Hi,

we have some articles like this:

http://www.schicksal.com/Orakel/Freitag-13

The main image has a width of 100% and a height of 100%. Today, I've discovered that GWT Instant Preview has some troubles with rendering the page.

We have CSS rules to deliver the image with the right dimensions. If a bot like google is not sending any screen height / width we assume the screen size is 2560x1440.

Does this harm the ranking of the page? (Content starts below the fold/image) What is a "default" screen size for google? How do they determine if something is "above the fold"?

Any tips or ideas?

Best wishes,

Georg.

Still no progress. So we have decided to rename our main urls and run into the next mess, have a look here: http://www.seo-stories.com/post/31927940673/google-penguin-penalty-duplicate-content-problem

Hi Andy,

no, thats not the case at my site.

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi Peter,

thanks for your answer!

Well, it's even more complicated!

It's an astrology calendar with planet aspect data for each day starting from 1900-01-01 to 2099-12-31, so there are around 73,000 pages, it's a big database.

People are searching for a date and the planet aspects. So I need the "old pages" and the future pages in the index.

People are also searching their birthday and want to know their zodiac. My calendar is providing this info.

This is an example:
http://www.schicksal.com/horoskop/tageshoroskop/1951/09/10

The best thing is to do nothing at the moment I think. The alternativ is to cut the content of the current day from the main page and let the user click a button which redirects to the current day page. But this is not user friendly and I will do nothing at them moment.

Any other idea would be great

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi Muhammed,

because the content is different. This would devaluate all calendar pages.

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi,

I've a calender page which changes every day.

The main url is
/calendar

For every day, there is another url:

/calendar/2012/09/12
/calendar/2012/09/13
/calendar/2012/09/14

So, if the 13th september arrives, the content of the page 
/calendar/2012/09/13
will be shown at
/calendar

So, it's duplicate content.

What to do in this situation?

a) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 301? (but the redirect changes the day after to  /calendar/2012/09/14)

b) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 302 (but I will loose the link juice of /calendar?)

c) Add a canonical tag at /calendar (which leads to /calendar/2012/09/13) - but I will loose the power of /calendar (?) - and it will change every day...

Any ideas or other suggestions?

Best wishes,

Georg.

Oh, very cool site! Thanks for the info!

Hi Peter,

were there any major google ranking updates in the last days? (end of july?)

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi Steven,

in the last days it got even worse (!). We lost the number 1 position of our main keyword. Also keyword combinations. So we have lost again half of our remaining traffic.

I am pretty frustrated, I need some time to analyze this new situation. I will post the new findings here in some days.

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi Grace,

thanks for your long post and for sharing your experience! Well, I am using a different software / content mangement system, so I am not able to have the same issue as you.

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi Roy,

yep, the turnover also went down. But not 50% but like 35%. We are still working very hard to get the turnaround...

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi Peter,

thanks for the link!

Well, that are really bad news

Quote:

• Wait for news of a future Penguin Update and see if you recover after it happens
• If it doesn’t, try further cleaning or consider starting over with a fresh site

We can't change the domain - that is our brand...

Do you know the cycle of the panda updates? What do you think, when will be the next penguin update?

The good news this week: Some of our rankings are coming back slowly.

Best wishes,

Georg.

Here is the complete analysis why we have lost our rankings: http://www.seo-stories.com/post/22524770229/how-to-get-back-the-rankings-after-the-penguin-update

Furthermore I've described all our actions so far to regain our rankings after the penguin ate the half of our fish.

Hi girls & boys,

today, I've made some on page analysis. I've found out that Google is delivering the "wrong" page from our site at several keywords.

I think this is a very strong signal that onpage optimization is penalized in some way.

But have a look at my new blog post:

Penguin ranking analysis - downgraded due to on page over optimization

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi girls and guys,

nothing has been changed so far. But I've written a new blog post:

After the penguin update disaster: Confessions of a bad seo guy: http://www.seo-stories.com/post/22062656569/after-the-penguin-update-disaster-confessions-of-a-bad

@ Alan: In this post I've described the reasons of our activities.

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi Alan,

if it would be that easy...

I will write a blog post about all our seo activities in the past years and the reason why we did this. I would ask you again after you know all details...

@ Rand: Thanks! Well, it took 3h to have a domain, a website and got alltogether into the google index... I wrote a separate blog post about that

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi girls + boys,

after being so frustraded about this penguin update, I've started a blog today: The SEO Stories (@SEOStories)

I will there report my activities to bring my site back to the top rankings. I would be glad about some support...

I hope, you will like my kind of humour...

http://www.seo-stories.com/post/21985421183/google-called-the-25th-april-2012-ranking-update

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi Josh,

thank you very much for your analysis!!!

How do you find out if a page / domain is "spam flagged"? Do they harm our site?

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi,

now I've removed a lot of seo onpage tweaks. We will see if this would help something. I will write a detailled report later on.

Best wishes,
Georg.

Hi Josh,

have a look here:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/schicksal.com

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi Josh,

it's www.schicksal.com

I've altered the source code meanwhile, I've removed some keyword links. I will report this later on.

Best wishes,

Georg.

More info about penguin at search engine land - Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice

After a very hard night and a lot of thinking, I've an idea.

We are using a lot of "keyword links" on our site.

It's - by the way - http://www.schicksal.com - an astrology site. We have lost 72% visibility - according to figures of sistrix.com.

So, we are doing this:

Zodiacs

Description of Zodiacs

Now a list with zodiacs

Aries (longer, descriptive title

short description of aries

In that case the "aries" keyword in the description is getting the link to the article.

I think, google doesn't like this after pengiun.

So, what is better:

a)

Aries

description

b)

Aries

description ... read more

What do you think?

Best wishes,

Georg.

link-spam.png

Google provides a form where you can them that your site was hit by error: http://searchengineland.com/penguin-update-peck-your-site-by-mistake-googles-got-a-form-for-that-119698

Damn, it's the penguin update...

http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623

Hi,

thanks for all responses so far!

I've looked in our access stats... Today we will have less visitors than yesterday, so the nitemare is still not over...

I don't think it's a good idea to wait some days and do nothing. There must be a reason for this - a penalty or a ranking algo change. And the only way around is to remove the "thing" which caused the mess.

Possibly reasons:

1. Over optimized on page (could be) - restructure site and recode html
2. Bad links (can't be removed easily) which are punished by google

I can't restructure / recode the site within days but within 1-2 weeks. If we get back the top positions meanwhile, I will also apply the new code to be fit for the future.

Have I overseen a thing?

Best wishes,

Georg.

No, we have no paid links. We have written several articles which were sent to press agencies over the years. Blogs, newspapers, other sites etc. are linking our content.

Hi Matt,

thank you for your advices! I will have a look at Rands whiteboard. So your suggestion is to reformat / restructure the html code to get out of this?

Best wishes,

Georg.

Hi Ivo,

thanks for your fast answer and the link to article! We have not done any article spinning (I didn't know about article spinning till last week...). We have not done any link building for the high traffic keywords, but we have done link building for other keywords (which are not affected).

No, we had no break down a month ago, I've attached our analytics...

So, if it's a penalty - what to do?

Best wishes,

Georg.

lTUzy.png

Hi girls + guys,

a site of us were hit by a google update or a google penalty. We have lost 50% google traffic in one day (25th april, 2012). (Total visitors in average per day: 6k, yesterday: 3k)

It's a german website, so I think google.de (germany) was updated. Our rankings in google.at (austria) are also affected, but it's not that bad as in google.de.

We have not done any specific on page seo activities in the last two months. GWT doesn't have any message for us (no critical errors).

After my first analyse I can say this:

• google has indexed 17k pages (thats fine)
• we are on 1st place with our domain name
• the last three days, the google traffic went up (+20%), but yesterday it was 50% below average (so -70%)
• last week we had a very good day, we had twice the traffic than normal, but this calmed down the following days
• we have lost number no. 1 places at two high traffic keywords. We had these no 1 rankings for years. We have been outranked by two of our competitors, but they have not done any onpage changes.
• We have lost a lot of positions at a lot of keywords. But there are also keywords which moved up.
• We have good content, useres are visiting 5 pages in average.
• No virus, no hacker (no hidden cloaking page)
• it's an old domain (2002)
• Lot of (good) inbound links
• Lot's of likes, g+. Good twitter activty.

So, all in all I think it's more likely a ranking algo change than a penalty (a penalty for what reason?)

My specific question(s): Is there any "check list" which could help me to find out the reason for this mess?

What is the best strategy to regain the positions? New HTML code? New On page seo? (seomoz grades most of our important pages an A)

Any idea would be appreciated!

Best wishes,
Georg.