Help: Create Valuable Content
There's a bit of reading there but hopefully it's helpful.
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
-
I was wondering, do you know when you see updated results for a sporting event in the google search.
I was wondering, do you know when you see updated results for a sporting event in the google search. Are those the result of structured data?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mycujoo0 -
Update content or create a new page for a year related blog post?
I have a page called 'video statistics 2013' which ranks really well for video stat searches and drives in a lot of traffic to the site. Am I best to just change the title etc to 2014 and update the content, or create a totally new page? The page has 2013 in the URL as well which may be a problem for just updating?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonWhiting0 -
Mission Possible? You have 3 hours to do Local SEO. Which top 5 sites do you go Social Bookmark, Local Search Engine Submit and Directory List.
Mission Possible? Here is a test. Suppose you had 3 hours (okay 7) to go and submit links, etc, on Social Bookmarking, Local Search Engines and Directories, which top 5 or more of each would you do? (Assuming your on-page is already sweetened). I just got 2 more clients and I need to get started on a few things for each. Thankful for all your advice.............
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Why is Google Reporting big increase in duplicate content after Canonicalization update?
Our web hosting company recently applied a update to our site that should have rectified Canonicalized URLs. Webmaster tools had been reporting duplicate content on pages that had a query string on the end. After the update there has been a massive jump in Webmaster tools reporting now over 800 pages of duplicate content, Up from about 100 prior to the update plus it reporting some very odd pages (see attached image) They claim they have implement Canonicalization in line with Google Panda & Penguin, but surely something is not right here and it's going to cause us a big problem with traffic. Can anyone shed any light on the situation??? Duplicate%20Content.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
How do I best optimise a page with 3 keywords that all contain 1 common word?
I am new to this so still getting to grips with a few things. I have a page here that I want to optimise for 3 keyword phrases. Towels, Egyptian Cotton Towels, Personalised Towels http://www.towelsrus.co.uk/towels/catlist_fnct561.htm SEOmoz reports a huge number of instances of the word towels overall. Title 3 URL 1 Meta Desc 5 H1 3 H2-4 1 Body 83 B / Strong 1 IMG ALT 11 Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 108How could i restructure meta tags and descriptions to still rank for these terms but reduce the level the word towels? Similarly as this is a category how can I reduce the term towels from other on page links?Also any extra advice regarding on page optimisation would be greatly appreciated to help our efforts
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
How to get better URL description when ranking #3
OK, last question of the week. I promise. I'm doing something right. I distribute for manufacturers. For some of my less known manufactuers I am #3 or #2 rank. For my main product the manufacturer is #1,2 with some numerical code as the discription. The manufacture will sell direct. To get the customers attention I need to PPC, and luckily it's inexpensive. Is there any way to control what the content is of the listing?. I would like to state in my #3 rank " 10-10-PP, In stock, same day shipping, best pricing." Does Google choose what to display and if so is there some where on my site I can influece this? For you experts, perhaps this is the joke of the week.? Please do not have a heart attack when laughing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wales0 -
Consolidating 3 regional domains
We recently took the decision to consolidate 3 domains for .com.au, .eu and .us. This decision was made before I arrived here and I'm not sure it's the right call. The proposal is to use a brand new .co (not .com isn't available) domain. The main reason is in terms of trying to build domain strength towards one domain instead or trying to grow 3 domains. We re-sell stock simlar to hotel rooms (different industry) and our site is heavily search based. So duplicate content is an issue that we hope improve on with this approach. One driver was we found for example that our Autralian site was outranking out european site in european searches. We don't want to only hold certain inventory on certain sites either because this doesn't work with our business rules. Anyway if we are to go about this, what would be the best practise in terms of going about this. Should we suddenly just close one of the domain and to a * 301 redirect or should we redirect each page individually? Someone has proposed using robots text to use a phased approach, but to my knowledge this isn't possible with robots.txt, thought a phased individual page 301 using htaccess may be possible? In terms of SEO is 1 domain generally better that 3? Is this a good strategy? What's the best 301 approach? Any other advice? Thanks J
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solas0 -
Panda Update - Challenge!
I met with a new client last week. They were very negatively impacted by the Panda update. Initially I thought the reason was pretty straight-forward and had to do with duplicate content. After my meeting with the developer, I'm stumped and I'd appreciate any ideas. Here are a few details to give you some background. The site is a very nice looking (2.0) website with good content. Basically they sell fonts. That's why I thought there could be some duplicate content issues. The developer assured me that the product detail pages are unique and he has the rel=canonical tag properly in place. I don't see any issues with the code, the content is good (not shallow), there's no advertising on the site, XML sitemap is up to date, Google webmaster indicates that the site is getting crawled with no issues. The only thing I can come up with is that it is either: Something off-page related to links or Related to the font descriptions - maybe they are getting copied and pasted from other sites...and they don't look like unique content to Google. If anyone has ideas or would like more info to help please send me a message. I greatly appreciate any feedback. Thank you, friends! LHC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhc670