Comments on: Why Google’s Panda Update is Different to All That Have Gone Before

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:35:47 +0000

Nice post. I’ve never heard anybody use the phrase “sweet traffic nectar” before, but I guess that’s about right lol..

It’s nice to see that you list off site factors in your post. So many people are under the impression that Panda only affects site content. I got hit by the Oct. update. And I am certain it was all about backlinks.

The good news was that it didn’t take too much work to bring them back.

By: Foster Favian

Foster Favian — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:25:07 +0000

I have read the public affirmation from Google which states that that Panda 2 revise will be in power soon, that’ll as well influence different than English languages and will go worldwide. Since March, I gained extra top 10 Google search positions, as top positions become better and do not contain numerous web directories, auto-blogs and duplicate content. I think thats why, all around webmaster’s and search engine optimization user discussion forums it was labeled “farmer update”.

By: Jeff Weiss

Jeff Weiss — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 06:55:55 +0000

This is probably the most detailed assessment of Panda I’ve seen. “Creating good content” only goes so far in explaining how to fix a huge drop. “Having duplicate content under multiple ‘tags’ within a blog” is something very concrete that can be fixed by most bloggers, although it could be time-consuming if you’ve been a frequent poster for many years. But who knew this would be coming a few years ago? Moving forward, most of these are easy things to change, especially for new sites. But when you have sites that are a few years old, domain age can give you a boost in ranking so it’s probably worth it to keep them and make changes. Social activity is weighted heavily these days and while also time consuming, it’s fairly simple to implement. Look for a huge increase in the number of Twitter accounts and Facebook Fan pages. Awesome info!

By: Ruud Hein

Ruud Hein — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:47:20 +0000

In reply to m0thman.

Could be. With search it’s pretty much an “anything is possible” kind of thing. Of course not everything is probable 🙂

Faced with your situation I would (in no particular order):

– figure out if the correlated dropping in ranking equals causation: something else could be going on
– see if specific pages or the whole site is involved: Panda typically hits pages, not sites
– look at the % changes in queries and traffic: are some queries affected or are whole categories of queries down the drain

By comparing pages that were hurt with pages that are still OK and queries that went down vs queries that are still OK you can get a sense of what may be different. That difference may not strike you as something “wrong” — but that difference could be the drop that makes the bucket spill over.

By: m0thman

m0thman — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 00:27:09 +0000

An insightful report. I have two websites that were hit by the Panda update and quite a few that I built that weren’t. In some cases I can see what I did wrong but in others I genuinely can’t. Could this be collateral damage?

By: Paul Forcey

Paul Forcey — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 02:32:20 +0000

Good layout of what it appears they are looking for..

But if the data is only renewed every few months does that mean that I may as well go and start a new site up?

Now I (think I) know what Google want (for now) and I know which keywords make money (from the pre Panda slaughterfest) I can go buy a domain and just start again with some niches.

Why work on fixing old sites when you can go and build new sites and find out if they work quicker than waiting for the old sites to be dealt with.

It may just be my back pain pills kicking in, but doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole idea of improving the search results?

By: Michelle Fradella-Barfuss

Michelle Fradella-Barfuss — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:03:51 +0000

Great post. I appreciate the list of variables that may be at play for a site. I don’t think I’ve seen it labeled so well in other posts about the Panda update. Definitely didn’t think that they are delaying their update of the algorithms. VERY interesting information to know!! Thanks for the post!