31 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
31 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Panda 3.7 Rolled Out - Meh...

by Mantasmo
26 replies
  • SEO
    • |
OK so most of you probably haven't been affected by this, but I know that some people are keeping track of updates so here goes anyways.

A Panda refresh was just rolled out by Google. Yey. Here's a Twitter link.



edit: I should probably note that Google update their algorithm almost non-stop, so any SERP movement is very difficult to pin down to any specific update.
#meh #panda #rolled
  • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
    After making many changes to one of our sites that was badly affected by Panda 3.4 I was tentatively looking forward to a Panda Refresh.

    It is with much sadness that I report traffic has fallen even further, down another 20% in the last few days.

    Despite hundreds of hours of work improving quality and user experience over the last 4 or 5 weeks, trying to handle the penda penalty, we have been crapped on yet again.

    Thank you very much Amit Singhal & Co.

    (Amit - You were recently interviewed by the BBC and when the interviewer said that Google's motto was "Do No Evil", I clearly noticed you squirm and become very uncomfortable for a few seconds. I wonder why? Were you nearly caught out?)
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6413123].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author dp40oz
      Originally Posted by Steadyon View Post

      After making many changes to one of our sites that was badly affected by Panda 3.4 I was tentatively looking forward to a Panda Refresh.

      It is with much sadness that I report traffic has fallen even further, down another 20% in the last few days.

      Despite hundreds of hours of work improving quality and user experience over the last 4 or 5 weeks, trying to handle the penda penalty, we have been crapped on yet again.

      Thank you very much Amit Singhal & Co.

      (Amit - You were recently interviewed by the BBC and when the interviewer said that Google's motto was "Do No Evil", I clearly noticed you squirm and become very uncomfortable for a few seconds. I wonder why? Were you nearly caught out?)
      Sorry to hear about your hard times. Google really has become a penalizing machine these days. As tough as it is to hear it is much easier to start over than try and bring back a pandalized or penguinized domain. In my testing its very rare that even when you do recover, that you will recover fully. Once penalized there seems to always be a bit of a handicap on the site.
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414324].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author cooler1
        Originally Posted by dp40oz View Post

        Sorry to hear about your hard times. Google really has become a penalizing machine these days. As tough as it is to hear it is much easier to start over than try and bring back a pandalized or penguinized domain. In my testing its very rare that even when you do recover, that you will recover fully. Once penalized there seems to always be a bit of a handicap on the site.
        Isn't that because there has only been one Penguin refresh so far? Wouldn't it take more refreshes for the data to be fully processed and a site to recover fully?

        I thought Penguin was largely related to backlinks, so if no one can control what backlinks are build to their site, how can a site be permenatly handicapped because of this.
        Signature

        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414432].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
          Originally Posted by cooler1 View Post

          Isn't that because there has only been one Penguin refresh so far? Wouldn't it take more refreshes for the data to be fully processed and a site to recover fully?

          I thought Penguin was largely related to backlinks, so if no one can control what backlinks are build to their site, how can a site be permenatly handicapped because of this.

          We are talking mainly about panda here.
          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414531].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
        Originally Posted by dp40oz View Post

        Sorry to hear about your hard times. Google really has become a penalizing machine these days. As tough as it is to hear it is much easier to start over than try and bring back a pandalized or penguinized domain. In my testing its very rare that even when you do recover, that you will recover fully. Once penalized there seems to always be a bit of a handicap on the site.

        This particular site of ours is over 10 years old and helps (soon to be helped) keep a number of employees employed.

        Regarding this particular site (no blackhat links or penguin hit) it is a shame as it is also the name of that particular company which is still highly thought of. But google obviously doesn't like it.

        It has been panda reviewed by a few "panda experts" and we have also endeavored to understand panda as best as we possibly can (various panda courses and ebooks consumed) and implemented what we thought were quite substantial changes to the site. So as I mentioned I was cautiously optimistic that we would see some major recovery when panda refreshed.

        I know we are talking about organic traffic etc., but we really feel betrayed by google if that is even possible.

        It is quite sad really because our whole business model will have to change and some jobs will inevitably go.

        Perhaps even worse is that we now feel that we have very little confidence in starting new sites and building a good income from seo. It seems there aren't really any rules to follow that google actually honors.

        Right now I am feeling somewhat cynical about google. It almost encourages me to become 100% blackhat - because being 100% white hat hasn't done us any favors in the last 12 months....
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414524].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
    I am not seeing the effects of this latest update.... yet

    Will be interested to see how it goes though

    Danny
    Signature
    Come and See me on Facebook... Come and See me at my blog...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6413239].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Jospeh31
    Between you making changes on site and off site and the 2 constant updates it's really hard to say what works and what harms your site. Seems like regular linkbuilding is not efficient anymore.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6413778].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author denominator
    One of my sites was tore up pretty badly by the first penguin update. Heck panda too, but came out of that as well.

    I was ranking 1-10 for quite a few mid competition keywords. When Penguin rolled out it knocked me off completely for virtually everything. When I would do a deep search check, I would see that keywords I was previously ranking very well for, had a page ranking in the 400's somewhere with a page that was not that page anymore, just one that referenced the original page from onsite seo.

    I did absolutely no link building or anything since then. All I did was write on more article about two weeks ago. Nothing fancy just about 400 words.

    Whatever happened, I must have been on the verge of being unpenguined (I did not do that much bad link building). Delightfully today I came on to see I had a ton of traffic to the site and am ranking right back where I used to be.

    Not sure that really helps anyone but came to this site to look for what happened. Guess I found out, algo change. Thanks for the update.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6413782].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Danny Cutts
    Yeah I had 4 aff sites hit hard and a client I recently took on got slapped due to bad SEO by a previous company....

    My aff sites were completely deindexed and one of them was earning $80 a day from amazon/ebay..... I now have them back and earning money again, will take a bit of time to get it back to where they were on the earnings front but still making some money.

    Danny
    Signature
    Come and See me on Facebook... Come and See me at my blog...
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6413802].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    I thought something was going on late last night, one of my main/ranked pages keeps switching text in the SERPs. The rank position never moved but the SERP title/description text keeps changing, no personalized SERPs & no site/page changes on my end.

    Looks like Google is flashing back & forth between new & old SERP data.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414539].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      Looks like Google is flashing back & forth between new & old SERP data.
      You should see my SERP graphs. I have sites that are holding steady, sites that are going up and some penalized sites (from months ago) as well. Oh lord... some of them are going up/down by +-20/50 positions every 30 minutes, others have been moving +-3 spots for about 24 hours now (every 30 or so mins). It's quite fun to watch!

      Here's an interesting observation - two websites came back to pages 2-5 from being MIA for about 2 good months. Like not in top 500 results. I always thought that I got hit by Penguin on those two, but maybe it was Panda after all? Or maybe they've done a data refresh for Penguin as well? Or something else? Not that it matters to me much right now, just pure curiosity...
      Signature


      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414632].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author David williamm
    If your website is user friendly and serving quality content then i don't think you should be afraid of panda or penguin.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414620].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
      Originally Posted by David williamm View Post

      If your website is user friendly and serving quality content then i don't think you should be afraid of panda or penguin.

      A very useful comment. (Not)

      Being afraid or not is irrelevant.

      What changes google actually makes that impact rankings is relevant.

      This site is all of the above and has been crapped on.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6414688].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author satrap
      Originally Posted by David williamm View Post

      If your website is user friendly and serving quality content then i don't think you should be afraid of panda or penguin.
      You need to wake up and smell the roses!
      Signature
      60 Awesome Ways to Make Money Without a Job
      .................................
      Check out my blog Survey Satrap featuring honest reviews of paid survey sites.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6417482].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author David williamm
    According to google create a website for users not for crawlers so according to you people i should follow attached pic
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415231].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by David williamm View Post

      According to google create a website for users not for crawlers so according to you people i should follow attached pic
      What's wrong with that plan?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415264].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
      Originally Posted by David williamm View Post

      According to google create a website for users not for crawlers so according to you people i should follow attached pic

      Who are "you people"? That's rather rude isn't it?

      Also in that picture you posted, which is now lame (yawn), it mentions cheating the new algorithm change.

      How typically irritating of you to assume I or others are trying to "cheat" the algorithm. That is very presumptuous.

      Considering you call yourself an SEO Consultant, can't you recommend anything more constructive than "If your website is user friendly and serving quality content then i don't think you should be afraid of panda or penguin".

      So Mr Williamm how about it?
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415461].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author dmtaylor247
        Originally Posted by Steadyon View Post

        Who are "you people"? That's rather rude isn't it?
        I hate these people in this forum, nothing short of BS comments, thinking they know the score. Tell us something we don't know please or go back to digital point.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6417121].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
      Originally Posted by David williamm View Post

      According to google create a website for users not for crawlers so according to you people i should follow...
      Weak post, bro. Weak post. Not sure where you got the "to cheat the new..." bit from?
      Signature


      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415627].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author David williamm
    so yukon wait for new update
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415308].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by David williamm View Post

      so yukon wait for new update
      I've got my own technique that doesn't deal with algo. updates. I leverage Google only crawling small chunks of URLs at a time, they won't change that anytime soon.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415789].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author wilsonm
    The whole thing is nuts.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6415943].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Steadyon
    If you do a google search for

    Amit Singhal squirm

    this post is number one!

    Revenge is sweet :-)
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6416838].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Punit12
    Yes google Confirmed that Less than 1% of queries were affected in the United States & 1% world wide.

    But it is also learnt that, such updates google might keep on rolling in every couple of months!

    So lets play a SAFE game.
    Signature

    Punit Kansara
    Seo Strategist
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6420556].message }}

Trending Topics