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Panda Penalty, or PBN Issue?

by MichaelAnthony
21 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi there,

I have an Amazon affiliate review website that was doing pretty decent, up until two points in time.

For my main keyword, I was ranking #2 for a few months, then on Aug. 25th/26th I slipped to #6, but was able to recover a few weeks later ... only to fall again to #4 around Sept. 22nd/23rd (see attachment).

Now, most people on here know that not only was the Panda update on Sept. 23rd, but that a whole ton of PBNs got de-indexed right around the exact same time. And I had a handful of PBN links pointing to my site which were de-indexed.

So my question is -- is there any way to determine whether my drop in rank can be attributed to a) the Panda refresh, or b) the fact that I lost some link juice due to the PBN de-indexing?

If I was hit by Panda, would the drop in the SERPS be more dramatic than a few spots on the 1st page? Also, it was my understanding that Panda effects the entire domain, not just a page or two; I do still have another page, my third biggest driver of traffic, ranking #1 for its KW, so it doesn't appear to have been hit.

I guess I'm hoping it is a link juice issue, because for me, that's easier to fix that a Panda hit.

Any thoughts/opinions welcome.
#issue #panda #pbn #penalty
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Panda can impact individual pages from what I have seen.

    In your case though, the more likely explanation is the PBNs getting deindexed.

    Without seeing the site and someone analyzing it for issues that might piss off Panda, there is no way to be 100% certain.

    If links were de-indexed though, that seems the most likely culprit unless those links sucked to begin with.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    I agree, links are the most likely cause.
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  • Profile picture of the author MichaelAnthony
    Thank you both.

    Mike -- it was my first stab at building a niche website, so it's by no means perfect, and I'm sure there could be potential Panda issues.

    I could PM it to you if you want
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  • Profile picture of the author AskAnAffiliate
    Hi,

    From my experience, many of the people who have been de-indexed by Panda when using a PBN have a a manual penalty applied to their "main" website. It's going to be hard to see if the PBN was effected because I don't connect the sites to any Google code including webmasters.

    However, if your money website has been hit then you'll get a penalty that says...

    "thin" content detected or something along those lines. Many times people are publishing poor quality content within their PBN websites and then they link back to their money site. With this linking pattern, it's NO secret that your money website will drop because you are technically linking to and from "thin" content websites.

    Check your webmasters and let me know what it says. Give me an udpate!

    Thanks,
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    • Profile picture of the author MichaelAnthony
      Thanks for the reply. I wasn't hit by a manual action. I did have some PBN links pointing to my site -- and some of those links, about 3 or 4, were de-indexed. However, my money site survived, in the sense that it did not get a manual action.

      The only reason I brought up the PBN issue is that as a result of those sites being de-indexed, I then lost some link juice. So I thought perhaps my drop in rank could be caused by me losing some link authority.

      But no, I definitely wasn't hit with a manual penalty.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by AskAnAffiliate View Post

      From my experience, many of the people who have been de-indexed by Panda when using a PBN have a a manual penalty applied to their "main" website.
      Panda doesn't actually detect PBN's or de-index anything.
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      • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Panda doesn't actually detect PBN's or de-index anything.
        Ha, I typed this earlier but changed my mind because of how big of a dick I've already been this week...

        Not saying you're being a dick, just that I didn't want to add more fuel to the fire that already rages all around me.

        None the less... yeah, I kinda laughed when I read about Panda deindexing blog networks... I mean really? Panda has been around for how many years now... it should be clearly understood by any SEO junkie at this point.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

          Ha, I typed this earlier but changed my mind because of how big of a dick I've already been this week...
          I usually do not have much of a filter. I actually have it toned down a lot around here compared to what I actually want to say most of the time.
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      • Profile picture of the author nik0
        Banned
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Panda doesn't actually detect PBN's or de-index anything.
        Panda flags sites as thin, so it could be an ultimate weapon against PBN sites.

        Perhaps not deindex it but it could add sites to a list to get flagged.

        More importantly, it could take the strength of a domain away.

        We can all easily say that's not the case but no one knows what new features they might've implented lately.

        Interesting list about low and high quality signals concering Panda:

        Netfirms | This site is temporarily unavailable

        Whoops that site seems down, I summarized it myself already for reference so here we go (some points seem more to do with Penguin then Panda but whatever)
        • Bounce rate
        • Social shares / mentions
        • Positive reviews on external sites, think Yelp
        • Authority outbound links, reveal sources
        • Address / contact, clearly visible on each page
        • Robust about us information
        • Robust contact / customer service information
        • Participation on blogs / forums, positive reputation
        • Date info on every page "Last updated"
        • Relevant backlinks
        • Different design for main content and supplemental content

        That's quite a different onpage check list then having h1, h2, rich media, and other layout stuff.

        Though OP lost some links its very likely he's been hit by Panda as the dates match so well, I had a batch of sites that dropped on the 22th/23rd as well, those drops were also smallish but the dates just matched too well. Unless Google has some push mechanism that let the rankings drop at the exact same time as Panda to confuse even more.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

          Panda flags sites as thin, so it could be an ultimate weapon against PBN sites.

          Perhaps not deindex it but it could add sites to a list to get flagged.

          Of all the websites out there that could be flagged as "thin", I bet PBN sites don't even make up 1% of them.

          They would be looking for a needle in a haystack trying to use Panda to track down PBN's.

          There are far, far easier ways to snag PBN sites than that.
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          • Profile picture of the author nik0
            Banned
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            Of all the websites out there that could be flagged as "thin", I bet PBN sites don't even make up 1% of them.

            They would be looking for a needle in a haystack trying to use Panda to track down PBN's.

            There are far, far easier ways to snag PBN sites than that.
            Relevant backlinks is a huge identifier on that list. Sure there are tons of sites that get flagged as thin but how many PBN sites have a backlink profile that's relevant to the current topic/content. I would say close to none while the 99 percent of other sites probably don't have many links but I do suspect them to be more relevant.

            Besides that PR would be another identifier as the majority of thin sites are in the PR0-PR1 range while the PBN sites are more often in the PR2+ range.

            Add a few more things to the mix and it becomes pretty easy to use Panda (or what the author claims to be Panda on that list) to sniff out PBN sites, without (ab)using SEO hosts for that purpose.

            Do have to say that I would've lost a lot more domains if they used this method so it's less likely, however definitely something to look into for the future as I definitely do suspect some connection between Panda and PBN's.

            Besides that, what if such filter would eat up the strength of suspected PBN sites, no harm done if some weak/thin legit sites lose the power of their outbound links as well.

            Especially now that everone is moving away from SEO hosts, or at least I expect the majority to, Google will have to find new ways to track them down and the latest increase in deindexations of domains on shared hosts seems to indicate something is going on.

            The deindexation rate might look small, at about 3 percent deindexed on shared hosts in 90 days, let's make that 12 percent in a year time if the trend continues. Compare that to 0,5 percent deindex rate to the previous full year then we're talking about an increase of factor 24. Sure 3 percent is still only less then a dozen domains and there can be a variety of reasons for that (like Google using disavow reports or competitors reporting) but it sure got me thinking.

            Anyway my plans for the future:

            - Get relevant dropped domains for reg fee
            - Buy PR4+ domains and restore them to the old state using waybackmachine (copyright issue's so be it)
            - Link from the PR4's to the relevant dropped domains, a few links won't dillute the anchor profile of the relevant dropped ones much

            Got to test how effective this is but it should be able to stay below Google's radar, especially when including some points of that onpage panda quality list on those dropped domains.
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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    If a PBN site is thin then the operator is a clueless, helpless SEO anyways...

    I'm sorry nik0, I assume to talk about people with an IQ of at least 80 or greater when talking about these things.

    ... now I need a beer. I was good, but ...

    F*&^ing Really? Come on!
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by godoveryou View Post

      If a PBN site is thin then the operator is a clueless, helpless SEO anyways...

      I'm sorry nik0, I assume to talk about people with an IQ of at least 80 or greater when talking about these things.

      ... now I need a beer. I was good, but ...

      F*&^ing Really? Come on!
      Since you recommended a $297 guide that contains nothing that I already knew you're on ignore. What a waste of time and money, expected a little better then that from you.
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      • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
        Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

        Since you recommended a $297 guide that contains nothing that I already knew you're on ignore. What a waste of time and money, expected a little better then that from you.
        Huh? .......

        I understand that people have been picking on you lately but sometimes you are just a little out there... Okay, you're really out in left field sometimes to be honest and when you take a position on something insanely inaccurate like you did above... well, sometimes people are going to treat you a certain way.

        Let us not forget your most recently blunder 4 threads down... you know, that insane stuff about the "real cost to make a pbn look natural" where you displayed your inability to actually do what the thread stated...

        Grow up kid, it's the internet and you're not always going to be right.
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  • Profile picture of the author MichaelAnthony
    "Though OP lost some links its very likely he's been hit by Panda as the dates match so well, I had a batch of sites that dropped on the 22th/23rd as well, those drops were also smallish but the dates just matched too well."

    Yeah, what threw me for a loop is that the big PBN de-indexation was right around the same time (Sept. 19th or so), so I'm having a hard time pin-pointing it.

    For some reason I also thought Panda would give me a bigger drop than to #4 overall (down from #2 overall).

    This is my first attempt at building a niche site, so I do appreciate all the feedback
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by MichaelAnthony View Post

      "Though OP lost some links its very likely he's been hit by Panda as the dates match so well, I had a batch of sites that dropped on the 22th/23rd as well, those drops were also smallish but the dates just matched too well."

      Yeah, what threw me for a loop is that the big PBN de-indexation was right around the same time (Sept. 19th or so), so I'm having a hard time pin-pointing it.

      For some reason I also thought Panda would give me a bigger drop than to #4 overall (down from #2 overall).

      This is my first attempt at building a niche site, so I do appreciate all the feedback
      Panda isn't as bad as most people think. Especially when you rank #1 you shouldn't expect a huge drop as you either have a ton of linking power or you're in a niche that isn't very competitive so it's logical that you would only drop a few spots (unless your site breaks every single Panda rule). Panda is based on a quality score it gives to a page and that is then used as a ranking factor so likely your score dropped a bit and thus you dropped a bit. Anyway easy to find out by adjusting the page and waiting a month for the refresh or you could build a few links that you lost and see what happens. Personally I haven't seen much gain yet from the links I build about 2 weeks ago, while I build more links then were lost. Two weeks is not much but it's 9 sites at the same time so I expected some to rise already.

      For me it's also a bit hard to pinpoint it though as I just replaced the homepages of a whole batch of sites, started a new batch of links, lost some domains and then Panda, all at the same time.
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  • Profile picture of the author K1
    I don't think the PBN's get deindexed do they? I didn't have any my PBN's deindexed, they still show up when I do site:www.domain.com I didn't install WMT cuz I didn't want to link my sites together, so I don't know if they got a thin content warning.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    nik0, you are way over thinking things.

    Google does not need to use Panda to find PBNs. They do not need to analyze the relevancy of incoming links. They do not have to do anything complex at all. All they have to do is what they likely just did last week. Sign up for the big public ones.

    RankHero. NoHatDigital.

    Any public network like those are going to have a lot of overlap in their outbound link profile. They also leave obvious footprints of how they link and setup sites.

    Once they signup, all they need is a handful of sites. Hell, even just one site. From there, it is easy to unravel the rest of the network. Then they can take those sites, and check the servers they are hosted on. Cheap hosts are attracting a lot of network owners right now. They can just check all the sites hosted on the same servers as those sites they uncovered from RankHero and NoHatDigital and de-index anything that even slightly smells like a network site. That catches some of the smaller "private" networks who were sharing hosts with those bigger networks.

    It's not that complicated, and as long as a network is selling links to the masses, it will be impossible for such a network to avoid.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      nik0, you are way over thinking things.

      Google does not need to use Panda to find PBNs. They do not need to analyze the relevancy of incoming links. They do not have to do anything complex at all. All they have to do is what they likely just did last week. Sign up for the big public ones.

      RankHero. NoHatDigital.

      Any public network like those are going to have a lot of overlap in their outbound link profile. They also leave obvious footprints of how they link and setup sites.

      Once they signup, all they need is a handful of sites. Hell, even just one site. From there, it is easy to unravel the rest of the network. Then they can take those sites, and check the servers they are hosted on. Cheap hosts are attracting a lot of network owners right now. They can just check all the sites hosted on the same servers as those sites they uncovered from RankHero and NoHatDigital and de-index anything that even slightly smells like a network site. That catches some of the smaller "private" networks who were sharing hosts with those bigger networks.

      It's not that complicated, and as long as a network is selling links to the masses, it will be impossible for such a network to avoid.
      I know there's an easy way but I'm theorizing about a way that would smack almost every blog network owner instead of going after individual networks. Such approach would really smack up the whole SEO world to the degree of almost impossible.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    It's not difficult to test If link loss was the problem, simply build fresh links to a new page on a low competition keyword.

    Either the page ranks or it doesn't.
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    • Profile picture of the author MichaelAnthony
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      It's not difficult to test If link loss was the problem, simply build fresh links to a new page on a low competition keyword.

      Either the page ranks or it doesn't.
      Thanks for the idea!

      While not quite the same ... I do have another page, my third highest-trafficked, that's been ranking #1 (1,300 LMS) for several months now ... and this ranking has not moved at all.

      What's interesting about this page is that I built *zero* links to it at all, no PBN links or anything, just inner-page links. On top of that, it's arguably the "thinnest" of all my pages -- not as many words, 30 Amazon affiliate links on the page, and just not as in-depth overall.

      And it wasn't hit.

      So this does give me hope that the cause of my other two pages dropping in rank were likely due to loss of link juice, since they did have some PBN links pointing to them that were de-indexed.
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