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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

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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.

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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

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.

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?

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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

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.

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

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 ....

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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.

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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?

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

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.

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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)

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Yep. Definitely an update. Lost a few #1 rankings in few sites, one site went from 100 visits to 14 visits.

This is not the typical google dance.

Apparently Matt Cutts tweeted about this update

Google Warns of Another Algorithm Update | Vortex Blog

And Brett over at Webmasterworld predicted it...

prediction: Florida-like Update Before End of Year Google SEO News and Discussion forum at WebmasterWorld

What you can do...

http://www.wordpressseomarketing.com...gorithm-update

My main KW has dropped from rank 6 to 27 overnight. My competitors still have their rankings on the first page. Really hope this is temporary...

All my secondary keywords dropped completely off anywhere near the top.

A couple of my sites have gone down 1-2 positions and a couple other have moved up 2-3 positions. Anyone have any idea what kind of sites the update has effected?

I think this is definitely an update. The rankings on my new site started dropping last Thursday (it's Saturday morning right now in PH). Much like what was experienced by many of what I read here. The site is 2 months old, so I'm guessing that's not authority so it got a really massive hit. I already managed to get to 2nd page on a really competitive niche (I was very serious about this site) but right now all of my pages were gone in the Google rankings. Market Samurai can't even find a single page from 1000 search page results. T_T

They are still indexed though, so I guess I'll try to work on it more for a few months and hope for the best.

I still need a little more data but this is what I am finding.

1. High PR links got more value

2. Link Diversity Counted for more - Multiple IPs, Multiple Anchors, Mix of Text and Contextual

3. No Onpage Changes were noticeable

4. Aged sites got valued just a little bit more

Its an update. A lot of my sites have dropped 2-3 places. Some results for my keywords have funny results. I expect another rumble before the final settle(if you know what I mean).

From the horse's mouth

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

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.

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

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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...

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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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.

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:

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Same hing has happened to my UK domain. Was sitting nicely at #1 for google.co.uk dropped to 7 and jumped to #3 for google.com I picked it up with big drop in adsense earnings cos drop in placement. really hope it is temporary

I've recently experienced the same thing ... I went from #8 to #175 for my main keyword on Google.com ... but on Google.ca I'm at #1! (which I think is actually an increase of a couple of spots, but I haven't been watching it closely as I only get a trickle from .ca vs. com)

Also my site is a .US so obviously it should be aimed at the .com/US market.. eh? (domain whois is in the US too...)

I would like to know if the dropped domain is dead no chance to recovery ?
should we better start new domain from the very begining that make me crazy.

Calm down people. This is just a phase

Well my 5 biggest sites got a left hook from Panda 2.5
First time I've noticed any Panda related effects since February.

These are all quality, authority sites. Tons of long, unique and well written content you can't find anywhere else.

The main keywords on each site haven't budged. These are all 100,000 to 250,000 Exact Match.

All of the thousands on long tail keywords i used to rank for are now gone. That's 60% of my traffic!

What the frack does Google want?

I have other thin affiliate sites that weren't affected. One good example, is a 5 page site, 200 words each -- Making $150 per day with adsense. What the ****?

Why don't you make your whois private then?

I don't see this pattern with affiliate sites being hit. I wasn't hit, and my site is an Amazon affiliate site. My newest site went up from rank 35-40ish to 15 overnight. It's also gradually going up as we speak, but I also have a 2500 word review on it rather than the usual 500-word review.

A few of my competitors were hit, but most of them are still there.

Also, number of affiliate links shouldn't matter since I have 3 or 4 per review. If anything, it might be words per # of affiliate links though.

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Since the recent update to PANDA, I and many others have seen lost rankings...I think we need to update our pages.

I would really like some opinions on the following observations and add some more that I have left out?

1/ Now need more words for an article..I think 650-1000 words is now optimum. And of course it still needs to be relevant and high quality.

2/ Having one less than optimum page on your site will now hurt your whole site. ie: a post that is thin with quality or a page with an affiliate offer that is in your face without much useful information will hurt your whole site.

3/ Having outward links to spammy or bad neighborhood sites will harm your whole site. But having links (dofollow) to high quality authority sites is GOOD

4/ There has always been debates about duplicate content, but now there seems to be no doubt that it will harm your site. Scraped content, bad spinning etc..equals VERY BAD

5/ Speed of your site now counts for more..(having one slow page could harm your whole site)

6/ Certain niches are now being penalized..ie: **** Berry, male enhancement, get your ex back, and more...(over saturated niches)

7/ Single keyword targeted sites will also now be penalized..that means google sniper sites etc

8/ High bounce rate pages will also affect your rankings more than it used to.....

Is there anything I have left out? Do you agree or disagree with the above?

This is all sand in your eyes folks, from Google.

The real deal is what happened to Amazon.com the last week of September, and first two weeks of October.

They got an early Christmas!!!

Check this out: Amazon.com Site Info

Compare the "Reach" and the "Search %" tabs... Search went down, total traffic way up, almost like last year's Xmas season...

I predict many of our sites will get back to "quasi normal", but Amazon will have an awesome Xmas season... starting right now.

I don't believe it is because of Adsense and other ads.
I don't even have Adsense on my site!
About 2 to 3 links only to an Amazon affiliate offer throughout the whole site - that's it.
But all pages are nowhere to be seen on serps... but still indexed, that's for sure.
I hope this helps the experts crack this down.

From what I read, I can only conclude to myself that this is Google's way to test me and my website. I guess I just injected some positivity on that statement but I sincerely hope all of those affected in here can recover back soon.

I just found this thread today and I'm thinking "Whew! At least it's not just me..."
3 days ago I just had my all-time highest daily income and 2 days later my earnings drops by 90%! !@#$%^& GOOGLE, MY FAMILY'S GOTTA EAT!!! (Sorry, I just had to shout that out somewhere and where better than here LOL) I wonder why IMers go crazy over SEO. It's all so volatile and others are right when they say we are completely at Google's mercy. But I'm a firm believer that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. So I'm doing to continue what I've always been doing with seo BUT I've also learned my lesson and will start on other projects that don't involve G^^*&%$#$#!!!

same it is happening everywhere, even if the authority site is not really even targeting the search. I personally like it alot as a authority site owner

And while we're on the subject of SEO, can you guys help me out with this thread:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...-software.html

It's been nagging me for weeks now, I'll even paypal anybody $5 who can give me the right answer LOL

I am looking at a Google search for a toy with 2 Adwords ads at the top of the page: Amazon and eBay,

that page ALSO includes Amazon and eBay Adwords ads along the right-side of the page

(yes, they are allowed to double-their ads)

and of course Amazon and eBay are doing quite well in the SERPS.

That is 6 top listings for Amazon / eBay. Actually 8, as eBay has 3 SERP listings on the first page.

Takeaways:

Buy stock in Amazon and eBay.

Your affiliate business is being destroyed.

But you may want to sell on Amazon and eBay.

If you can no longer compete in SEO against Amazon / eBay by having better content, or more specific page backlinks, or longtail keywords, then it is close to checkmate for a massive chunk of traffic.

How are you going to get a higher search ranking?

Get your own trusted PR9 site with tens of millions of pages and backlinks? That sells products and is not an affiliate site? Good luck.

.

Hi,

I'm literally losing sleep over this issue.

I run a fitness blog over at fitmole.com and my goal on that site is to provide nothing but high quality 100% original content. There is ZERO duplicate content on that site and there is no adsense. Everything is written by me and is 100% original. There are a few affiliate links, but that is for only products I truly believe in.

My site is about 4 months old and for the past 2 months I was ranking high on page 1 for terms like "Ryan gosling workout" , "Jason statham workout", and "beyonce workout".

But as of the past 3 weeks, they simply dropped off page 1 and I couldn't even find them in the first 30 pages of Google.

Does anyone have any idea as to why my rankings would just drop off like that. It's killing my traffic levels.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

I don't know why one of my website is improving traffic from the day you mentioned (Oct 14), may be because of minor Panda update. My site always benefits whatever there is update from Google.

I also noticed a change. 2 of my #1 sites moved to #6 and #8.

major blow.

I'd like to see at least the start of the working week's worth of traffic before doing too much analysis but I have so far seen a 30% reduction in traffic with comparing the same day last week on my diet blog (previoulsy between 2500 to 3400UV/day).

A few people are basing their drops on a couple of the quiet dats of the week. Wait until Monday/Tuesday before seeing the real damage.

The traffic drop has come from a lot of keywords losing a few places, not massive changes. Last Saturday (+10GMT) I received traffic for 506 different keywords; this Saturday was 411. A lot of little changes adds up fast!

The interesting thing is that one of my major goal keywords jumped up from #5 to #2 for both the singular and plural version. A few other big keywords returned to #1 after a couple of weeks down a spot.

Some context:

The site does have a lot of limited release PLR on it but for the last few months I have hired dedicated writers so a new article is added 5 days/week.

The site has 'social proof' with regular facebook comments and likes (as well as tweets and +1s) so I would like to believe it passes at least some of the quality tests. Navigation is clear and siloed for lack of a better word.

This is the first blog I made to make money so the linking profile is as rough as guts. Most of the original links have disappeared but it still has a fair chunk of crappy blog comments and profile links. These have been replaced by article directories, syndication, forum discussion, BMR, high pr rentals, and finally natural blog and facebook links.

I'll post an update in a couple of days just to see how much of this actually sticks.

Two of my big performing sites are down traffic by 60-80%. Going through my analytic stats it seemed to have happened on around the 13-14th of Oct.

One of my sites is a very aged site over 7 years and the other is less than 1 year. They both have a bunch of quality unique content as well.

Well, seems like Google did another algorithm change that we now have to figure out and adapt to.

Can't wait to see all the WSO's that come out on this one.

I think folks get too concerned pleasing search engines than their customers after learning SEO tactics hence we fall into this trap of being affected by a 3rd party so drastically.

One thing I can say for sure is that Google is not penalizing sites with Adsense or Amazon links. I have sites that have shot up in Google traffic in the past few days and several of them have the maximum Adsense units on each page and Amazon Ads on a large percentage of the pages.

The sites that have improved all have two things in common. They have a high percentage of backlinks from authority sites and their other backlinks are mostly "natural". They are links from people who liked the content, not from "artificial" links at blogs with dozens of junk links on the same page, not from hundreds of forum profiles and not from links on crappy articles duplicated at hundreds of crappy sites.

So my guess is that Google is further attempting to rank sites based on how well they are liked by people that are trustworthy. That's what is in their best interest in their quest to offer search results to the best possible content.

The reason that brand sites are doing so well is that they have backlinks from many authority sites and from millions of people who liked their content. Your site's content may be better but you don't have their backlinks. I suspect that Google is aware of this problem and will most likely continue trying to account for it in future adjustments to their algorithm.

About a year ago I decided to totally give up on any "artificial" backlinking and concentrated on content that people would naturally want to link to. That seems to be working better than ever. It also allows me to concentrate on content creation. No more time or money invested in pursuing what appears to be becoming worthless backlinks. No more writing content for SERPS. No more keyword stuffing. Just great content that people want to tell their friends about.

The only challenge I see is the promotion of newer sites. Obviously, you have to get some traffic in order to get people to see your content and give you those first backlinks. I've got some ideas for doing that naturally too but in my case I think I'll just keep building my authority sites.

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I was affected due to Google Panda But I never left using my basic and some advanced techniques And I am back to my results as quick as previous.

Some of the highest traffic pages at my sites are those that have been sitting there unchanged for years. I've sometimes even seen traffic decrease when I've added content to a page.

I just keep doing whatever I feel improves my visitor's experience at the site and while there are momentary ups and downs, the income just keeps going up year after year.

The key is ... does the new content make visiting your site more pleasurable. If so, the traffic will eventually come.

Well my website is not down to number 10 of google page What to do guys!

Yes, My newer site has been affected. It was ranking #3 now it's down to number 9. I'm going to add some content and do more backlinks and see how that goes.

I have a new site. First time I have outsourced backlinking. Over 60% of backlinks have vanished. Could they have been de-indexed?
Just when you seem to be getting somewhere.........

I have three amazon review style sites, they all been wiped out. Not in the top 1000 anymore. It started a few months ago when my hompages all of a sudden stopped ranking for any of my keywords. Then, a couple of nights ago, the inner pages (all product name based) vanished from the first 1000 in SERP's too. Pretty much dead in the water as far as google are concerned ATM.

my sites are doing fine over the last few updates

my sites just consist of good, quality content that reads well (and i mean native english reads well) and makes sense.

Chuck a little bit of link building on the sites, be consistent, and it always works for me.

I even have an autoblog in a niche that has gone from strength to strength after the panda update. I put it down to people visiting my site and getting what they need or came for.

I really cant think of any other reason why i would rank so well

This is why you shouldn't rely on Google for most of your online income... luckily, i don't.

I never noticed Webmaster Tools showing all those backlinks now! Pretty sure that's a new development. Man there is some ugly viewing for some of my sites

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I was listed as site sponsor (those sites don't openly sell links, I've got the links via personal connections), with less than 30 outbound links. In fact for one of the PR 7 where I am listed, there's only 5 links.

I just back from vacation without any SEO works during it so the rank falls but everything seems fine, the PR showing from the third party was not shown last two or three days but now it is back.

unique content is still the king. to do this, usually i hire writer or translate other language to english

what you guys going to the do for the dropped domains, keep adding content and backlinks and hope for recovery , or just abondon them ,or do a 301 to new domain ?

Yes, Changes are affected on the ranking of websites but it can be earned again by deploying quality SEO.

Just an update... If your site already has some level of followers, the traffic should and will return, but the organic traffic due to SERP drop may take longer.

I scheduled an article to be published this morning (630AM GMT+8) and by noon, my WP stats went back to the usual 1500-2K levels.

Adsense clicks and CPC were actually higher the since Panda 2.5, but my Amazon clicks dropped by half since Panda 2.5 because of the loss of rank/traffic my previously top-ranked reviews received.

Let's just keep monitoring...

This post has been bouncing between #1-3 the past 15-20 MONTHS... Post panda 2.5, dropped to #13, single digit visit as a result...

FYI: My site was down on Oct 10, server transfer.



Other than having FOUR YT videos ranking, I don't really have an issue with the other sites outranking me as they're pretty good anyway, but still hehe.

My site went back up in rankings today after being nonexistent after last week's update. Did you guys see the same on your sites?

I just did what I did before, nothing special. Maybe it's just a Google test if the same thing happened to your sites.

Okay, so it's not the same for everyone. I just thought that I'm bringing in good news since we all got kicked out by Google at the same time and I just happened to check mine first. In any case, keep at it. I'll keep monitoring mine.

Is there anyone whose sites actually moved UP in rankings?

Google has updated Panda to penalise websites that have crappy content?

YAY!

It's strange how i've never been affected by Google Panda and i'm fairly confident it's because the quality of content on my website is high. There has to be some sort of correlation of no Panda infractions and the fact the information on my websites is of high quality - either that or i should put the lottery on

My site went down the drain 2 weeks ago. I was getting some very good results, a couple keywords slowly getting to the top 10 with 2-3 KW in top 5.....I lost everything in a matter of hours, site disapeared from top 500...

However, this morning I kinda crashed the place getting tons of keywords back on the top, much better than it was 2 weeks ago, best results ever. I did some minor changes yesterday which might have helped but still, my site is only 5 months old with PR2.

I guess there is always hope somewhere, you just gotta keep doing the right things.

Yes, my own websites and all my client websites have seen increased in SERP around 9-10 am - GMT, Friday 14th Oct. 2011. However, one of my main keyword drop from 3rd to 8, actually it was thin affiliate website. All other affiliate websites have quality content, authority links and all varieties of links have seen improvement in ranking. All of my client website who are into ecommerce, have seen improve in ranking.

My one site which is in weight loss niche is no 1 now, getting traffic of around 1300-1400 per day as compared to 800 per day before updates.

Dolors, give it a few days or a week or two. I really don't think you have wasted a year... I think some major changes are happening right now and if your site is of high quality, youre gonna bounce back quick enough. Thats my understanding right now of the process going on and many people seem to think the same thing...

...however, at the end of the day, google is still the only one in control, nobody has the perfect recipe.

Yes, we've all been affected in one way or another.

Time to man up, pick up the pieces and move on.

I know it sucks to lose years worth of work in literally one night, but if this is something you truly want, you'll find a way to make it happen.

It is definitely important to be consistent, more than anything else. With my Sniper sites, the first tweak I had to make a year ago was to begin adding relevant, consistent content and backlinks. The days of putting up a site and walking away are long gone.

Learning to think like Google is impossible - but if you focus on giving value to the customer and understand you need to be in it for the long haul, you will always end up okay. Yes, my connected FB pages have helped save me and my sites from a complete drop in sales, but it still hurt!

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I can honestly say I don't see this "quality" upgrade that some people are claiming. I still find lots of poorly conceived and written articles when I search. Google should head back to the drawing board.

I have had my butt kicked.

Never paid much attention to rankings. Just checked in daily to see earnings on adsense. Although from the times when I did check they have all dropped from top 3 spots to bottom of the page or even to page 2.

Should have flipped them when I could have. HA HA HA

My adsense is down over 80% since the change. I have not built links to any of these sites in over a year.

My clients sites where I used BMR have all moved up the ranks.

my few amazon review sites which all completely disappeared from google a few days ago have all now reappeared back roughly to the positions they were previous for the keywords i was trgeting. Still no sign of the long-tail product names. Things are shifting about happening no doubt.

Interestingly enough, a page that I put up about 6 months ago with ZERO backlinks is now sitting pretty in position 5 for it's targeted keyword. /shrug

Time to do a little backlinking.

Yes! 2 of my main income websites got slapped! 80% of Google traffic drop.
My referal traffic is now more than from Google.

One website was on # 2 for 6 months. After this Panda update, it's #10 - almost disappeared!

I have about 25 microniche sites, I would say they have all stayed about the same. Averaging roughly the same per month, I had a bit of a dip a few months ago but things evened themselves out. I haven't touched the sites in a long time. So all in all it is going ok!

Hey guys, I just checked my webmaster tools and google has stopped giving me stats after the 14th. This is for all my sites. You think that has any correlation to the crazy rankings the past few days? Maybe they know the rankings will be out of whack and so didn't bother to record stats since they're messing with stuff?

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They have a unique position and responsibility, when they shake up the results real people get hurt. I think Google needs to be very careful, their time is coming and they will end up getting regulated.

my site still shows no signs of recovering to it what used to be :sigh:
All my targeted keywords now languishing in SERP, the visitors dropped to just few hundreds.

I wonder it is to do with SEO Search Term Tagging 2 Plugin because a friend of mine who installed it on his site also had the same problem?

When the last Panda update was rolled out about 6-7 months ago, wasn't there some fairly big changes about 1 or 2 weeks later where a lot of the effected sites moved back up the SERPs, if i remember correctly?

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I have seen reduced number of visitors to my few sites and was really concerned, Seems Google is dancing again.


.

I've noticed in a niche that I work in the #1 site that was ranking for last 6 months was dropped on 10/14 to the #3 position. Then when I checked the SERPs this morning they have gone back up to the #1 spot again. They were in the #3 spot all weekend long. For the same keyword I am targeting my site stayed on at this same position on page 2 before and after the October update. So I don't know if things are shifting again and sites are moving back to their previous positions, but let's hope that it starts to happen to several of my sites where I was #1 and now on page 2. Maybe it takes time for the datacenters to update again?

Anyone know why that site went back up to the #1 spot again? I'm sure it wasn't additional content or any backlinks that they did since it would not show up that fast. Their site is on a everyday product with affiliate links. Each post talks about a specific brand or model and will links to various stores like Best Buy, Amazon, Buy.com.

The site hasn't added any new content since 8/2010.

The quote ttomp13 is talking about is here: https://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/121480187375398912

Dated Oct 5th... meaning the "next few weeks" would have meant the Oct 14th shakeup. Cutts wasn't saying that there would be changes to the Oct 14th update...

Misleading post...

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The authority website I am building has not been affected. Actually improved.

Details:
50 pages worth of content
3 youtube videos based on niche
age: 3 months.

I think the key is to get in touch with the target market through forums and really provide unique content. That is what I have been doing for the past 3 months. Eventually you will not need Google but rather have a community of your own.

Regards,
H

comes here again.
what i want to add is that, after the first update that we should realize that only original content can keep alive forever. if you insist on this, your site will never be punished by google.

It's clear Panda is clearing out the crud.

It makes sense to serve up the best, most relevant pages to it's inventory ( the searcher ) and Google has a simple decision to make.

Google knows the days of backlinks are coming to an end!

If your relying on backlinks... its only going to get harder. And that makes sense.

Social indicators ( people sharing, liking and +1'ing your stuff ) this is where Google and the like are going.

Lets face it, if 50 people are 'talking' about your new content... and im looking for information about it, do i really want to see something written 6 months or 2 years ago with a gazillion links OR do I want want to see the buzz.... what people are saying now.

I'm certain that long term... affiliate only sites will see less traffic from Google. The set it and forget it approach will see long term decline and ALL the search engines will start to favour those people who engage their target market...

Back to fundamentals..... 'serve your market'

Mark

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Social signals can be gamed. It already is with twitter. I don't get those who tout social media as if it can't be? Also, not everything is social. Information on bleaching anus will never be shared or liked. Product niches maybe but the information type of sites aren't social friendly. Google will continue to use links in some aspect. Otherwise I might have to start printing shirts with bleach anus and start my brand.

My best site that wasnt affected on October 14th fell from #1 to #3 just sometime back.

So it seems the effects are still being seen even today 5 days after the initial change in the results. I did notice changes here and there where some thin sites ranking #8 moved up to #2 spot tonight that were at the old spot the last 4 days. So who knows how the results will be in a few days from now since things are constantly changing.

I responded on this thread about having a tattoo of my brand and the comment was deleted?

Really?

This update killed two of my best sites. What's funny is they were replaced by exact copycat sites with crappy content and thrown together layouts. I mean these sites that are ranking above mine are terrible. My content is unique and well written and my sites look pretty nice.

Hoping this is temporary but haven't seen a comeback yet!

I feel the difference but my keyword holds a good position from Oct 13. I think Panda started to consider good and reputed websites.

Hi...
yes google panda update i noticed it .

The google pand update has a lot of to do with ages doamins. That i'm sure of after a little investigating!

Blend

Here's what I've noticed:

We have three sites that have been severely impacted by this update. From what I'm seeing, our one site that has a lot of repeat visitors, page views, time on site, etc... has greatly benefited from the update with about a 40% increase in traffic.

On the other hand, two of our sites that have much poorer visitor stats have just gotten annihilated, with some top five keyword rankings dropping into the seventies and traffic decreases from 50% to 70%.

The other factor that may or may not be in play are BMR backlinks. The two sites that got hit the hardest have a lot of BMR links while the other site that has done really well has very, very, few, maybe a dozen. We also have one other site though that has a total of about 70 BMR backlinks that seems not to have been affected at all by the update.

Anyway, if the Panda update is about qualitative issues, then I suggest everyone take a look at their user stats to see if this might not be the primary issue? After all, If I were Google, this is the one factor I would weigh most heavily to determine if a site is truly relevant or not.

Could it be that Google has placed more weight/value on the total amount of back-links across an entire domain, rather than to an individual page?

This could explain why the top ten SERP's are filled with the big stores such as amazon, walmart etc for longtail and product name keywords (which is usually easy to outrank them on) even though those actual product pages have none, or very little back-links to them.

This also seems to coincide with a lot people losing their longtail and product name traffic with this recent panda update too.

For me, I've noticed the following:

- My sites are all across the board. Some were hit. Some weren't. Some improved, some stayed the same. Needless to say, they all followed the same backlinking and on-page SEO approach.

What does that mean, exactly? Not much, really.

While a lot of people will try to figure out the problem, I'm going to move ahead and continue with the way I do things. To me, it's a lot easier to keep on trucking then spend hours (or days) trying to figure out what "might" have happened.

Besides, by the time you end up figuring out the issue, things will change yet again, only to start an entire thread all over again trying to figure out the reason for that change. No matter how broken it may seem, it will always fluctuate. Nothing is forever in SEO.

I'm just saying - I would use the time to improve what you already have and continue to build. Having a website lose its ranking is never fun, but why not add more value so it can eventually bounce back? Or, better yet, try other methods of traffic generation that you never have before.

That video was awesome. So spot on.

Hi guys,

Just wanted to give you a bit of an update and some hope for your own sites. My main keyword was relegated from position 5 to position 13 on Friday 14th October. A couple of days ago it climbed up to position 12 and as of this morning it's now on position 11.

1 of my main competitors has also moved from the second page to position 8.

Cheers,

Tom

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Quick update:

Of my two top sites that got hit hard, one is back and better than ever. The other one, unfortunately, isn't. It went from having two main KWs at the #1 spot to no KWs in the top 200. Sucks. But, another site that fell out of the rankings just before the update is ranking higher than ever now. This site is relatively new and pretty competitive.

So yeah, I would stop analyzing and start building links!


-Brock

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Noticed some movements, 7 sites back from sandbox (page50+) and 1 is gone. Anyone else?

Bryan

One site bounced back to where it was, thank goodness! The others are still at the lower positions.

Hint of returns. Nothing major yet.

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OK, read through the whole thread, took some time

Bottom line is, nobody knows why his/her site lost rankings. It doesn't matter if you have good or bad content, good or bad on-page SEO and what your backlink scheme looks like.

For everyone who has a background in computer science, think about that:
You have an algorithm that looks at a huge network of websites and tries to rank these websites for a lot of different keywords. This algorithm will obviously need to store a lot of data. Now you change this algorithm and the way it valuates websites. Do you think the new data that is needed to compute the new valuation can be collected in a few minutes or hours? No, I don't think so. Keep in mind that to evaluate a single site, you also need to look at the valuation of all sites that link to that site. And at all sites that link to these sites and so on.

So what will happen is that the algorithm shuffles all websites around without a visible pattern until it revaluated all sites in the network. Only after the revaluation of all sites, you will be able to see the real results of the algorithm update.

What do you think?

Maybe it's only what I WANT to think because my main money site dropped from #1 to page 3 to page 5 for many keywords.

Hey, guys.

I don't know if you're interested, but I just wrote a post about Google Panda 2.5.2, and
I figure a lot of people who are stressed out about what they will do next can benefit from
reading my article.

Feel free to check it out, and provide Facebook Comment below the article.

Google Panda 2.5.2: What Now? Who Moved My Cheese?

My site was hit quite badly on the 14th and has not recovered. It's almost 2 years old, and has over 500 pages of what I consider to be high-quality content. I hadn't done any aggressive link building, but had still accumulated a reasonable number of back links, mainly to internal pages, each of which was optimized for a particular key word.

As a result, the traffic I had been getting from Google was based on quite a diverse range of keywords. Take a look at the exact impact and draw your own conclusions:

Date / Visits / Keywords
Sep 28 / 369 / 283
Oct 5 / 349 / 265
Oct 12 / 417 / 306
Oct 19 / 55 / 49

Pretty grim. Clearly (or that's how I see it) Google has suddenly decided to send many of the long tail key words to other sites. Also, my rankings for those key words that I was actually targeting is jumping around quite a bit, relegating me to page 2 or worse from page 1.

So I consider the hit I have encountered to be both on the long tail key words and my specific targeted key words. Not sure how I'm going to react to this and recover, but I though the above statistics would be useful for people to think about as they figure out what is happening!

Two of my Adsense niche sites that were at #2 spots and sitting now at #8 have not budged at all. I hoping for some movement on these sites soon since they have a diverse backlink profile and have good unique content. I've started getting some edu backlinks to these 2 sites to see if I can build some authority links and if that will move it back up.

It's just frustrating not being able to do something to get sites to move again. I hate these big drops which move sites from top of page 1 to bottom of page 1 or page 2. A few spots OK, but there is no way that the other 7 sites in front of me did as much backlinks or added content.

Are you guys continuing with your regular backlink strategy right now for sights that got hit?

Damn you guys are seeing the upward movement/correction that I was hoping for. Instead, mine main site actually dropped a second time! They were slowly improving after the Oct 14 hit, but now even worse. I can't for the life of me work out what's different with this site than the others.

I have a big feeling most of this is related to external links though. I am in the middle of some tests which I hope are conclusive...

I guess I'll also give updates on two sites. Maybe we can gather some information or see a trend.

I created one affiliate site about 3 months ago. It used to be as high as #3 before getting hit by the -50 filter. Soon after that, it disappeared from the SERPs but it was still indexed. I'm assuming it was a penalty for unnatural backlinks (tried out a bunch of WF services and most were disappointing). In any case, two months later (aka today), it came back ranked at #8. I'm assuming this is because of the most recent Panda update, but I'm not entirely sure since I did make some changes to my sites two days ago.

Rather than simply nofollowing the affiliate links, I created a PHP redirect that takes them to Amazon. I nofollowed that and also used robots.txt to prevent that folder from being crawled. I'm not sure if this is why I came back in rankings or if it's just the recent update. The interesting part is my inner pages. I'm ranked #8 for my homepage and behind 7 other affiliate sites. However, I am ranked #1-5 for most of my inner pages when I google "product keyword". I'm almost always ahead of my competitors. If I'm not first, it's usually Amazon or some other sites that are ahead of me so I'm assuming these other affiliate sites definitely got slapped for their inner pages. I have 14 product reviews that are 1000+ words with pictures and videos. I also have 6 other informational posts.

As for my second site, which I created about 1.5 months ago, it finally hit page 1 two days ago. In other words, it improved during the initial stages of the update. However, it disappeared from the SERP completely yesterday only to come back today at #10. This is a crappy affiliate site with 700-word reviews. I have nothing but reviews on this site, and each review has 1 photo. I also simply nofollowed the affiliate links rather than redirecting them.

From what I have seen all the sites that have been slapped seem to meet the two following criteria:

1) Google knows they are linked (either through adsense or analytics)
2) They have similar backlinking profiles (in y case they were all using mainly BMR).

Perhaps google have just looked at these factors to identify people who are obviously backlinking thier own sites.

Any thoughts on this?

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My pages climbed the SE ladder last week.
A lot of them were dancing crazy and have returned to gain some positions now.

Many are affected badly while some of getting recovery in traffic drop....

Some sites of mine are back from the grave (rank 400-500) and some took the places of those in the grave.

Some sites I did heavy linking to recently, seems to just have rolled back to where it was 1-2 months ago.

Off to find some new cheese!

I was influenced by the latest panda. my site got promoted to position 4 in the search results from position 7 and that because im doing only white hat SEO.

For those wondering about backlinks:

I have NEVER created a single artificial backlink for any of my sites - least of all comment, blog, and crappy forum links. The reason behind this is that i know Google is smart, and it seems beyond stupid to think you can game the SERPs with 50,000 auto-generated crap links.

My sites all generate organic links on their own, and enjoyed excellent SERP positions for ages.

However, several of my sites were hit, and hard by Panda 2.5.2. One site that was hit shares the same layout type, bounce rate, time on site, and even a similar topic to one that wasn't hit at all (and actually gained).

I totally agree Mike / Zeb. I wasn't suggesting that by monetizing a site you are spamming in Google's eyes.

But what I am suggesting is that there is a difference between monetizing your great blog and creating a great blog to monetize. If Google thinks you have created the blog soley to monetize and make money then you are a target, no matter how great it is.

This is what I'll be focusing on in future, creating a great blog to monetize, but giving the appearance that I've monetized a great blog. Confused? So am I :-) ...

If you see a pattern, you're more than welcome to share it.

From what I have read in this thread, the update affected a lot of different types of sites. Some thin sites were hit, some authority sites were hit, some with good content, some with bad content, some with many good links, some with few poor links, and so on and so on.

When I look at the only one of my sites that lost rankings, I can also see different things that could be a reason. But then again I see sites at the top of the rankings that are much, much worse than my site.

The thing about the shuffled rankings during re-evaluation of sites was just an attempt to explain something that looks like randomness to me. It can be totally different, of course.

I didn't want to say that Google doesn't know what they are doing or have limited computing power.

So where is the new cheese? haha!

So where is the new cheese? haha!

Google tweaked and I saw some recovery but not full. Haven't done anything new since 14th. Still loss of long tail.

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email marketing is no longer effective in the days of social media. It used to work for specific niches but not for physical products. In any case the rate of emails being opened has dropped recently.

peterjamesmorris

Thanks for the link. Got a copy of the guidelines.

WOW so much doom and gloom in this thread, we might as well just pack up and go home

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A few tweaks here and there and a change in my linkbuilding and on-page strategy, my sites and pages are beginning to shoot up in the rankings. Come on people, stop wasting time waiting for things to "go back to normal", lol. And if you want to quiet, go right ahead.

@TheFBGuy Do not torture us and tell us the strategy which made you circumvent latest Panda update

I'm also trying to tweak the pages that dropped. A bit difficult without knowing why they dropped in the first place. Moreover I have about 100 inner pages that ranked at the top of the first page for their keywords. So a lot of work.

I think the pages are already well optimized, so I only added some content here and there, nofollow'd a few links and added some links to authority sites. In addition to that, I optimized the page load speed of some pages and started to build more and more diverse links.

But I don't really see any effects, yet.

Here a very "motivating" screenshot from Traffic Travis for the rankings of 20 of these keywords. Seems like the software doesn't have enough colors to display more than 12 different keywords .

My rankings have all gone back up in the past three days

I haven't published any new articles or any new backlinks

today was actually my most profitable day yet

Also I use blog networks for backlinking so those who say they got hit, it doesn't seem so

I had one of my top 4 sites trashed. site was 1.5 years old. several hundred pages of original content. There were 50 -100 first page long tail keywords and regular keywords. about 75% dropped in ranking by 50 places or more.

I have started going page by page and making changes. What I have seen:

1) if a page had more then one or 2 affiliate links or links to amazon it got trashed. So as I rewrite pages I cut it down to one sale related link. (For example if I have a page on the top 10 wordpress plugins and 4 of those are plugins you buy, yes I had my affiliate link in there. Now I remove the entire link from all but the best one. People will have to go find the link themselves if they want it. It is a bit of a diss-service to the reader but if I leave the link in, even without my affiliate link, I believe google will see it as a link to a sale page and slam the article).

2) Pages that had been ranked high but had no backlinks (yes I had many keywords on the first page with no backlinks. The site was somewhat of an authority site and all it used to take was original content and great on page seo) were hit hardest. i will get to backlinking those later.

3) right now I am making minor changes and reposting and resubmitting to social bookmarking sites. That has gotten a lot of the pages moving back up.

I disagree with sitting on my hands and waiting to see what happens next.

As stated before, my keywords are back at one but still no sign of ling tail traffic. Any theories as to how I can fix?

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Is it just me, or are Exact Match Domains in the non-product related industries seeing a
climb in the rankings?

Example: Wall Mounted Pull Up Bar as an EMD would fall in the rankings, because it's
product related, and a site like Amazon would rank above it. Same for any other
product.

Example: Melatonin Side Effects, Birth Control Side Effects, Accutane Side Effects are
all ranking really well on page #1 for EMD, even with very little content on the site.

Thanks for all the suggestions and encouragement.

Since the first Panda update, I am seeing a trend here. Google wants to get rid of affiliates. They would love affiliates to go away and then all of the online retailers would have to buy Adwords ads to get traffic.

If you care to read the document "2011 Google Quality Raters Handbook" you will realize affiliates have been marked unless you are a company with deep pockets.

All my articles are original content (each about 700 - 1000 words) and each of my site has nothing less than 100 posts. The articles are well researched and no one can argue their value to users who are searching for unbiased independent reviews. My sites often outranked Amazon on many keywords. Now even the long tail keywords are trailing behind. My only standing site is an EMD which has seen an increase in traffic.

I have added new content and built backlinks during the past 3 months without much upward movement in traffic. If anything they have been temporary.

As for alternative traffic what choice do you really have? I have tried Bing and Facebook PPC without much success. The revenue can't cover costs. It is a loosing proposition. As for email marketing they don't work for electronics niche. So much product changes are taking place in the electronics world that subscribers don't really bother with the emails anymore! My email list is no longer as effective as it used to be 2 years ago.

I have been wondering why only Google has the biggest share of search engine traffic? What is Yahoo and Bing doing? Why can't they too send a decent number of visitors to your site? If you are not on the first ten on the SERPs then you get nothing. Imagine the number of sites competing for this positions. There are no clear cut rules on how you appear on the top ten. Above all keeping your position is also difficult as thousands of affiliates are also vying for the top ten positions, and the unpredictable algorithmic changes by Google create nightmares.

I am at a cross-road here. I have given my best to do what I have been doing. A lot of time and money have been wasted. A lot of Gurus have taken me for a ride. So much have been spent on content writers, graphic designers and VAs to build backlinks. The whole thing looks like some kind of "dark science"

If I continue building backlinks and add more contents will there be any reward for me at the end of the day? Affiliates are treated as spammers ("If a page exists only to make money, the page is spam", pg 95, 2011 Google Quality Raters Handbook). Is this the kind job you want to do? Your work considered as a spam (as decided by Google) and you are being treated like some kind crook!

Google has a hidden agenda. Like any business they serve their shareholders first, followed by their top executives and lastly all the low paid employees. You don't figure at all in their scheme of things. Neither do they owe us any living!

Friends,
Am Abbas form Pakistan. i have a website. my website loose its page impressions 75% down. from last 10 days. I think i just submitted more than 55 Articles to different Directories to boost up my website traffic in just 5 days and i have 12000 back links in just 3-4 days. is this any kind of pnelaty from google??? is google treat this like an unnatural???? please help me to find answer about this.

Are your guys' dropped sites have something in connection like Adsense or analytic or webmaster tool ?

Maybe google is giving more weight now to the bounce rate of each website for a certain keyword. And from there, google will determine which site is deserving to put on top of the rankings? ? ?

For me, the longtail searches have been hit hard (but only on one site in one niche in particular). It has resulted in a 50% - 60% drop in traffic. It's almost as if the G is targeting anyone targeting longtails because they see them as the minnows. The one's going after the crumbs.
The sites I see at the top for those longtails I used to rank for are what would be described as authority sites - Yahoo Answers, Youtube etc. It's like Google said: "OK we'll give these other minnows a chance to beat them to improve search results - and they did that for a year - but now they've rolled back to where we were a year ago. I kind of wonder if this is damage limitation for the whole Panda thing in the first place. And they're slowly but surely simply rolling back the clock.
The main keywords that I tried to rank that site for are all still there and ranking well. But the longtails are where 60% of my visitors came from and they made up 60% of my income.

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This post gives me hope. Took 16 days for labnol.org to come right after a panda update

Website Traffic Improves Two Weeks After Google Panda (Farmer) Update

First ever post in the Warrior forum.

Just wanted to add some comments of my own here.

Some of my sites were severly affected, others not at all. If I look at my personal website profile it's pretty clear that all the sites that were affected are those that contain lots of affiliate links. I have 1 large adsense site and a whole bunch of local lead generation sites that weren't affected at all. All of my sites have the same backlink profiles across the board, so I don't think it has to do with backlinks. I also seem to have a big drop off in long tail and brandname keyword traffic like some others have said here.

With regards to this statement from the raters guide:

"If a page exists only to make money, the page is spam"

To be honest, this applies to every page at Amazon if you take it out of context like that.

have the rubbish sites stayed on top of the quality ones for you guys?

yes i was affected and i am losing money rapidly

Guys: Quit whining, and continue linking.

This is what I'm doing to ALL of my sites, including the couple of them that were hit by this update.

And you know what? They are already starting to rise back up the SERPs.

This kind of thing happens. When it does, move forward.

My observation is that the main keyword SERP has not dropped, but the overall traffic dropped. I am assuming that is long tail keywords, which I don't bother to check and verify. But sad thing is that at the end of the day I lost more than 50% of revenue, especially starting today..

For the benefit of new guys here like myself, is there a guidelines of tweaking that i can follow. Greatly appreciated!

My site still drop 50% traffic since 14 October, is there anyone who already recovered from this Panda?

I am frustrated with recent Panda updates. One of my sites down grade from PR 5 to PR 3. Dramatically my traffic also going down.

unfortunately, the impact may seem to continue. In addition, I have observed that PR and article publishing sites are affected too as even EZA has been losing its organic traffic. Is it still related to the said changes? Matt Cutts confirmed "minor changes" ironically, it has a huge impact to most sites.

Just keep backlinking folks. Nothing to see here.

my sites are all doing alright, if not increase in traffic

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

Update...

2+ weeks after... One of my severely affected post (#1 dropped to page 3 or so) is back up to #2 without me doing anything to it...

2 of my formerly #1 posts are now #5 and 6, but 1-4 are all amazon product links, at least I moved ahead of the YT videos now.

My other KWs are still wayyy down, but that's alright..

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Do you not want to improve your company in any way you can? Would you sit static and still with your current income generators? While everything around you is constantly changing? It happens in all businesses that want to stick around for a while. It's called "Change". Those businesses that don't change and adapt to market forces become stagnant and die. This is what Google is doing. And it will take the likes of you and me out in the "click of your fingers" if you are impacting negatively on their goals.

This may have been said before, but with nearly 600 posts, I didn't read them all.

In the last twelve months there have been over 500 updates to Google's algorithm. So to attribute any changes to Panda or any other named update is a little overboard I think. They make a change more than once per day on average.

Don't use a bunch of tools if you don't know what you are doing. Use diverse higher quality backlinks and unique content. Google won't mess with you.

Looks mine was a manual penalty after all. Google replied to a reinclusion request stating that some or all pages violate the quality guidelines. Removed every bit of on page optimisation and filed another request. Don't know what else I can do.

Hi,
Everyone, one of my friend told me that google has stopped PR And link building
is this true. if yes than all are the SEO persons what have to do for this problem.
if it possible pls provide me the link where this news is published by google please ans me as soon as possible... i am waiting for your ans and link.

Thanks & Regards
Winner Shah

Not only affected, it changed entirely everything. geez!

Has anybody had a drop in the rankings from the Oct 13 update on a website that does NOT have affiliate links on it?... I am still thinking that is the common thread with the Oct 13 update... None of my websites dropped but I don't have any affiliate links on them.. However I use a lot of the "easy" link building techniques with minimal unique content... so if it was the link building or the content, then my sites should have dropped...

One of my sites have 2 keywords sit on the 1st of google for nearly a year, recent google panda dropped me to #3, and #5. I immediately gave some boost, 1 week later, back to #1.

I can;t really see why bounce rate is a factor, perhaps my logic does not align with Google's.

Surely if someone finds a page that is EXACTLY what they want, then they have no need to delve deeper into the site. Bounce rate as we know is when the searcher leaves the entry page back to Google or presses the 'back' button, but they could stay on that page for 10 mins and it would still be considered a 'bounce'.

Perhaps time on site is more important that bounce rate??

My experience with all my good content sites has been extremely positive post panda. One website was on and off page#1 now sitting firmly at position 5 not only for the main kw but also for LSI kws....

However, one of my favourite adsense autoblog site fell heavily from 4000 uniques to about 900.

This proves that it is good time for content sites :-)

My average bounce rate is 32% and average length on site is 4 min 32 sec ...

I think Google is smart enough to know the difference between an informational search vs a search with high commercial intent... So my guess would be Google's update wouldn't apply to keywords that have no commercial intent (the searches that are just to look up a quick piece of information that would have a high bounce rate because the person found what they were looking for)... So the theories of bounce rate and time on site playing a major role would really just apply to those keywords with high commercial intent (the ones that everybody is trying to monetize)...

If there are still some "crap" sites out there ranking in the first spot... maybe they somehow found a way to artificially inflate the time on site / bounce rate to be favorable and that's why they are ranked high... afterall, the only people that are going to know those numbers are google and the owner... So if all of the other factors are saying that crap site shouldn't be ranked high, then maybe its the factors that you cant see that are keeping it ranked high...

No.. i am working ok. Its only for website like article websites which have got plenty of duplicates contents.

A couple of my sites got hit but not that bad. I was ranking on page 1 - went down to the top of page two.
Did a little link building use SENukeX and I'm back

Panda is kind to me so far...

My automotive site is also affected after the updation of google panda. isitors have drop down. My site have fresh content. Dont know where I went wrong can anybody suggest me what changes I have to do to overcome form this. The name of my site is indiandrives[dot]com. waiting for your reply guys.

3 of my main longtail keywords are gone... I was moving up the rankings, hit page 1 for both of them for a couple of days around the 20th October... now, they're gone.

I used 3 sepearte warrior backlinking services... how can I tell if one of these has hurt my site... I have my suspicions which one (the cheapest)

many things have been said about why sites have dropped in rankings etc

i like to keep things nice and simple

i am a niche marketer and yes i do have a few sites which make money with adsense and amazon

but... all i do now is work on 1 site and building it out.

Who do you think google will value more, someone that makes a new post every 7, 14, 30 days or someone that posts everyday?

im making new posts nearly every day and my site is doing awesome and constantly being found for new keywords

by making a new post every single day its impossible for you not to start getting good traffic because you are forcing the spiders to crawl your site every day looking for new content to index

forget all the other palava

work on 1 site

build it really big into an authority site

post every single day with fresh unique juicy content

PS: if your not convinced if it will work for you....try it for a month and see for yourself

paul

Here's an interesting thing I noticed.

It's not just aged authority sites that got a boost. It was aged links as well.

In other words, if there are links pointing to your sites that are 5 or 10 years old, that is worth 50 or 100 of my brand new links in Google's eyes, making it even tougher to take down big authorities.

Yes. I had sudden drops on traffic since 13th.

I'd like to repost a question here, and also include my site this time to get some feedback. Question: Should we be worried that our website has been HUGELY rewarded by this latest update (specifically the iteration of 2.5 that hit October 13th/14th)?

We've seen an increase of 65% in traffic, 25% in revenue, 29% in orders. Obviously, our Paid Search is now falling rapidly (clearly as an outcome of our increased Organic numbers). Sitewide, we're not going up a ton, though we do show a small increase, it just seems to be that Organic search is now pulling in larger numbers than our two leaders, e-mail and PPC.

My worry is that this is a temporary lift and we're about to get bombed. We've gone to ranking number 1 for a VERY competitive search term: "Natural Remedies". Any input would be great. We've built our site on VERY strong SEO, tags, and a huge set of content (instead of only product pages, we actually have more informational pages than products, around 5 info pages to 1 page of products).

We got killed by the initial Panda update early this year because we have VERY poor backlinking (no black hat sites, just a VERY small number of links, not many from high PR sites). Perhaps our lack of content farmed links is finally paying off...? We have been rebuilding our Organic numbers for quite some time, and we really seem to be at a peak we haven't seen before.

Hence the worry...when will the other shoe drop? Site: nativeremedies[dot]com.

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Here is a podcast James Martell did about the Panda 2.5 update. James has been in affiliate marketing for a number of years, so its great to hear his take on things.

Affiliate Buzz #226 – Yet Another Google Panda Update - James Martell | James Martell

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Panda kicked all my sites down and put my income at a quarter of what it used to be. So, Google is definitely pandering to the big boys as these big corporate sites beat me with one paragragh and I have 50-100 unique articles on the same subject. I used to be #1, but now gone or on the first page bottom. Google is going to make enough people angry that they won't stay #1 forever. Anyway, got to keep keeping on. what else can you do.

One of my site has been experiencing about 80% drop in the traffic since Oct 12. I added new posts but does not seem to be indexed by Google . After monitoring the site for 2 weeks I filed a reconsideration. The reply is appended below. What does the reply mean and what happens next. Anyone with similar experience care to comment? Thanks

Reconsideration request for http://www.XXXXXX.com/: No manual spam actions found.

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.XXXXXX.com/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team.

Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users.

If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search.

If you're still unable to resolve your issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,

Google Search Quality Team

Here are some sure shot tips for ranking higher (I use these methods);

1) Each post should have atleast 1200 to 1500 words (proper English without spelling and grammatical mistakes)

2) Use a single page for targetting multiple keywords which convey the same intent. Don't create multiple pages for just the sake of targetting these additional long tail keywords. For example:

how to lose weight and how to lose weight fast and lose weight should be targetted in the same page and not in different pages.

3) Don't keep writing about the same keyword again and again in scores of pages. They just don't help. Broaden your niche and write about related topics.

For example, instead of writing 50 pages about how to lose weight, start including related content like diet & fitness, body building etc.

4) Remove unecessary links in your Blogroll and footers that point to external websites.

5) Use rel="nofollow" for all external website links.

6) Use atleast one image in each blog post. Image file name should have the blog title and so should the alt text of the image.

Anyone familiar with Google places noticing a difference in the activity of this section?

I have over 100 automated blogs which were created early in 2011 most were created in January just before Panda unleashed its mayhem. However, all blogs have continued to rise in ranks over the last 10 months and now have several thousand first page rankings.

Traffic has increased by a minimum of 12% month over month.

I attribute the success of these sites to two things. The quality of the automated content and the scheduling of certain types of links at certain times of the first two months of the sites inception. All links were done through Fiverr providers and the content was generated through Content Revenge (disclaimer...I own Content Revenge).

However, this method was created after several years of playing cat and mouse with Google and I have to say that Panda is indeed rewarding this method and our sites.

That is the key is adding the Youtube video, I would even use a picture unless the property will not let you or you they want you to pay to upload the video. Google's update pretty much is picking on new domains. We have noticed aged domains are very easy to rank and new domains are more difficult, but obviously possible.

The july panda update penalized sites linking to OTHER sites penalized in the july panda update - IE ezinearticles.com got wacked ; so did my ranking [was #3 in "internet marketing" worldwide] ; in oct ezine's got better; so did mine.

I have an RSS based article search engine rewriter that feeds off of ezine's and others ; re-builds the material/summary and creates a listing 4 times per day --- talk about new content - over 50,000 article summaries in 75 different channels updating every 6 hours - all with internet marketing type content.

Ok - maybe over did it?

However- and here is the BIG ONE - Google also employs real people to review sites from time to time - both line - if you have value; provide something that adds to the web, real content [or at least REALLY READABLE] ; you will be fine...

And of course link your ass off ; on the highest PR sites you can like a mad man!
Get on a high PR - .gov or .edu - LINKGASM.
FYI ; Warriors is PR 5.
D

Hi guys, just wondering if any of you have any clue whats going on with my site:

I was ranking 6th for my money keyword with my domain, after the October update rankings completely disappeared. Did a bit of tweaking and my domain is not in the top 500 but the blog post of the article im using as my front page for my domain is ranking 35th, the article its self has 0 back links with the domain having 300+

Any ideas whats up? is just my homepage banned?

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This morning, I was sh*t upon by Google again. My one site that "survived" the Oct. Panda update dropped from spot 2 to spot 6. Result? Almost no traffic. Total day's revenue thus far: Less than 3 dollars. Amazing, the difference between position 2 and 6, isn't it?

I put a fair bit of work into my sites, for what they are - small, niche sites - I don't think it's that my content sucks; I'm a good writer...but I've waited long enough to see if things "bounce back". Time for more quality linking than what worked before.

I got dropped almost out of top 10. Not sure what happening. But my site was having down time often thanks to my host Dreamhost (a top worst host on the Internet). I think down time has an effect these days.

Here's a great video (with a written transcript) from seomoz.org on their view of Panda, what it does and what people can do about it:

How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever - Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz

Suzanne

@Chris: My only issue with bounce rate is that a high bounce rate doesn't necessarily means it's a bad page. I have particular calculator that ranks #1 in Google SERPs. The bounce rate is high because people come in, use it and then go about their lives. They just needed that one particular calculation, at that moment in time. However, the % of return visitors to that page is very high compared to my other pages.

From what I understand, Google does check bounce in the sense when a user clicks a link in Google search results and then bounces back to the search results and clicks another link because the first link didn't give them what they wanted. And now Google is going a step further by asking you if you want to block the website you just bounced out of.

@Dennis: Just wait till the next Panda update! I'm sure they'll be another thread started! :-) So far, my site has *not* been effected by Panda (in a negative way), but I've been following threads here and in Google's Webmaster Tools forum. You just never now if/when you're going to be hit. I've fixed up a few things on my site, but right now I'm in a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mode.

Suzanne

Google tends to change there policies frequently. I had my adwords account disabled from which I believe due to low grade keywords I was trying to use. I'm still not sure why, So Im not surprised that they are cracking down harder on sites now.

Yes, very much affected. My sites and my clients sites suffered because of that Panda. Anyway, we can do nothing about it.

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I think Google has always rewarded aged sites, it would make sense for them to stick with those that have been around for sometime rather than an upstart

It's interesting how when you call something a Panda, it is a cute little innocent creature.

What would you think of this "Panda" upgrade if they never chose to name it a cute name?

You'd be thinking that Google changes algorithm to sort out thousands of wrongfully linked sites. Hmm, that cant be good for reputation.

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From what I've read, the Panda update is named after a Google employee by the name of Navneet Panda.

Suzanne

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It seems affiliate sites were hit hard by Panda. It is frustrating, because I have some sites that have great content but are large, and I think to some extent the shear size of the sites are hurting the entire site.

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I have always stated that as long as you write unique content on your blog and bookmark it as you go along, and continue to create a collection of varied links REGUARLY.

you will be fine, as a result any updates should not effect you, never rely heavily on one thing keeping your eggs in one basket.

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Nah..

No changes ...

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