Apparently there was a big Panda update a few days ago affecting 3-5% of search queries.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4704237.htm
Anyone affected? Overall, I’m not seeing any change in new visits from Googleâ¦
Would be nice to get a bump upwards out of it, but I’m happy with no change at all.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
It’s hard to tell, there is a slight down starting on Monday 21 Sept, but that could just be the normal weekday slowdown. Not seeing anything massive or anything that really stands out. Similar across all sites, which makes me unsure if it’s just a general thing or a update. Your curve looks quick similar to mine.
For me there is a more obvious decline in traffic starting 1 Sept, coinciding with the odd sales we all seen. Again its across all sites which makes me think it’s not a Google thing.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
My numbers are pretty flat.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
No change here that I can see.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
Just thought I would put this out there and see if anyone else has seen anything strange…
We’ve been checking our UK position for BlokeToys over the last couple of days and see a massive problem. While some pages have crept up onto page one of the results, Amazon and our biggest UK toy sites still dominate for almost every single item (no change there, helping small business my arse!) We’re also seeing the almost empty pages of a wholesaler appearing in the top five.
This company supplies to businesses, and the pages appearing have a title, product name (same as title) and a 50 word description (in some cases no description at all). There’s one small image, no price, no ordering info, no reviews. They’re blank pages apart from title, product name, image and stock level. It requires sign-in to look at anything more.
How the hell is this site getting such a high position consistently? There is absolutely no reason for it.
Anyone else been seeing anything odd and unexplained since this last update?
Regardless of what Google says, there seems to be no change at all, no benefits to real small businesses. The corporate monsters still run the show and we’re fucked over a barrel once more.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
Conran - read this articleâ¦
http://macedynamics.com/research/content-quality-score/
And pay primary attention to the sections about Authority and Trust. I’m guessing you lack authority and trust (relative to your competitors).
Now watch this video…
http://moz.com/blog/google-keyword-relevance-whiteboard-friday
It answers the question of “why does that website rank so well when their page on that topic isn’t all that good?”
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
Thanks for those links, plenty there to read through but a cursory look tells me this is what we’ve already been adhering to. I’ve read much of that before and you know I’ve been a big proponent of original quality text for a while. We don’t copy in any descriptions.
If anything it raises more questions about how the other site is ranking so highly, their content doesn’t meet any of the basic requirements. If Google really is presenting content by calculating this combined score of pages the wholesaler site appearing in the top five should be on page 50, beaten by plenty of sites with all the basic information.
We are doing far better on products with reviews, and we are looking at what else we can add to product pages to make them more useful too (without duplicating that across the entire site), it’s just disappointing to see such a poor site doing so well and beating us, when we offer far more than they do.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
Apparently it went after a lot of “then content” like lots of lyrics and game sites.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
I’m hearing that too, but in our case that’s not what has happened.
Take a look at this.
This is an example of a page beating us in Google.co.uk for one item, one of many from this one site. It seems every one of their products is placed higher than ours, and higher than many other retailers with far more content and more adequate user experience.
How the hell can Google suggest that this is a quality site with user content someone searching for this product would want to see?
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
[QUOTE=conran;153225]I’m hearing that too, but in our case that’s not what has happened.
Take a look at this.
This is an example of a page beating us in Google.co.uk for one item, one of many from this one site. It seems every one of their products is placed higher than ours, and higher than many other retailers with far more content and more adequate user experience.
How the hell can Google suggest that this is a quality site with user content someone searching for this product would want to see?[/QUOTE]
I explained that above. Sites with thin content can rank above sites with better content if the site has more authority and trust with Google. You’ve done something to lose trust and authority with Google. Fix that and you fix your problems. It’s not all about content quality.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
How does that explain this site being positioned higher than all the other UK adult retail sites in the UK? There are several instances of pages just like this one from this company beating sextoys, lovehoney, prowler, bent and clonezone. It’s even beating AMAZON for several items with pages exactly like the one I’ve shown above.
If this is about trust, how the fuck is it beating every major adult retailer in the UK for various items, with almost completely empty pages?
The trust issue is obviously not what is causing this company to dominate for so many things.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
I am sorry to say but part of the “algorithm” includes those who buy Google Ads.
Let’s take it as the âPanda dietâ. This diet consists among other things of removing pages that no or low quality content from the search engineâs index. And those who buy Google ads. It’s like a smoothy or smoothie.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
[QUOTE=conran;153230]How does that explain this site being positioned higher than all the other UK adult retail sites in the UK? There are several instances of pages just like this one from this company beating sextoys, lovehoney, prowler, bent and clonezone. It’s even beating AMAZON for several items with pages exactly like the one I’ve shown above.
If this is about trust, how the fuck is it beating every major adult retailer in the UK for various items, with almost completely empty pages?
The trust issue is obviously not what is causing this company to dominate for so many things.[/QUOTE]
Watch the video I shared above. It explains exactly that issue.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
Rather than start a new thread…
Does anyone have any information regarding SEO and a dedicated IP? I’ve been looking for information on this for a few days and I can’t seem to find anything absolute, but given our shop is hosted on an IP with more than 27,000 other sites we’re thinking this might be a major problem. The competition all seems to be on dedicated IP’s and all the well-ranking sites I’m associated with currently doing well are also on dedicated IP’s (or have other company properties on that IP).
Me thinks this could be a major “trust issue”.
Any help would be appreciated on this, it’s not something I’ve ever encountered before, and it doesn’t seem that any SEO sites/companies really mention it at all.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
[QUOTE=conran;153258]Does anyone have any information regarding SEO and a dedicated IP? I’ve been looking for information on this for a few days and I can’t seem to find anything absolute, but given our shop is hosted on an IP with more than 27,000 other sites we’re thinking this might be a major problem. The competition all seems to be on dedicated IP’s and all the well-ranking sites I’m associated with currently doing well are also on dedicated IP’s (or have other company properties on that IP).
Me thinks this could be a major “trust issue”.[/QUOTE]
Are we talking something like a Yahoo! store, or a mishmash of 27,000 different types of sites?
While Google says you won’t be penalized for the actions of other sites on the same IP, I would almost put money on the fact that they factor shared hosting into their algorithms. If you have a store, they’re going to want to see SSL (at least for the checkout process - it’s a “your money or your life” scenario), and that has to happen on either a dedicated IP or with a multi-domain SSL cert (where it’s one owner per cert/IP).
So yes, when it comes to e-commerce, I can’t see Google thinking a site is trustworthy or authoritative unless the owners have invested enough into the site to have SSL - which means the owner has their own IP (even if they put multiple of their own domains on the same IP). Unless they were on a platform like Yahoo! Stores - those tend to be trustworthy stores because they have Yahoo! backing them and lending credibility.
And that’s been my point above. It’s not just about the textual quality of your site. There are other important factors in Google’s algorithm that can tank a site with good content.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
Thanks.
Yes there are 27,000 other sites of all kinds, and seemingly not all stores. Doing a search on the IP itself results in masses of reports of abuse, from illegal content to malware. This is something no one ever mentioned to us, but we were forced into looking into this after the IP (and our domain) was flagged for spam emails.
From what we can gather, the IP is registered to our host, covering all these sites, but the shop platform is controlled by another party. The shop does have a shared SSL, but I really think there’s somewhat of a “lethal combination” of issues here affecting us.
Session ID’s, the shared SSL in association with that IP, the reports of abuse for the hosting company, the fact that it’s not a dedicated IP… all of these things are, I think, contributing to the lack of Google attention for hundreds of our items.
So, after a little thinking about it, and seeing that the cost of setting up another site ourselves from scratch would be only a little more than we’re already paying, we’ve decided we have nothing to loose from migrating and starting over with a traditional self-install.
It’s not like this site is delivering a massive amount of income. It’s paying for itself, but we just need to push it over the edge to make it a truly viable entity of its own. Hopefully, this move will do that.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
BTW, Panda is STILL being rolled out (believe it or not)⦠It’s a particularly long rollout for some reason.
Re: Big Panda Update - Anyone Affected?
I suppose as long its being rolled out they won’t be rolling out another update at the same time.