are you affected by Google Panda update Oct 13 2011

[fated82]

2 of my profitable sites are still ranking well on the serps for their main keywords. In fact, most of my sub keywords shot up to page 2 ( usually page 3-4). Here is what I did.

- about 800-1000 words article
- keyword density of 2.5% - 3%
- each page links out to authority site & internal pages
- backlinks from BMR to specific pages I want to rank.

Google's main objective is to provide quality content when users do a search, so as long as we do what Google wants, it should be fine.

[ruff]

Well, my site is fairly new, about 2 months old but I thought I was building it right with good quality content and multi-tier linking. I was on 2nd page of Google for one of the terms I'm targeting, so I really thought I'm already getting there. Then suddenly, the site and all of the pages got kicked out of the rankings. Can't even find it within the 1000th results.

The site is not spammy on ads in any way. I don't even have Adsense on it because I would like to use Adsense only after the site is getting enough traffic - which it did not get to have.

The site does not have high PR links yet. Aside from being unnatural, I'm not into that point yet in my link building activities.

So there, with this 1 site I think Google punished me for being very new to the game and having no high PR links. My only plan right now is to keep adding content as I always have and keep building links as I always have too - maybe even get into building high PR links.

In my mind, I haven't done anything wrong so if this does not correct itself within a few months, I will have to reboot everything and maybe will be left a little discouraged about the system. I guess in a way, that's the comfortable thing about being new.

[Chiayee]

Originally Posted by fated82

Google's main objective is to provide quality content when users do a search, so as long as we do what Google wants, it should be fine.

Sorry, I beg to differ.

Many site are built with valuable contents and quality backlinks, and they got hit.

I can quote two affected sites in the last updates:

DaniWeb IT Discussion Community
Ask the Builder - The Home Improvement Resource

Both are aged authority sites, with tons of top notch articles and backlinks from other authority sites.

[Oranges]

From $100/day to $13 today!
I hate this game!

[Oranges]

<rant>
I'm completely screwed! Lost all my rankings, earnings! Feels like i was struck by lightening. I hate this BS! Dammit And Hey! Matt cutts and all his gay buddies and nerdy engineers, can now go back and play with their dildos, as the algo update is over and people are screwed to death!
</rant>

[Mega B]

Have noticed a few changes but nothing major,if you keep building quality links and adding decent content you wont have anything to worry about,yes they do fluctuate but if you want to stay up at the top you have to remember SEO is a ongoing job.

[Dellco]

Originally Posted by Oranges

From $100/day to $13 today!
I hate this game!

Big drop there. Not easy to build up to $100.

That's why it's called a GAME....

Adsense-SEO game is strictly for those who like torturing themselves.

[outwest]

Strangely none of the THIN one or two page EMDs i bought for backlinking my resort site, and I mean most of these have like 10 backlinks dropped at all, and I at least have 10 of these sites

is there a theme like , most of the sites that dropped for you guys are product theme sites?
I mean that kind of defines the site as an affiliate site, even without the product links being there

[Dellco]

Originally Posted by outwest

Strangely none of the THIN one or two page EMDs i bought for backlinking my resort site, and I mean most of these have like 10 backlinks dropped at all, and I at least have 10 of these sites

is there a theme like , most of the sites that dropped for you guys are product theme sites?
I mean that kind of defines the site as an affiliate site, even without the product links being there

If those thin sites have no monetization on them, I bet they are safe. I'm also seeing thin sites and even parked pages ranking well now.

It seems a common denominator for the sites that fell, is either using Adsense or affiliate links.

[dagaul101]

Google has always rewarded aged sites, but now it becomes more apparent as it punishes those that attempt to get high rankings too quickly, and unnaturally

[dagaul101]

It could possibly be that some of the links you are using with BMR have been penalised and you are reaping some of that penalty

[markowe]

Yep, I have seen this same thing - my best-performing site dropped to the no. 2 spot for its main keyword (been there all year) and all the other keywords got kicked back to page two. And this is in Google UK, btw.

My site is a built-out minisite, i.e. started life as more or less an MFA but has been beefed up a lot. Very diverse backlink profile including articles (incl. from private high-PR blog networks but also AMR-type sites), PAD backlinks, manual blog comments, Web 2.0 pyramid etc. I could still see why Google MIGHT want that kind of site out of the SERPS, but it doesn't make sense because some of my much crappier micro-niche sites are still holding firm. Obviously we are hoping this is temporary, that's a big earnings hit for me (about 50% on that site)...

Sure there are threads like this popping up every day, "what happened to my sites", and it's usually just someone's site moving around. But this time obviously something is up, there is too much similarity among the reports, so obviously we want to get to the bottom of it, that's why we do SEO.

[rinor81]

This is idiotic...

Why would Google downgrade a site with AdSense? They make their money from this...

One of my sites that got hit is an affiliate site with Amazon...

[Jasonsc]

Today one of my keywords (I guess you'd call it my main keyword) for which I have an exact match domain came back. It had been 6th, then dropped to 27th yesterday and now today is 2nd. However I was ranking top page for two other keywords as well and these are nowhere to be seen.

However, I do notice many other sites rankingwell that I've never seen before. They have exact match domains for the keywords.
It doesn't make sense that this update would give more weight to exact match domains, because that could mean very low quality sites ranking well more reasily and undermining a lot of hard work by google thus far.

Awaiting further information...

[JRemington]

Originally Posted by Dellco

If those thin sites have no monetization on them, I bet they are safe. I'm also seeing thin sites and even parked pages ranking well now.

It seems a common denominator for the sites that fell, is either using Adsense or affiliate links.

Half of the sites on the net then, at least. Still, I have no idea why Google would penalise adsense sites, they are the main earners from it.

[stelweb]

I saw deeply into what is happening atm. I looked up some of the kw [ that has the potential to make more than 100 dollars per day] in google and find that some of the sites ranking at the top that were using adsense got hit. Their competitors who were not using CPC came up. I guess this is a war against sites that use CPC for monetization. On the other hand, i am sure not all sites that use CPC will get hit. Only those that fit a profile G has in mind.

[Rukshan]

Yeah SERP has decreased! Now I'm adding more quality content to all sites. Let's see

[Dellco]

Originally Posted by JRemington

Half of the sites on the net then, at least. Still, I have no idea why Google would penalise adsense sites, they are the main earners from it.

It would make sense if you remember that the Adsense dept is separate from the Search department. What the Search department wants is different from what the Adsense dept wants.

The Adsense dept will always tell you to MAX out your ad units and even place them above the fold.

But you know, this will get you in trouble with the Search dept (excessive ads lead to penalties).

This is an internal conflict within Google.

And one more thing, Google doesn't really need the money from Adsense for Content (the ads displayed on publisher websites). They have been moving away from this since years ago, and they are flush with money.

Too much money.

[Oranges]

Originally Posted by stelweb

I saw deeply into what is happening atm. I looked up some of the kw [ that has the potential to make more than 100 dollars per day] in google and find that some of the sites ranking at the top that were using adsense got hit. Their competitors who were not using CPC came up. I guess this is a war against sites that use CPC for monetization. On the other hand, i am sure not all sites that use CPC will get hit. Only those that fit a profile G has in mind.

That's Pure BS!
To me it looks like a random update to confuse webmasters with what exactly works and what doesn't when it comes to SEO. And that is all done to stop people putting their efforts on SEO and start buying their PPC crap!

"Hey! Shopping and holiday season is on the door, let's screw some webmasters and force 'em to use PPC."

[Steve Faber]

1) People that are saying Google is penalizing sites that use Adsense need to take a step back and get away from the crack pipe. That makes absolutely no sense. They may be penalizing sites that are similar to the MFA sites from 5 years ago, but to think that they are penalizing sites simply because they use GOOGLE's OWN ADVERTISING PROGRAM just doesn't hold water. That is G's primary revenue source, and they are far from stupid over there in Happy Valley.

What I've noticed:
Lost major traffic on 5 of the 8 sites in my main portfolio. One site that has been getting over 250 visitors a day for years is now getting about 50, and one that was getting over 300 is now getting about 40. These sites have very little in common. I've used a different backlink profile on them. Some I've used both SEOL and BMR on, some of them one or the other, and others neither one.

3 are WP blogs, 1 is a MoveableType blog, and one is a static site built with a Yahoo Sitebuilder tool. They are hosted at three different hosting companies, on 4 different servers, and are in 4 completely different niches.

Age is between 7 years and 1.5 years. One has over 12,000 natural backlinks and I've not used any of the backlink networks on it. That site has over 600 pages of totally unique content, and has links to it from several big name authority sites, such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, although these are a few years old. That site has also not been updated in a long time. Tracking is Sitemeter.

One of the others has over 200 pages of unique, high quality content, with images (but no video). It is over 2.5 years old, and has a fairly high bounce rate, but an average time on site of over 4 minutes, which is very high. It went from over 300 visitors a day to 75. That one I've used BMR and SEOL on, in addition to plenty of natural link building.

I use no forum or other profile links for backlinking on any of my sites.

I really see no correlation between the amount of content, site/domain age, backlinking profile, monetization, etc.

One of my WP blogs that has only about 50 pages, but all high quality content, saw very little effect. It has plenty of affiliate links on it, and I've used BMR and SEOL on it, in addition to lots of natural link building. It's been getting over 300 uniques a day, and it still looks to be doing so. I haven't posted on it since December 2010, however.

Yes, it sucks, and hopefully for smaller marketers they are not giving an edge to the larger, Fortune 1000 sites with well established brand names, but we'll just have to wait and see how ti all shakes out.

I would suggest getting a hold of a copy of Google's 2011 Handbook for Manual Reviewers and looking at exactly what they want their human reviewers to rank sites on, then do exactly that. Here is an interesting blog post from Pot Pie Girl, where you can find a link to download it. She makes a number of other interesting observations about Google's algo updates as well.
Google Algo Changes and Google Manual Reviews - How It Works | PotPieGirl.com

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by Steve Faber

1) People that are saying Google is penalizing sites that use Adsense need to take a step back and get away from the crack pipe. That makes absolutely no sense. They may be penalizing sites that are similar to the MFA sites from 5 years ago, but to think that they are penalizing sites simply because they use GOOGLE's OWN ADVERTISING PROGRAM just doesn't hold water. That is G's primary revenue source, and they are far from stupid over there in Happy Valley.

What I've noticed:
Lost major traffic on 5 of the 8 sites in my main portfolio. One site that has been getting over 250 visitors a day for years is now getting about 50, and one that was getting over 300 is now getting about 40. These sites have very little in common. I've used a different backlink profile on them. Some I've used both SEOL and BMR on, some of them one or the other, and others neither one.

3 are WP blogs, 1 is a MoveableType blog, and one is a static site built with a Yahoo Sitebuilder tool. They are hosted at three different hosting companies, on 4 different servers, and are in 4 completely different niches.

Age is between 7 years and 1.5 years. One has over 12,000 natural backlinks and I've not used any of the backlink networks on it. That site has over 600 pages of totally unique content, and has links to it from several big name authority sites, such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, although these are a few years old. That site has also not been updated in a long time. Tracking is Sitemeter.

One of the others has over 200 pages of unique, high quality content, with images (but no video). It is over 2.5 years old, and has a fairly high bounce rate, but an average time on site of over 4 minutes, which is very high. It went from over 300 visitors a day to 75. That one I've used BMR and SEOL on, in addition to plenty of natural link building.

I use no forum or other profile links for backlinking on any of my sites.

I really see no correlation between the amount of content, site/domain age, backlinking profile, monetization, etc.

One of my WP blogs that has only about 50 pages, but all high quality content, saw very little effect. It has plenty of affiliate links on it, and I've used BMR and SEOL on it, in addition to lots of natural link building. It's been getting over 300 uniques a day, and it still looks to be doing so. I haven't posted on it since December 2010, however.

Yes, it sucks, and hopefully for smaller marketers they are not giving an edge to the larger, Fortune 1000 sites with well established brand names, but we'll just have to wait and see how ti all shakes out.

I would suggest getting a hold of a copy of Google's 2011 Handbook for Manual Reviewers and looking at exactly what they want their human reviewers to rank sites on, then do exactly that. Here is an interesting blog post from Pot Pie Girl, where you can find a link to download it. She makes a number of other interesting observations about Google's algo updates as well.
Google Algo Changes and Google Manual Reviews - How It Works | PotPieGirl.com

Why would you say adsense is their primary revenue source? It is NOT. They make most of their income through ads shown on search [ not through the publishers ]. As for the recent changes, i am not saying every site using adsense is prone to get hit. I suspect those that use above the fold ads have higher chances of getting hit. That is just my opinion.

[bcmwp]

Steve,

I had the exact same experience. My four biggest earning sites were all hit hard, and three of them had very little in common (two of them were fairly similar). One was a squeaky-white SBI! site with lots of pictures. Another was built out of an old micro niche site that had been doing especially well.

What I've noticed from what people are saying is that there seems to be no pattern at all to what happened. One of my sites should have absolutely aced any manual review, but got hit. People have had micro-nice, authority, young, old, grey hat, white hat, outlinking, not outlinking, adsense, non-adsense, etc. sites all slammed. There just seems to be no pattern, and I have no idea what to fix.

[Texjd]

Ran my reports this morning and about gagged on my coffee. The traffic was down across the board. My webiste are very diverse and many are 7-8 year old authorty sites that get a steady flow of fresh content that's all real deal. I don't use writers and most of my websites are about my areas of knowledge.

I went and checked a few serps and many of my #1 are now #5 or 6. Nothing disappeared nor got de-ndexed. My websites are diverse as you can get on different categories, format, location, and linkng.

Based on about an hour of analysis I see no one or even a couple of common factors.

I've been through this many times and I just continue to do what I do since I have no idea what the cause is at this point. Traffic down by 2/3, same with revenue.

I'm still on the frontpage so there is hope the websites will recover, but who knows.

I'm going forget about it for today and go on with my work and play.

[Steve Faber]

Originally Posted by stelweb

Why would you say adsense is their primary revenue source? It is NOT. They make most of their income through ads shown on search [ not through the publishers ]. As for the recent changes, i am not saying every site using adsense is prone to get hit. I suspect those that use above the fold ads have higher chances of getting hit. That is just my opinion.

Sorry, you are correct in that, but they make a substantial amount of revenue from the Adsense program nonetheless. Also, Google advocates above the fold placement in their heat map documentation, why would they penalize it? Not that they've never done anything contradictory before, of course.

[InitialEffort]

Looks like my thread my merged, I also like how someone is reusing the heart image I made. Good stuff.

But my sites were relatively untouched as I described. I am very pleased with this update.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by Steve Faber

Sorry, you are correct in that, but they make a substantial amount of revenue from the Adsense program nonetheless. Also, Google advocates above the fold placement in their heat map documentation, why would they penalize it? Not that they've never done anything contradictory before, of course.

Google search and adsense are entirely different things. Adsense gives us the heat map while the search team despises above the fold ads that look like something shoved into the throat of the searchers. They tend to think that the leaderboard ads on the right top or ads on the sidebar are much better choices. And rightly so, wouldn't you say? By the way, my site got hit too and it was using Infolinks above the fold. I guess we just got to wait and see what happens.

[MikeFriedman]

Originally Posted by Dellco

And one more thing, Google doesn't really need the money from Adsense for Content (the ads displayed on publisher websites). They have been moving away from this since years ago, and they are flush with money.

Too much money.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

That would be like Apple saying they are going to stop selling the iPad because they have plenty of money already.

[Dellco]

My portfolio is very diverse as well, and use HTML/WordPress/Joomla. Most got hit (mostly small hits....a few bigger ones). When you add them all up, it is BIG.

The only ones that were not touched were EMDs, and those NOT monetized at all. Yes, I have sites I make not for money.....strange as that may seem around here.

Google seems to have valued EMDs perhaps even more, with this nonsense update. Considering most EMD sites are nonsense....

All those that were hit have one thing in common - monetization.

People who cannot understand why would Google hit Adsense sites really do not understand ALL the motivations of Google and other huge global companies....and should not sneer at those who suggest so, because strange as that may seem, Google is not all about the money, as I've said before.

And for someone who has sites with no monetization, I can understand why. Google definitely has their own agendas. Just (one) agenda can be seen here - Google.org - Google Technology-Driven Philanthropy

I'm willing to bet very few guys here even know about this. Google does not promote it at all.

[stelweb]

Originally Posted by MikeFriedman

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

That would be like Apple saying they are going to stop selling the iPad because they have plenty of money already.

But if you think hard and long about it, you will also realize that adsense is the impetus for a ton of sites that look like crap. I guess the search team recently had their last straw and decided to do something about it. On the other hand, there are plenty of sites using above the fold adsense ads and are also good quality sites. If they have been hit too, i would only call it collateral damage and that is such a shame.

[cagliostro]

To add my situation to the puzzle:

9 websites, all hosted in the same ip/server.

My main $ website, 7 years old, gets now half of the traffic. And money.

My other 5 years old (travel) website lost a lot of ranking. My main keyword went from page 2 to ... i have no idea where (not in top 100 searches). Other keywords went several pages back.

Other projects i run are ok for the moment. All my websites are running Adsense and Analytics.

[natethegreat7037]

It cracks me up how much this update throws everyone into a frenzy. And then start suggesting all of these solutions to help fight it (I've seen about 18 different remedies).

First off, Google makes an absolute killing off of their ad sales so why would they punish people who promote them? In case you forgot, Google makes about 49% of the cpc...and you do the work promoting the traffic. Why would they stop doing that?? Here's an excerpt from Barrons, which mentions how google crushed wall street expectations:

Bottom-line earnings per share were reported at $9.72, significantly better than the Street/our estimates at $8.74/$8.92.
The 28% paid click growth in the third quarter was the highest paid click growth reported since the fourth-quarter of 2007 on our estimates. While there is likely a mix shift coming from more mobile searches, international and AdSense partners, the paid click growth was impressive.
With the higher volume and mix shift, cost per click was lower as a result, up 5% year-over-year (or down 3% excluding foreign exchange).
Mobile advertising continues to be a strong growth driver and likely drove a significant ramp in 28% paid click growth. Considering the near-term focus is on building the critical mass of mobile search than monetization, we think the $2.5 billion run rate signals that we are at an inflection point of mobile volume growth.
Display advertising continues to grow strongly and Google noted that its top 20 customers are now spending an average of $15 million compared to just $2 million in 2009.

So, it seems Google is just focusing on ways to EXPAND their advertising reach...Hm. After all, I've never seen a ton of insects in a tiny spider web.

So, here's a question: How does paid click growth happen? Chances are, you guessed it right.

Just ride it out for a few days, before getting hysterical.

[dp40oz]

Many people are running around like a chicken with their head cut off looking for answers as to why their sites got slapped in this last Google update. I completely understand, having a site/sites that you've put tons of work into get pushed down in the rankings is a terrible feeling and can be financially crippling, I have, and I constantly do experience this first hand.

The Reality

- Many Google SERP changes are there solely to help hide their algorithm.

They will push pages around to ensure that there is no absolute way to game rankings. Even if your page is aged and backlinked well. This has been a main job of Panda. Its not always that theres anything wrong.

- Panda's rules are there because thats what Google would like your site to be, its not necessarily what panda looks at though

Comparing sites with many colleagues over all the different Panda algos has left many of us with the same conclusion. The rules Google has told us will keep us safe are just their way of trying to get us all to "fall in line". Many great sites that follow every rule that Panda should like and reward, get penalized, just like many sites that break all rules stay at the top. Panda doesn't do what Google tells us it does.

- The rules are highly subjective as to keep us guessing and to give Google an excuse as to why sites were punished

With the rules set in place Google could make an argument that any site in the world could or should be penalized. Google could claim Apple.com has too much duplicate content, or pages with too little content if it wanted to.

- Don't kill yourself looking for answers

With any SERP change your site can come back in a few weeks and never be penalized again. On the other hand you may constantly be in a back and forth swing… who knows.

When it has been stated publicly that the algorithm has elements built in to keep you guessing, then trying to look for answers like 1 + 1 =2 is pointless. For site A, 1 + 1=2 about 90% of the time but for site B 1 + 1=2, 20% of the time. Its no fun for us but its how these things work.

It is what it is. SEO is a wild ride. To sustain a living, my advice is to have many different sites. Also developing a few tricks up your sleeve never hurts also.

[TheFBGuy]

This little site with 9 high quality unique articles survived every Panda update... never thought I would see this day. That little site was as white hat as it gets. That's why I don't waste time building these large sites, but micro niche sites. Seems like this update has no regard for whatever you do whether it's white hat or black hat, so it's not clear what Google's main objective is so far.

Still accessing the situation... and what the next course of action should be. What are the new rules now? I really thought I had SEO figured out, damn. Any statement from Google?

[Rageki]

Originally Posted by socomplete

No, not really, all of my sites are doing pretty well, I submit everything manually with unique content.

You can out rank amazon easily if you know what your doing. Alot of those amazon listings are extensions.

I agree; I see websites with only 10 backlinks rank out amazon.

[ElectronPlumber]

Let's use the tremendous wisdom and experience on this forum to figure out EXACTLY what Google changed in their algorithm in the Halloween Massacre SERP update. Admins, please don't lump this thread in with the "Anyone Noticed Changes In Google SERPS" discussion that is mostly just people complaining.

Post what you know that can help this effort! If you have five sites that went down and five that weren't, please post EVERY DETAIL about the differences that you can think of.

Please post DETAILS of your experience and lets see if collectively figure this out. I'll keep this list updated as more people post.

FACTS:

1. There was a wide reaching algorithm update on October 14th at around 2am.
2. The change was confirmed by Matt Cutts via a Tweet, although not the wide reach.

SPECULATION:

1. On page SEO factors were reduced in value.
2. Proper spelling and grammar increased in value.
3. High PR backlinks increased in value.
4. Internal linking decreased in value.
5. Exact Match Domains increased in value.
6. Adsense and Ads decreased in value.

[stelweb]

One of my sites got affected [say site1] while the other [let us call it site 2] did not. Actually, the traffic for site2 is up 400 percent.

Here are the differences:

site1:
1. monetized with CPC
2. crap comment links
3. decent content

site2:

1.not monetized yet
2.has only a few links [just directory submissions]
3.excellent content created by experienced professionals in the field [not professional writers]

[ElectronPlumber]

My Experience:

Site #1:
One of my oldest and best sites was hit with now 50% lower traffic. I had done very little backlinking on this site other than some social media and manual blog commenting. It has about 600 pages of manual high quality content and is regularly updated. Many keywords that were ranking #1-3 are now ranking #3-7 instead.

What I noticed is that the few pages that have diverse external backlinks mostly maintained their positions. Pages with nothing other than internal backlinks dropped dramatically for their targeted keywords.

The site had Google Analytics and an approx 50% bounce rate, as it was heavily targeted to driving people off the page to Amazon.

Sites #2-5:
The sites used for my backlinking experiment all increased in value FOR THE MAIN PAGE that had 90% of the backlinking for the keyword that had been backlinked. All the other pages that relied on internal links and had no backlinks dropped dramatically. Almost all long tail keyword traffic due to on page factors died.

Sites #5-10:
Similar as the others, pages with external keyword focused backlinks regardless of the quality of the links (profile, blog comment, etc) stayed about the same, pages that had no external backlinks are no longer getting long tail keyword love.

[davidtong]

@FBGuy: I'm no SEO expert, if you find something (like what the change was exactly), please do let us know. Much thanks.

*sigh* just when I started to figure out opt-in forms and consistent blog posting.

[coronaborcalis]

Here is overview of my site that got hits and its written really well because I'm hiring professional writer to write content to make sure that visitor will gets what they are looking for and since lot of website reviewing my site organically so I don't make any backlink for the site and it was there on position one for year. But now drop like a stone



This one is really poor site that made for adsense and I only have couple article for this site and If I were visitor I will close the website in a second because its pointless site. For backlink I use spammy trick. but see the spike of the traffic.



So this statement is really true

When it has been stated publicly that the algorithm has elements built in to keep you guessing, then trying to look for answers like 1 + 1 =2 is pointless. For site A, 1 + 1=2 about 90% of the time but for site B 1 + 1=2, 20% of the time. Its no fun for us but its how these things work.

[rinor81]

Originally Posted by peterjamesmorris

Exact same strategy that I use, but my main site still took a hit. My main keywords are still ranking number 1, but most of my product name keywords that subpages were ranking for have suffered.

The main keywords, but of course the product name keywords convert better...

Same here.

Have one site that got hit hard, main keyword stayed on page 1 on top while all inner pages with sub-keywords are down a few pages....so hurts...other sites seems to be intact so far...

From what I read here there is no real pattern to what has happened and all sorts of sites got hit...guess there are too many factors and we'll never know, just need to keep on building links and adding content....any other ideas?

[Phil72]

For no reason other than to join in on the global self commiseration... here is what happened to one of my sites I had been building up for nearly a year....

img822.imageshack.us/img822/1680/trafficdrop.jpg

300-400 per day down to 40-50 per day - with Adsense earnings following suit.

Thank you Google, though you simply run a search engine and we have no reason to expect free traffic from you, I still want to kick you in the nuts.

Commiserations all, I'm off to drink a lot of beer.

[Young Samurai]

I'm not sure I can take much more of this.

I've 3 sites which have still not recovered from Panda.

One of them resurfaced with high page 1 rankings for 4 or 5 days a couple of weeks ago (and approx. 1K visitors per day and some very welcome sales) but then it disappeared again to the outer limits.

A fourth - my best selling until 2 days ago - had 11 pages on the first page of Google and had been untouched by Panda. As of this morning not one of those 11 keywords/pages are on page 1. They've all dropped to pages 2, 3 and 4.

This past few months have been very frustrating and this only compounds the problem.

[WealthyBlogger]

Originally Posted by gagan

All I see is big product stores and brands taking up first page.

This is pretty much what I'm seeing as well. for a major key word, my ten year old site consistently ranked #4 and #5 on page 1 of Google.ca and Google.com on searches in Canada.

Yesterday and today, the top 3 are still the same as what they were (wikipedia, about.com's niche site and another older site), but the rest are all brands and stores now, on page 1. Those used to be on page 2.

[davidtong]

I have a product review that has been ranking at #1 for a year at least, practically since the item came out... Lots of traffic to it etc...

Overnight, 2 Amazon listings + 2 lousy Youtube Videos outrank my long review.

I wonder if they're penalizing or 'disliking' pages with affiliate links.

[W.P. Allen]

How 'bout them apples:



Google's an a$$hole.

[RayW]

Originally Posted by peterjamesmorris

Those sites may have been hit, but i disagree that its about the content.

My site that took a hit has about 20 articles, hand-written, original and over 1000 words each. There are only 3 links in each article. Thats about 25,000 words and only 60 links. Doesnt seem like that's excessive.

3 affiliate links per article isn't a lot?...

[mekap04]

Woah I thought my main site was just experiencing the Google dance but it may be something more. One of my sites also saw a drop in rankings and earnings as well -_-. Most keywords dropped 10 spots and a couple past 50+. This sucks cause I was experiencing my highest earning days this week. Hope it just temporary.

[Charley Brown]

It should be interesting to see how this all plays out, but it looks like having quality articles on your site may be very important.

[outwest]

The feedback I have read seems to say its more about high PR backlinks or having deep varied backlinks, and if you did not you got booted

then again some people insist thats the reason they got booted and google was targeting high PR backlink networks

[vij]

Originally Posted by peterjamesmorris

Yes, I'm seeing this too, although I'm also seeing one or too very poor sites mixed in too, including one that doesn't even work (you just get a 404 error when you click on the link).

I'm sure they aren't going to leave things like that. Just need to wait and see what happens in the next week

Happens everytime. They do an update and leave sh1t floating around and then they do a second sweep to tone things down. But what's to be seen is if the sweep is going to make things better or...