are you affected by Google Panda update Oct 13 2011

[trustumar]

Today i have noticed changes in google. It seems google is rewarding aged authority sites. Is there anybody else who observed this change?

Edit: Matt Cutts confirms it, http://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/124905069748559872

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by trustumar

Today i have noticed changes in google. It seems google is rewarding aged authority sites and penalizing those who are using private blog networks. Is there anybody else who observed this change?

How do you know they were penalized for using a private blog network? I use a private blog network to give my websites a massive boost in the rankings and have yet to see a penalty for doing so.

Noticed changes in Google? Google is CONSTANTLY changing. For some various keywords that I am not actively targeting I see constant fluctuations in the rankings. However, with keywords that I am purposefully targeting and WANTING to rank in the SERPs all I have seen is a rise.

I have even seen a rise for some pages that I haven't actively promoted with backlinks, BUT I still want to rank for that specific keyword.


-- Jeff

[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.

[trustumar]

Originally Posted by theverysmartguy

How do you know they were penalized for using a private blog network? I use a private blog network to give my websites a massive boost in the rankings and have yet to see a penalty for doing so.

-- Jeff

Today i have noticed 2 sites dropped a little. They both were using private blog networks as their main backlinking strategy.

1 is hereshowtoloseweightfast.com the other is in mortgage niche. Yesterday it was ranking @ #1 for their main keyword but today it is @ #5.

[jackwebson]

Whether you use blog networks or link wheels the result will still vary on each sites. Some may be successful and others may not. I did a lot of case studies and still I'm not relying on those as I believe that SEO is uncertain.

All we need to do is use white hat tactics and follow Google's rules for SEO.


Jack

[theverysmartguy]

Originally Posted by trustumar

Today i have noticed 2 sites dropped a little. They both were using private blog networks as their main backlinking strategy.

1 is hereshowtoloseweightfast.com the other is in mortgage niche. Yesterday it was ranking @ #1 for their main keyword but today it is @ #5.

Sorry but going from #1 down to #5 is not a penalization. It is just a standard rank fluctuation. Those are very very competitive niches, of course there is going to be fluctuations.

If it was a penalty for anything really then it would have gotten hit quite a bit harder than that.

-- Jeff

[WakondaMarketing]

In my case, my sites improved in rankings. I don't know why most of my fellow marketers' websites went down in rankings. Weird.

[ttkim]

Originally Posted by wyuguy

I think the problem is it keeps the top position for a long time. but suddenly it drop

It's a competitive market so it will fluctuate.

It was #3 a moment ago when I checked with scroogle, and now it's showing at #4. Scroogle also shows 1 site with 3 pages ahead of it so it's not like it's suddenly falling behind a series of other websites.

[gagan]

May be there is some kind of a update in progress. A couple of my sites are down in serps. They are older sites ranging from one to five years. (have been quite steady in their rankings) The only thing I could find in common was that they were all updated with new content with in last week.

[blogworker]

Today i have noticed changes in google. It seems google is rewarding aged authority sites and penalizing those who are using private blog networks

really?
i don't see. how do you get that information? what is the reason for doing this by Google? how to know sites are penalized due to using private blog network?

[karismasand]

Hi,

If you don't try to trick Google everything will be fine. In less than a month i jump on page 3 for a keyword that have 135.000 exact US searches.

If you don't buy links, if you don't spam if you make all manual you don't have to worry about Panda Update.

Good luck !

[dadoc]

I have seen a significant drop in a few sites today. Other sites no problem and another site increased in ranking.

We are all at the mercy of the Big G...

[AuthorityDomains]

I've noticed changes to SERPs too for quite a lot of our sites.

Not sure what the pattern is yet

Some have adsense, others don't and both affected

Some dropped a few places that were no1 for over 1 year

Some dropped a page or 2

Some longtail traffic also lost

Some sites haven't moved and are still in the same position.

These sites haven't had any new links or content for a while. They are all unique content and have good domain/page authority with age.

Only thing is most of these sites are niches and on the same web host

I have noticed that a lot of brand/merchant sites have had a boost.

Hoping its a temporary measure as I don't really think the sites ranking above our sites are more 'Relevant' to the visitor.

[BillyBacklinks]

yeah ive noticed the same thing with most of my sites, a lot of the main keywords have dropped out , being replaced by wikipedia and amazon. My other lsi keywords have dropped a couple of places too.

Seems strange as these sites have unique and well written content and are pretty well established.

as per previous posts id just stick with what you're doing and id expect them to bounce back sometime soon

[bummed.out]

Yes, all my sites have dropped in ranking; it's unfortunate, some were number 1, 2 and 3 for their main keyword. Seems I'm not the only one, if that's any consolation.

My hope is that this is only temporary, since it seems to have affected many of us, and that the sites will bounce back.

Anyone have more insights into this?

[princee]

Originally Posted by peterjamesmorris

Having done a little more digging, I'm sure this is going to be very temporary.

I have a UK domain name, and a UK focussed site and my site dropped in Google.co.uk. However, I've just noticed that at the same time it has leaped up to the very top of Google.com some of the same keywords! Previously, my site was nowhere to be seen on Google.com (quite rightly since it is targetted to the UK).

I've never seen a country specific non-US domain at the top of Google.com for anything, let alone a competitive keyword like this.

In short, there's no way it is a permanent thing.

Yes i should also say this even since last some days around 1 month i am experiencing major up and down my one keyword which was on 1st page went on 3rd than 7th and than no where in 100 but now its back on its position.

[Matt Attack]

Hey guys,

For some strange reason when I checked my niche sites today my top adsense site apparently fell from #2 to #10 over night for its main keyword, and then my top amazon site fell to the 2nd page for all 5 of its top performing keywords. these sites are completely laid out differently and the only thing similar between them is the backlink strategy.

I dont get it, I never see my competitors bouncing around like this. It seems like if I leave the site alone for a while it will slowly climb then when I build some backlinks or add content to the site it will take a huge plunge sometime shortly after. I only build 1-2 backlinks to each site per day, if that.

I build 90% of my backlinks with BMR and throw in some profile and blog links every once in a while. This is very discouraging, as I dont have many niche sites and planned on building 4-5 more over the next month but if they are this unpredictable then what is the point?

[d0rhk]

I had 3 sites go from #1-2 to #10+ overnight as well... Huge setback and disappointment.

There must have been an update last night with the search alrgorithm.. so many other people are commenting on the update.

[TheFBGuy]

I thought was losing my mind or dreaming, some of my sites got destroyed, along with the ones who were at the top with me, yay Google, lol!!

The annoying thing about these changes is they are silent and don't say anything, checked their blog and no news.

[Matt Attack]

Do you all use Build My Rank for linkbuilding?

[JamesPenn]

My health blog had one of it's best Google traffic days ever yesterday.

It's an aged four year old blog that publishes only unique, original content and generates backlinks using guest posts and other bloggers linking back.

My high traffic continued until the early hours of the morning (UK time) and then at 5am it took a right dive.

See the attached screenshot showing my traffic by hour.

I've updated my Market Samurai rank tracker and I have a mixture of about 40% of my target keywords losing ranking by 3-20 places, and 20% of my keywords going up in rankings.

Unfortunately, all my #1 ranked keywords took a dive to the second page, and all the keywords that increased were in positions 20+ originally and only went up a few places, so they didn't reach the first page.

I hope this update is temporary!

James

[razorhound]

Yep, noticed some changes in SERP. 1/3 down from #1-2 to #7-10, 1/3 not affected, 1/3 went from #4-6 to #1-4. Competitors are either gone or moved down a few spots. Hope this is not permanent.

[d0rhk]

The only sites that dropped were the ones I didn't use BMR on

I consider a drop of 2-5 spots normal. I'm only concerned with my sites that went from top 3 to page 3.

[Dellco]

Originally Posted by carp104

Do you all use Build My Rank for linkbuilding?

I have a suspicion that Google has taken notice of the latest HOT trend in SEO, which is private blog networks, and they are cracking down by demoting most of the URLs that were propped up with them.

Most people (including myself) fell anywhere from 1-10 spots, but some are still in denial mode....

[Bhutto2k]

Most of my websites dropped average 2-3 spots yesterday. Google definitely did something at the back-end.

[dadoc]

I can't see this as being permanent...makes no sense unless G has lost its mind. Sites in a lot of my niches getting completely jumbled.

[Dellco]

Originally Posted by coronaborcalis

If its would be permanent I will go out from this business and sell all my site that still earn money.

I never thought that losing ranking in search engine is more hurt than losing girlfriend

Maybe Google wants to hammer home the message that SERP rankings are anything but stable, unless you are Wikipedia or Amazon.

A lot of newbies think internet business is stable stuff.....Maybe 5 years ago it was so, but not any more.... In a single day, a lot of top rankings went poof......

[royroy]

although my main website (12 yrs age in competitive niche) dropped few places #4 to #9 but still i can see funny things happened, for example in one of my keyword #1 reserved as usual for brand name website and #2 guess what ? affiliate link ranked in #2 in very competitive KW with its CJ unmasked extension,
i think (hope this is not a wishful thinking) this a temporary because this insane from big G makes no sense and the guys over there they are just updating there algorithmic data ....

[athenistic]

I have 5 new sites that I've been testing BMR on. All sites are 2-4 months old, and I've been building secondary keyword back links to them. (not my main keywords. It might be a bit of a strange test.)

All have been steadily rising for their keywords. As of this morning, the one that was getting the most traffic out of the group dropped anywhere from 1 to 7 pages for every keyword that I was targeting, but the rest either remained stable or gained position.

So, I don't think that networks can be blamed.

[remodeler]

Originally Posted by Dellco

I have a suspicion that Google has taken notice of the latest HOT trend in SEO, which is private blog networks, and they are cracking down by demoting most of the URLs that were propped up with them.

Most people (including myself) fell anywhere from 1-10 spots, but some are still in denial mode....

I wish that were true because it would be an easy fix. Unfortunately, it's not the case. I've had sites with no linkbuilding fall as well as sites with plenty of linkbuilding going on.

It's all guesswork unless you're the google employee that knows exactly what they did.

[JSProjects]

Depends on the niche. Google, IMO, has always given a slight preference to aged / authority sites in broad & competitive niches. I haven't seen any changes on my end. But I mainly focus on micro niches.

[TheFBGuy]

Looks like update is not done yet.

[wyuguy]

I dont use BMR, but my sites are dropped too.

[36burrows]

This has nothing to do with BMR or any other network.

Geez, it's funny how people just start making things up without having any proof or evidence of anything.

[Matt Attack]

I have seen this happen as well and like you suggested, within a few days it usually goes back. However in the past it usually only happened to one site at a time, not all of them.

We will see what happens but in the meantime I think I need to build a better SEO strategy as well, as I probably have too many of my links coming from BMR and not enough diversity.

[bhuff85]

I've seen a few drops on some of my sites, but just like peterjames said, just keep adding content and continue to build links. Sometimes, you just have to ride out the storm.

Eventually everything will come back together, and when it does, you may find out that your rankings are a bit higher than they were previously.

[rinor81]

Well, I guess if it happened to so many people who do things in different ways it must be temporary, especially when I see sites which I'm sure are new and are EMD's on page 1 but still not deserve to be there and my site with all its keywords that I promote is down or vanished...

Guess we'll have to wait, see and follow...let's just hope it's temporary.

[bummed.out]

No change over here, yet. All site's rankings are still down. Sigh. Revenue is about a tenth of what it would normally be. If this is temporary, how long, typically, do such shifts last before things bounce back?

[HelenAbell]

I seem to have got away relatively unscathed this time, but I'm investigating some 'suspects':

-Avoiding having "tag clouds" which have allegedly fallen from favour, as they look too much like keyword stuffing..
-Increasing encouragement of social media links and not relying so much on forum back links?
- No follow on forum posts on your site that don't have replies... until they get replies?
- Avoiding duplicate content - ie. where you publish blog posts, and also have published articles with some of the same content.
- Avoiding having internal Search Results - which allegedly fallen from favour as Google wants to be the god of search?

Anyone had any experience with any of these ideas? I'd be interested to hear?

[FredJones]

Yes there have been some shift in rankings. I see some massive improvements for bigger sites. Interestingly, from what I have seen so far, EZA has moved up (I mean, they may have gone down for all that I know but a few ones that I knew seem to have improved - I don't have much on EZA so I'm not talking about many) !!

And Amazon? That's what has taken all the gold away with it. What improvements !! And all for pages that sell with not much "information content". Wikipedia has remained as solid as ever of course, it was solid anyway so nothing surprising about that.

Originally Posted by rinor81

Well, I guess if it happened to so many people who do things in different ways it must be temporary, especially when I see sites which I'm sure are new and are EMD's on page 1 but still not deserve to be there and my site with all its keywords that I promote is down or vanished...

Guess we'll have to wait, see and follow...let's just hope it's temporary.

[gagan]

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

[pilotemt963]

I have noticed a change in my rankings also. Two of my top sites moved from #1 to #4 and #5.

[jonnyhardbaked]

All have experienced the same scenario. That's pretty normal because I'm doing some adjustments regarding on this update and finding it effective (but not 100% yet).

I'm going to share it if I found out that it is effective. My site dropped almost 50+ in SERP but now its getting back on its feet again with a quite high level competition keyword.

[munstersg01]

Fight on and continue to add fresh unique content and build better quality backlinks and more backlinks.

Analyze those websites that have moved up instead and what could be done to improve the affected websites.

In addition, explore ways at which traffic could be driven from alternative means. For example, posting articles to document sharing sites always gives me a boost in traffic for awhile.

Social book marking also helps a little.

For income wise provide a service or sell a product to make active income while still build on your sites for passive income.

Algorithm and system changes, it happens, don't give up

[pilotemt963]

One thing I noticed is that the sites that moved up for my keywords, are newer domains and they have only a fraction of the links and link diversity.

I'm going to try adding more content on a regular basis for the next little while and keep building links. Hopefully it will even out eventually.

[Matt Attack]

It doesn't seem like any of my competitors moved much, just my sites fell considerably. I will just keep my fingers crossed this is just some simple SERP shuffling, although since many of you are reporting the same problem it might be more serious than that.

[mkl3377]

Just from my sites, a lot of my EMD affiliate product sites were hit. Google seems to be bumbing the big product store sites up the serps.(another crackdown on Affiliate sites?) My adsense sites seem to have remained relatively the same.(knock on wood). Hopefully it is just a temporary shift and things will be back in a few days...(fingers crossed)

[kindsvater]

Definitely some ranking changes since yesterday.

Seems to be a continuation of the trend this year in Google:

Big brand sites have a more significant presence at the top of search.

Maybe Google should be renamed the AWE: Amazon/Wikipedia/eBay search engine.

.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by 36burrows

This has nothing to do with BMR or any other network.

Geez, it's funny how people just start making things up without having any proof or evidence of anything.

LOL!!! Over time you will learn to just ignore some threads as they
will drive you crazy. Or you risk developing the "paulgl syndrome."

Sad, really. It gives the wrong impression of the WF from passer-bys.

That the majority of the forum is full of illogical complaining, whining,
blaming everything on that mean google and their algorithms.

Forgetting, of course, that search results are dynamic, constantly
changing, for various reasons.

Paul

[ttkim]

Originally Posted by peterjamesmorris

I use Build My Rank on 2 of my sites. Today one fell, and the other one shot up.

A blog network can produce pretty good quality links, but should only be a small part of a diverse backlink portfolio anyway.

I've only been doing this 6 months, but I've already seen this happen 3 times. Each time so far it's been a temporary shuffling of the SERPs while they apply some update, and after a few days everything goes back to normal usually with a nice increase in traffic as well.

Given that my UK site is suddenly and inexplicably ranking at the top of Google.com (despite having a UK domain name, and not being anywhere to be seen on Google.com yesterday) I'm thinking it will be the same story this time.

So let's just chill and see what happens. Maybe take the time to do something constructive like add some good quality new content to our sites.

I heard that Google is starting to drastically take into consideration your location. For example, a lot of people from the UK will see co.uk results, despite searching on Google.com and not Google.co.uk.