Google EMD. POST your site status Thread**

by sdlive
106 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Guys, i know alot of you were effected. My site was affected too during the first day.

Day 1 September 28, 2012 - Got hit, traffic down 6k
Day 2 September 29, 2012 - Recovered a little ..still down 4k from avg traffic
Day 3 September 30, 2012 - Almost full recovery.

Post your status
#emd #google #post #site #status #thread
  • Profile picture of the author Mr. Ken Russell
    Day 1 September 28, 2012 - Extremely high competitive keyword ranked #54
    Day 2 September 29, 2012 - Same keyword jumped to #1
    Day 3 September 30, 2012 - Still ranked #1
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  • Profile picture of the author ps2home
    Day 1 September 28, 2012 - All EMDs apart from 2 vanished from ranks (most were ranked 4th-20th).
    Day 2 September 29, 2012 - Still not back
    Day 3 September 30, 2012 Still not back

    I'm going to wait and see how many come back within the next days. Hopefully some will come back.
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  • Profile picture of the author georger123456
    Day 1 September 28, 2012 - All EMD's totally gone and 2 sites non emd also totally gone - Zero traffic via 17 domains
    Day 2 September 29, 2012 - Still not back in AM, during PM a few pages creeping back, mainly more obscure search terms
    Day 3 September 30, 2012 No change so far. I am really hoping for at least a partial recovery as our business income relied on these.
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    • Profile picture of the author tinknocker
      Day 1 September 28, 2012 - All day #3 position then around 8pm Got hit, traffic down 0 nowhere to be found
      Day 2 September 29, 2012 - Recovered a little (294) ..traffic still down 0
      Day 3 September 30, 2012 - Ranking (286) 0 traffic

      I thought the little movement I had on Saturday morning was going to continue but it really hasn't moved. Think I will wait until Wednesday to see if anything happens but my gut tells me I'm screwed.

      As far as traffic for my keywords I target, if I'm not in the top 4 then I don't get hardly any traffic. On the other hand I only have about 35 backlinks per site so maybe I should start a back-linking campaign which is not my strong point for sure but I need to work on this weakness I have.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ant B
    No change on my EMDs. They are all multiple page, good quality, grammatically correct sites and although they are EMD they also target multiple other keywords.
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  • Profile picture of the author ShutupAndEarn
    Same as above as far as page quality. I moved up from #6-#1 and #8-#3
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  • Profile picture of the author Jacob Sterbenk
    Can someone with lost ranking let us know if the websites that vanished from SE were of low quality or not? Did they have natural link profile (many links from different sources)?
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    • Profile picture of the author Ant B
      Originally Posted by Jacob Sterbenk View Post

      Can someone with lost ranking let us know if the websites that vanished from SE were of low quality or not? Did they have natural link profile (many links from different sources)?
      In my opinion asking for the site owner to answer that is always going to be biased towards their own interest. Of course they are going to say their sites are good quality but without sharing the URL and allowing unbiased review of their sites we are not really going to be able to determine good / bad quality. Do you agree?
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      • Profile picture of the author tinknocker
        Originally Posted by Ant B View Post

        In my opinion asking for the site owner to answer that is always going to be biased towards their own interest. Of course they are going to say their sites are good quality but without sharing the URL and allowing unbiased review of their sites we are not really going to be able to determine good / bad quality. Do you agree?




        I agree with you on this point and I may share one of my sites after Wednesday if it is still in the tank (nothing really to lose at that point) to get an opinion on the quality which of course I think is good.
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      • Profile picture of the author markthedoc
        Day 1 - Sat 28 Sep - All my EMDs apart from 1 vanished from ranks (most were ranked 2nd-20th). The one that didn't budge was at number 1.
        Day 2 - Sat 28 Sep - Still not back
        Day 3 - Sat 28 Sep - Still not back

        I've also just discovered that a 1 page EMD site that I finished on Thursday has just entered the SERPs at #6. I'm confused!
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  • Profile picture of the author Jerome15
    all my MNFs are gone even my money site which has lots of content has dropped from 4k visits/day to 2k.
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  • Profile picture of the author petemcal
    2/3 EMDs completely blasted out of the serps.

    No recovery. My biggest site has went from 300 visitors a day to 8 EEP
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  • Profile picture of the author Arowana
    2 of my best money making websites are gone. No recovery. I am gonna start looking for a job today. Very sad and worried.
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  • Profile picture of the author tansks
    I think most of my EMDs gone as I lost at least 80% impression in adsense.

    Maybe this game is not for me. I am thinking to quit.
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    Coming soon

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    • Profile picture of the author nest28
      Originally Posted by Arowana View Post

      2 of my best money making websites are gone. No recovery. I am gonna start looking for a job today. Very sad and worried.
      Originally Posted by tansks View Post

      I think most of my EMDs gone as I lost at least 80% impression in adsense.

      Maybe this game is not for me. I am thinking to quit.
      Don't quit, just make sites differently.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by Jacob Sterbenk View Post

        Can someone with lost ranking let us know if the websites that vanished from SE were of low quality or not? Did they have natural link profile (many links from different sources)?
        Originally Posted by Ant B View Post

        In my opinion asking for the site owner to answer that is always going to be biased towards their own interest. Of course they are going to say their sites are good quality but without sharing the URL and allowing unbiased review of their sites we are not really going to be able to determine good / bad quality. Do you agree?
        Yeah, without seeing the sites you will never get any real data on this.

        If you believe everyone on this forum, they are all creating websites with Pulitzer Prize quality material and nothing less. :rolleyes:
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      • Profile picture of the author tansks
        Originally Posted by nest28 View Post

        Don't quit, just make sites differently.
        I just can't believe most of my sites got hit and including those quality sites, which I put many effort to created. The main problem is who define quality? Is there anywhere we can submit our site for measurement?
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        Coming soon

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  • Profile picture of the author jackiej21
    17 EMD domains - all 17 blasted without trace - hoping for maybe some recovery
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  • Profile picture of the author brettb
    My bigger sites got blasted. My smaller sites seem OK.

    My writing is OK, but at the end of the day I don't actually sell the widget in question. The big G is giving us clues that for many queries it is wanting to see FORUMS and ANSWERS type sites.

    In the IT niche, I can give you an example - StackOverflow.com has stolen most of my IT questions type traffic ("how do I write a table join", that type of stuff).

    One site you can see is HubPages. My Hub Google traffic is down 90%! Ouch. I don't know if other Hubbers were hit so much.
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  • Profile picture of the author Aussie_Al
    All my EMDs are ranking fine - that said by posting this I have probably jinxed myself and will see them drop tomorrow :-/
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    • Profile picture of the author MarketWave
      My site has taken a beating and it's not even an exact match domain, but it got destroyed starting September 28th.

      I'll give out my main keyword because the site only makes about $10.00 per month and I mostly run it for fun.

      The keyword I'm targeting is "Play Hangman". I created a Javascript Hangman game. The site is 100% original coding done by me and the graphics are all done by myself as well. My site is www.justhangman.com and I was previously ranked third in google. I now rank somewhere around 670 for that keyword.

      Everybody talks about how their sites are high quality and I feel mine is as well. It delivers exactly what the searcher is looking for. A place to play hangman online.

      I was getting 50-70 visitors a day. Saturday I got 10, Sunday 7, and today so far... one visitor. I'm don't understand why my site was targeted? It's not exact match for my keyword and has great site engagement. Here are my stats from Google Analytics for the past month:

      Visits: 1,529
      Unique Visitors: 1,156
      Pageviews: 10,561
      Pages/Visit: 6.91
      Avg. Visit Duration : 00:07:17
      Bounce Rate: 31.72%
      % New Visits: 71.68%

      I feel like I have a nice visit duration and a pretty low bounce rate.

      I know some of you are probably wondering, why are you giving away your keyword, website, and stats?

      If I'm only getting 1-10 visitors a day everybody else can have at my keywords. I'm obviously not providing what Google wants. What they actually want is a mystery to me.
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      • Profile picture of the author sdlive
        Originally Posted by MarketWave View Post

        My site has taken a beating and it's not even an exact match domain, but it got destroyed starting September 28th.

        I'll give out my main keyword because the site only makes about $10.00 per month and I mostly run it for fun.

        The keyword I'm targeting is "Play Hangman". I created a Javascript Hangman game. The site is 100% original coding done by me and the graphics are all done by myself as well. My site is www.justhangman.com and I was previously ranked third in google. I now rank somewhere around 670 for that keyword.

        Everybody talks about how their sites are high quality and I feel mine is as well. It delivers exactly what the searcher is looking for. A place to play hangman online.

        I was getting 50-70 visitors a day. Saturday I got 10, Sunday 7, and today so far... one visitor. I'm don't understand why my site was targeted? It's not exact match for my keyword and has great site engagement. Here are my stats from Google Analytics for the past month:

        Visits: 1,529
        Unique Visitors: 1,156
        Pageviews: 10,561
        Pages/Visit: 6.91
        Avg. Visit Duration : 00:07:17
        Bounce Rate: 31.72%
        % New Visits: 71.68%

        I feel like I have a nice visit duration and a pretty low bounce rate.

        I know some of you are probably wondering, why are you giving away your keyword, website, and stats?

        If I'm only getting 1-10 visitors a day everybody else can have at my keywords. I'm obviously not providing what Google wants. What they actually want is a mystery to me.
        Any black hat or close to black hat seo u did to it?
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        • Profile picture of the author MarketWave
          Originally Posted by sdlive View Post

          Any black hat or close to black hat seo u did to it?
          None whatsoever. I don't even build links for it anymore. I added a few blog comments when the site was first created approximately three years ago and I added some links on a few web directories.

          I haven't built links for it in ages. It slowly started rising until it settled into a nice position at #3 for the keyword "play hangman". I occasionally add a new version of the game to target a few more keywords, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc...

          I've attached a screenshot of traffic from April 1, 2010 - October 4th, 2012.

          I was averaging about 50 visitors per day for the last year, but now my traffic has plummeted. The only real traffic I'm getting is from people visiting my site from this thread. (Thanks, I hope you enjoyed playing my hangman games!)
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          • Profile picture of the author ShopServe
            No hope or changes so far. I am curious if anyone who was hit, has recovered in any way and what did you do?
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  • Profile picture of the author caseym
    I have a site with 60 pages of unique content. The domain is not an EMD and has nothing to do with the search results. My traffic is down 80% after this update.

    This is my first experience with this kind of impact and it is so frustrating.
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    • Profile picture of the author valvarga
      I have 7 keyword rich domains, (not EMDs) some are big some are smaller, some are good, some are could do with more content. The sites target the UK market with UK domain extensions.

      Traffic dropped 70%-80% (approximately) across the portfolio. So far no recovery.

      So my feeling that is is not just for US search, and it is not just for EMDs. I can still see plenty of EMDs ranking in my niches, many of them are much lower quality then mine. My lost sites all had similar layouts and structures targeting different niches.

      Hoping for recovery
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      • Profile picture of the author caseym
        Originally Posted by valvarga View Post

        I can still see plenty of EMDs ranking in my niches, many of them are much lower quality then mine.

        Hoping for recovery
        I'm seeing the same thing. An EMD that dropped a few months ago just moved up and is ranking above me now. I'm hoping for recovery too!
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    • Profile picture of the author HarrisAndrea
      Originally Posted by caseym View Post

      I have a site with 60 pages of unique content. The domain is not an EMD and has nothing to do with the search results. My traffic is down 80% after this update.

      This is my first experience with this kind of impact and it is so frustrating.
      Same situation here. My website is not EMD, it has 210 unique and high quality articles and is 3 years old. I have not been affected by the Panda and Penguin updates at all and I was getting around 1500 visitors a day. After Sept29 my traffic dropped by 75%. That is so frustrating. I don't know what went wrong. All my links are organic without any manual link building or anything.
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  • Profile picture of the author Green Moon
    I have several EMDs and have not noticed any change, but they have relatively low traffic so they have lots and peaks and valleys. It would be hard to see any trend in a 3-day period. I'll post back in a week.
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  • Profile picture of the author Weedy92
    0% Hit. 100% of my sites are fine. Most even jumped way up, plenty sit on page #1 now.. Some of my projects I didn't have time to finish, or do extensive backlinking on jumped 5-25 spots average. Best update yet, at least for my sites. Ranking an EMD for a client soon here, going to follow my same process, not much has changed on my end.

    Sorry to hear about your losses guys, I'm sure there's a way to recover. I'm looking into it further.
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    • Profile picture of the author massiveray
      Originally Posted by Weedy92 View Post

      0% Hit. 100% of my sites are fine. Most even jumped way up, plenty sit on page #1 now.. Some of my projects I didn't have time to finish, or do extensive backlinking on jumped 5-25 spots average. Best update yet, at least for my sites. Ranking an EMD for a client soon here, going to follow my same process, not much has changed on my end.

      Sorry to hear about your losses guys, I'm sure there's a way to recover. I'm looking into it further.
      Out of interest, do you use webmaster tools? The only site of mine that was affected is the only emd I have on wmt. The rest have jump up or stayed with no work on them.
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      • Profile picture of the author Weedy92
        Originally Posted by massiveray View Post

        Out of interest, do you use webmaster tools? The only site of mine that was affected is the only emd I have on wmt. The rest have jump up or stayed with no work on them.
        Nope, No Webmaster tools, No GA. Don't ever give Google my private site data.
        Why give them a reason to screw you over? Not like it even helps your site..
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        • Profile picture of the author satrap
          Originally Posted by Weedy92 View Post

          Nope, No Webmaster tools, No GA. Don't ever give Google my private site data.
          Why give them a reason to screw you over? Not like it even helps your site..
          Do you really think Google doesn't already have that data, and needs you to sign up for their webmaster tool to get that data?...

          How do you think they rank your site in the serps if they dont know where your links are coming from?...
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      • Profile picture of the author kevinpascal
        Originally Posted by massiveray View Post

        Out of interest, do you use webmaster tools? The only site of mine that was affected is the only emd I have on wmt. The rest have jump up or stayed with no work on them.
        Oh Wow! What an observation. It happened to me as well.

        I have around 8 EMD and 1 PMD website (which is 68 high quality articles website built slowly since 2008) using webmaster tools and they all fell down.
        I have 2 other EMDs low quality and they are still doing good. I have deleted all my sites from webmaster tools for now. Google Sucks if it is doing this.
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        • Profile picture of the author kevinpascal
          Originally Posted by kevinpascal View Post

          Oh Wow! What an observation. It happened to me as well.

          I have around 8 EMD and 1 PMD website (which is 68 high quality articles website built slowly since 2008) using webmaster tools and they all fell down.
          I have 2 other EMDs low quality and they are still doing good. I have deleted all my sites from webmaster tools for now. Google Sucks if it is doing this.
          Is this happening with anyone else as well? Please confirm.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sharon Hayes
    No hits here. The sites I had #1 rankings on are still #1. Those that weren't #1 have moved up not down.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dayne Dylan
    Banned
    Trying to rank and stay ranked in Google is like building a house on thin toothpicks. It's just a matter of time until you get a few bad backlinks or Google views your site even 1% in a negative way and you're dropped. You can even play by their rules and still be dumped. It's ridiculous.
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    • Profile picture of the author Weedy92
      Originally Posted by Dayne Dylan View Post

      Trying to rank and stay ranked in Google is like building a house on thin toothpicks. It's just a matter of time until you get a few bad backlinks or Google views your site even 1% in a negative way and you're dropped. You can even play by their rules and still be dumped. It's ridiculous.
      Want to know what's even more messed up?

      Matt Cutts website still ranks #1. Yet go look at his homepage, it's bare, it's incredibly low quality.. Worst website ever. Then go to his blog, his link structure isn't easy to read, it's not correct. He doesn't have a custom theme, it's incredibly bare and low quality.. Only thing he has going for him is content.

      In short, he does everything he tells SEO's not to do, lol. (Aside from backlinks)
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      • Profile picture of the author UMS
        Originally Posted by Weedy92 View Post

        Want to know what's even more messed up?

        Matt Cutts website still ranks #1.
        For what terms? Matt Cutts :p

        Yet go look at his homepage, it's bare, it's incredibly low quality.. Worst website ever. Then go to his blog, his link structure isn't easy to read, it's not correct. He doesn't have a custom theme, it's incredibly bare and low quality.. Only thing he has going for him is content.
        Basic does not have to equate with low quality. There's plenty of very slick looking websites that have crap content.
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        • Profile picture of the author pilotjoe
          I have about 50-60 EMDs are low quality thin sites that got hit, so I'm not surprised.. but all have went from #1-#11 down to like #175.

          I have several EMDs that had 10+ pages of unique content moved up in rank. Some EMDs were aged with lots of older unique content have been hit.

          My main money site with 100s of pages of unique content, not an EMD.. getting tons of traffic today.
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    • Profile picture of the author alfred9858
      My site is affected too. With the domain name as keyword search, my site WAS on page 1 in Google Search. Now its no where to be found (it is above page 10+). However, in Bing and Yahoo search, it is still page 1.

      I have another site domain name uses an actual name (example: tomjerry dot com). The keyword targeted on "Education Material", the keywords have no relationship with domain name. The ranking of this site went up.

      The structure and setup of both sites are the same. I have both adsense and Clickbank ads in it.

      How to get my position back in Google search???
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  • Profile picture of the author densho
    Mine droped 3 positions it was number #2 on the first page, after 2 days it got back to #3, hopefully it will get back to second place
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  • Profile picture of the author nemesis81
    3 of my website burned.

    for now any improvement in the serp.
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  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    2 emds first page
    2 general domain with 50+ tanked

    I don't like to say penalty because I don't consider every drop to be a penalty unless I'm positive and I don't believe I deserve #1 like everybody else. I see it as ok maybe I deserve to be on page 8 what can I do to make it better. That's different from a penalty.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dayne Dylan
    Banned
    Speaking of watching your rankings, what tools do you guys use to monitor your ranking positions?
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    • Profile picture of the author OmarNegron
      Originally Posted by Dayne Dylan View Post

      Speaking of watching your rankings, what tools do you guys use to monitor your ranking positions?
      Im currently using Serp Fox. I love everything about it.

      -Omar
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  • Profile picture of the author nemesis81
    I use the rankerizer, or TT4.
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  • Profile picture of the author supaH
    1. All EMD's completely tanked
    2. No difference
    3. Some keywords move from 500 to 400. Slight movement.
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  • Profile picture of the author camay123
    This makes no sense. My EMD was not ranked for its term, but was slowly gaining rank for other terms and subpages. It is nowehere to be seen since september 29th. So not just emd that got it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matt Attack
      All my Amazon sites, some of which are EMD and some of which are EMD + short word have dropped off the map. All my niche site income went practically to zero overnight, and no sign of any recovery.

      Most of these sites had close to 10 pages of all unique high quality written content written by myself. This really stinks...
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  • Profile picture of the author ianbirch
    I have 7 sites ,3 emds
    My main 2 emds are still page 1 on all search engines,i lost one but it has just started to come back and is now on page 2 but at the bottom.
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  • Profile picture of the author stockpost
    Some of my sites which are on page one (Niche Directories) are not seen for those keywords today. One site has 9000 listings related to that Niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author ChrisMoon
    18 sites shot down, but not surprised they were pretty thin. Was going to drop most of them when it came round to renewing domains.
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  • Profile picture of the author codecreative
    What do I do to recover my site?
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  • Profile picture of the author zannix
    One of my "high quality" EMDs dropped 2 spots for it's EMD KW, and totally vanished for the non EMD keyword. Weird huh?

    The other EMD (low quality) still ranking #1. This is a local keyword though.
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    • Profile picture of the author ashishthakkar
      5 emds of mine - all gone.

      2 gallery sites + 1 amazon + 2 product blogs(actual products and not affiliate ones. have unique content).

      1 of them got back on the top page for a while last night(12 hrs ago). Gone again...
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by MarketWave View Post

      My site has taken a beating and it's not even an exact match domain, but it got destroyed starting September 28th.

      I'll give out my main keyword because the site only makes about $10.00 per month and I mostly run it for fun.

      The keyword I'm targeting is "Play Hangman". I created a Javascript Hangman game. The site is 100% original coding done by me and the graphics are all done by myself as well. My site is www.justhangman.com and I was previously ranked third in google. I now rank somewhere around 670 for that keyword.

      Everybody talks about how their sites are high quality and I feel mine is as well. It delivers exactly what the searcher is looking for. A place to play hangman online.

      I was getting 50-70 visitors a day. Saturday I got 10, Sunday 7, and today so far... one visitor. I'm don't understand why my site was targeted? It's not exact match for my keyword and has great site engagement. Here are my stats from Google Analytics for the past month:

      Visits: 1,529
      Unique Visitors: 1,156
      Pageviews: 10,561
      Pages/Visit: 6.91
      Avg. Visit Duration : 00:07:17
      Bounce Rate: 31.72%
      % New Visits: 71.68%

      I feel like I have a nice visit duration and a pretty low bounce rate.

      I know some of you are probably wondering, why are you giving away your keyword, website, and stats?

      If I'm only getting 1-10 visitors a day everybody else can have at my keywords. I'm obviously not providing what Google wants. What they actually want is a mystery to me.
      Just took a quick glance at this site. You should take a look at the text version of the site. It is not far from being a blank page. That is probably why it is not ranking. Google cannot read javascript and tell you have a hangman game.


      Originally Posted by Weedy92 View Post

      Want to know what's even more messed up?

      Matt Cutts website still ranks #1. Yet go look at his homepage, it's bare, it's incredibly low quality.. Worst website ever. Then go to his blog, his link structure isn't easy to read, it's not correct. He doesn't have a custom theme, it's incredibly bare and low quality.. Only thing he has going for him is content.

      In short, he does everything he tells SEO's not to do, lol. (Aside from backlinks)

      The backlinks is kind of a big deal. Do you know how many truly natural backlinks that site attracts? More than you could ever dream of.

      Nobody is trying to rank for the term "Matt Cutts". There is really no competition.

      Originally Posted by massiveray View Post

      Out of interest, do you use webmaster tools? The only site of mine that was affected is the only emd I have on wmt. The rest have jump up or stayed with no work on them.
      Originally Posted by Weedy92 View Post

      Nope, No Webmaster tools, No GA. Don't ever give Google my private site data.
      Why give them a reason to screw you over? Not like it even helps your site..
      This argument is always silly to me. You can use Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics and rank just fine. What is it you really think you are hiding from Google by not using it?

      Generally, Google penalizes or decreases the ranking of sites for 2 reasons. The first is onsite issues such as hidden text, doorways, etc. The second is what Google determines to be low quality or spammy backlinks. Whether you use GWT and GA or not, Google has all the information they need about those things.

      Now if you want to go with one of the paid options, hey go for it. There are far better analytic tools out there, but you are going to pay for them.
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      • Profile picture of the author MarketWave
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Just took a quick glance at this site. You should take a look at the text version of the site. It is not far from being a blank page. That is probably why it is not ranking. Google cannot read javascript and tell you have a hangman game.

        Thanks for taking a look. That's interesting and I'll take a look at adding some more text to the page. It just seems kind of weird to have a lot of text on a page that is esentially a game. This could be a good case study on what Google considers quality signals because I know that my visitors enjoy playing the game because it has good engagment metrics. I have keywords in my title and description. With so little text on the actual page it looks like having keywords in your title and description without enough supporting text may send a "low quality" signal. I'll try to add some text to the page tonight and monitor rankings after that. If anybody is interested I can post the results back to this thread.

        Thanks,

        Ryan
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      • Profile picture of the author massiveray
        What argument? I asked a guy a question to help me investigate the cause and possible solution to this latest update.

        I simply noticed that the only emd (which is not even a money site) that I have in wmt is the only one that suffered a drop, not even that big, from 1 to 11, this to me is worth further investigation.

        The site was ranking based on its on page factors only, never built a link to it, with the exception of a dormant twitter account.

        I pay for analytics because I get more insight into what my visitors are doing.

        You sir just assumed that you are smarter than google, you don't know what they can and can't see without you adding their code to your site. We all only know what they want us to know.

        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post


        This argument is always silly to me. You can use Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics and rank just fine. What is it you really think you are hiding from Google by not using it?

        Generally, Google penalizes or decreases the ranking of sites for 2 reasons. The first is onsite issues such as hidden text, doorways, etc. The second is what Google determines to be low quality or spammy backlinks. Whether you use GWT and GA or not, Google has all the information they need about those things.

        Now if you want to go with one of the paid options, hey go for it. There are far better analytic tools out there, but you are going to pay for them.
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        • Profile picture of the author valvarga
          It seems that there may be hope for recovery. I can report an increased number of visitors over the past 24 hours to the sites that went down. Still way down from before the update, but it increased. Wait and see.
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        • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
          Originally Posted by massiveray View Post

          What argument? I asked a guy a question to help me investigate the cause and possible solution to this latest update.

          I simply noticed that the only emd (which is not even a money site) that I have in wmt is the only one that suffered a drop, not even that big, from 1 to 11, this to me is worth further investigation.

          The site was ranking based on its on page factors only, never built a link to it, with the exception of a dormant twitter account.

          I pay for analytics because I get more insight into what my visitors are doing.

          You sir just assumed that you are smarter than google, you don't know what they can and can't see without you adding their code to your site. We all only know what they want us to know.
          Sup Dannyboy!
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    • Profile picture of the author prospectsoftech
      I also lose the SERP during this update and bounce rate goes high,so what to do this to kept position back??






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      • Profile picture of the author tommeh
        1 EMD dropped to page 2
        1 EMD gone completely
        2 non EMDs gone for all major phrases
        1 EMD untouched

        hoping the update isn't over yet...
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    • Profile picture of the author condra
      My 6 month old EMD (with excellent content) site has gone from 20 visitors a day, to .... zero visitors a day.

      Cheers Google.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Silvey
      Are you guys recovering for the Keyword in your domain?
      Are you ranking using on page SEO or backlinks?

      Google rolled out a Panda Update the day before the EMD update, So some EMDs not hit by the EMD update, might of got hit with the Panda Update.
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    • Profile picture of the author mxr
      I have noticed rotation in my niches.

      Some of my sites that that were on the first and second page got blasted ~ as did some other EMD and thin affiliate sites in my niches.

      However, other sites that were way down, say page 5+ have now moved up, for myself and other competitor sites.

      It is almost as G has decided to shake everyone up - remove those that have been near the top for a while making money, and giving others a chance to be at the top. G is ensuring everyone gets their just dessert, and no one takes the bulk of the money.

      But what I find strange, is that some of my sites where are reasonable quality, are now being outranked by a single article on a totally unrelated domain name.
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    • Profile picture of the author blend
      My site has bounced back. It was #2 on Google before the EMD update, it's now number 8. I am happy with this as i feared it was blown away
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  • Profile picture of the author jimnastics
    One of my 3 smaller sites that were hit has magically reappeared in it's original position this morning So there is hope.

    My 3 most important EMD sites were all unaffected - 1 is a 70+ page 3yr old site with good link profile, the other 2 both under 1yr old, under 10 pages, little link building. But decent enough, not-over-optimised content I guess.
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  • Profile picture of the author brettb
    Some of my sites are seeing a little recovery.

    My non-EMD domains have been hit hardest. Strangely, the EMD I bought here on the Warrior Forum has had a surge in traffic (it's cheapgreenwidgets.com).

    Strangely, some of my sites are OK, others not so OK. Sites with no link building seem better, but like the other updates it's hard to determine why one site is hit and others survive.
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  • Profile picture of the author javari
    What I find most worrying is that there seems to be no clear pattern.
    For me it's very unclear what to do or not to do. There are lots of people here with sites with a lot of quality content (of course can't verify that) who are being hit as well.

    I can understand that thin sites are hit, but when sites with a lot of content are hit as well, I just don't get it.

    Hopefully some smart people will be able to recognize a pattern soon...
    (we will be seeing a lot of WSO's then about this, I suspect)
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    • Profile picture of the author Tspringer
      Originally Posted by javari View Post

      What I find most worrying is that there seems to be no clear pattern.
      For me it's very unclear what to do or not to do. There are lots of people here with sites with a lot of quality content (of course can't verify that) who are being hit as well.

      I can understand that thin sites are hit, but when sites with a lot of content are hit as well, I just don't get it.

      Hopefully some smart people will be able to recognize a pattern soon...
      (we will be seeing a lot of WSO's then about this, I suspect)
      I disagree, there is a solid pattern with this and all the Panda/Penguin updates. Giant sites and brands that generate huge Adwords revenue for Google - THEY consistently improve. Smaller sites that are not revenue sources of significance for Google are consistently hurt. That is the only real clear result that I can decipher.

      Buying traffic is what google wants.


      Terry
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  • Profile picture of the author cagliostro
    Some websites of mine are gone from rankings. Not EMDs BUT all of them had backlinks from EMD websites (i had manually submited to them).

    So my backlinks were FROM EMDs and since they lost their traffic, i lost my traffic also. Go figure.
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    • Profile picture of the author Anil Kint
      SET 1 - EMDs overly optimized ( > 95% on Easy WP SEO plugin) - Rank dropped by 20-30

      SET 2 - EMDs with not so much optimized pages but having content from related keywords. The keyword relevance is not from Google Keyword Tool LSI but from a end user perspective. Drop was not that severe. After the drop they seem to be coming back to normal ranking again.

      SET 3 - PMDs - Not too much change.
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  • Profile picture of the author LeoTran
    All my websites got hit, EMD and Non-EMD :/ f*cking days
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  • Profile picture of the author raffiliato
    I have 3 EMDs and of them 1 is presently my money website since the other two are receive little or no traffic. The one that got hit received an average of 2200 with the following stats:
    Page per visit: 3.86
    Average visit duration: 01:49
    New visits: 82.18%
    Bounce rate: 0.27%

    This one got hit seriously as now I get just about 20 visits a day now. And by all standards in niche, though it is PR1 1-year old site, the content is nothing near low quality. Personally written and well-researched.
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  • Profile picture of the author KeNiQ
    Site 1 Partial EMD - Dropped from page 1 for all keywords
    Site 2 EMD - dropped to position 78 from position 2
    Site 3 EMD - I can't even find it
    Site 4 EMD - Was position 5... now I can't find it at all


    I have more sites they have all been punished 70% of my sites are 20-30 pages of original content...

    I see a few sites with fewer pages EMD 100 for a keyword im targeting and they haven't been affected at all..
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  • Profile picture of the author HorseStall
    Google definitely tweaked something, I have a bunch of sites and saw changes around the 28th. Some websites lost traffic by about a 1/3, some increased traffic by about 1/3 typical Google... its not obvious what the common denominator to cause the change is.
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  • Profile picture of the author ownergolan
    Too many metrics, mostly are downhill but a few surprises. Just wait it out to see where you stand after the dancing.
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  • Profile picture of the author ShopServe
    I'm new here, but thought I HAD to reply. We own (8) stores all within a particular industry. Each store relates to an individual niche, in the industry . . . so our stores are named as such. Our most important store, for the season, got hit hard. And yes, it is an EMD, as it has been for 4.5 years (keywordkeywordUSA.com)

    Day 1 September 28, 2012 - Got hit, traffic down 3,000
    Day 2 September 29, 2012 - Massive slide to 400 visitors, down 5,100
    Day 3 September 30, 2012 - Slightly up to 500 visitors, down 5,000

    Store has no ads, good link profile, unique content, manufacture info on product pages - similar to text of competition, yet written to be somewhat unique. Page 1 for 4.5 years for 100's of terms, now totally gone.
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    • Profile picture of the author CletusVanDamme
      Every single EMD site I have got hit - zero traffic the last few days from google...
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  • Profile picture of the author gladwinforum
    My traffic has increased twice after the Update
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    • Profile picture of the author valvarga
      my sites are still down all PMDs. Income down too, not surprising.
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  • Profile picture of the author hunti410
    My question is this...If you ran a small business...in a shop for example...would you buy that shop, add content, etc only to find the following month the council come along and change the road or remove the pedestrian area? No is the answer and yet we are constantly coming up with sites, ranking them only for Google to change the game and then you lose your traffic, hey presto, business gone...

    What with Panda in 2011, Penguin in April and now this I have just had enough of Google. Matt Cutts is a t**t and I cannot wait for Bing/Yahoo and/or Facebook to really eat away at Google's search dominance - something needs to happen - lots of small, local businesses foolish enough to play to Google's tunes are taking a lot less money this week - e.g. taxi firms, florists, restaurants, all companies that were bound to have exact match domains because hey, if I want a taxi from Stansted Airport why would I click on some random looking company say called tick-t**ck taxi I'd want to click on a domain that has Stansted Taxi in the domain.

    Google sucks and they are killing businesses all over the place - shame on you Matt Cutts!
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  • Profile picture of the author Mkj
    I have around 45 more or less identical EMD sites each of which deals with different product ranges. These are large affiliate database driven sites of which some have around 100,000 pages. They all died a death with the latest update but 2 are now getting much more traffic than they were previously. Some others are starting to get some visitors but the vast majority are still dead in the water. I don't hold much hope of them recovering to be honest. I think the ones that have recovered and improved have less competition - cycles and computer systems - with exact model type searches being carried out.

    Lets face it Google wants to make money from everything affiliates get involved in so we are potential threats. Google shopping, Google this and Google that. They want it all and more besides. I don't trust them an inch and I try to keep my activities as low key as possible with no usage of webmaster tools and so on. If they take a dislike to you bang you are deindexed or penalized or something. You could become extremely paranoid about them quite easily. I could well be already! I hope to hell other search engines gain ground and ruin the b******s to be honest.
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  • Profile picture of the author dennis09
    Anyone willing to share your actual site urls? I've been pouring through a lot of data these past few days from over 50 sites and I think i might be on to something but I need a bigger sample pool to analyze. You can shoot me a PM if you like and i'd be happy to share with you any results I find.
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    • Profile picture of the author Carl Brown
      Originally Posted by dennis09 View Post

      Anyone willing to share your actual site urls? I've been pouring through a lot of data these past few days from over 50 sites and I think i might be on to something but I need a bigger sample pool to analyze. You can shoot me a PM if you like and i'd be happy to share with you any results I find.
      Not any current domains, but I just let the domain expire that got hit bad in April. proteinshakerecipesguide.com It was #2 for "protein shake recipes" and climbing for "protein shakes." I made a lot more per month than I expected for the keywords. Turned out I was getting a lot of unintended traffic for longtail keywords that I wasn't targeting.

      I used blog-blueprint.com as the blogging network and linkwheels from fiverr. I targeted "protein shake recipes" way too much, but that was before Penguin

      I got sent to Google Hell and was replaced by Bodybuilding.com--another authority site that had lower quality content on that specific topic than my site. But they have authority, and Google rewarded them.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mkj
      Originally Posted by dennis09 View Post

      Anyone willing to share your actual site urls? I've been pouring through a lot of data these past few days from over 50 sites and I think i might be on to something but I need a bigger sample pool to analyze. You can shoot me a PM if you like and i'd be happy to share with you any results I find.
      Ok here are 2 sites of mine that are currently receiving much more traffic than they were previously. Bear in mind these are blatent anti Google type sites with no unique content. I like the technical aspects of running websites so I love messing with servers and so on. All my sites run off a home server ( over 60 huge database driven websites ) and all off home broadband. Anyways these 2 sites are flying now and making quite a lot of money:

      Computer Systems - Computer Systems And Monitors From Featured UK Companies

      Cycles - BMX Bikes, Kids Bikes, Mountain Bikes, Road Bikes, Touring Bikes And Cycling Accessories From Featured UK Companies.

      If you look at the footer you will see identical sites with different products many of which are dead but some are in fact now active. They should really help you form some sort of conclusion I think.

      The footer links are not the same as many of the sites urls as I have used 301 htaccess redirects a lot to send them to new domains. Confusing ain't it?
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      • Profile picture of the author deekay40
        two consistent EMD's knocked out the galaxy, lost all my traffic, first was #1, second #3
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  • Profile picture of the author WarGasm
    Google wants you to pay for traffic, end of story. Quit trying to figure them out.
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    • Profile picture of the author dennis09
      Originally Posted by WarGasm View Post

      Google wants you to pay for traffic, end of story. Quit trying to figure them out.
      Was that even necessary?

      There's a reason I distance myself from pessimistic f*cks like you. So far my "hunch" is proving itself to be correct and i'm seeing it even in the sites that have been given to me for review. Only thing left to do is run a few tests for myself. But I don't expect you to understand how real SEO works so you just keep following the crowd. If you don't have a question or anything of value to add to this community then please find your way to the nearest exit.

      "Those that say it can't be done should get out of the way of those that are doing it."

      edit: Sorry to derail this thread, please ignore and continue.
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  • Profile picture of the author stuartmike4
    (EMD) Exact Match Domain for Google new algorithm.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ashley249
    Day 10 (07-10-2012)My only EMD website got hit.

    It is a three month website, and was on #2 of google first page.
    I tried to search my keyword using different computers and proxy sites.
    Some show it on #10 of first page, some show #4, and some show ... nowhere

    And I just started my second website 2 week agao, which also EMD. Now I don't know if I should continue to do it...
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  • Profile picture of the author emigre
    No significant changes for me.

    Before anyone starts giving up totally, they should at least give it another shot but this time try to get traffic from non-Google sources.

    It's been said many times before by different people.
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  • Profile picture of the author manishak
    Day 1 - Sept 28 - Traffic Went Down
    Day 2 - Sept 29 - Traffic went further down
    Day 3 - Sept 30 - EMDs gone and so do non-EMDs - Traffic down to 2-3. 2 websites disappeared!

    EMDs showing higher position on Bing. Hopefully traffic also recovers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mkj
    I don't think the shake up is quite over as a few others of my sites have started to get traffic, more traffic in some cases than before. It was mentioned that it would take to the middle of next week or so to eventually settle.

    Funny thing I can see one of my sites (a small category of a much larger site and therefore using exactly the same and duplicated content) is getting far more traffic than the much larger one. Could be something to do with indexing rather than anything else, with the smaller site targetting products in that niche more so than being lost in the big site.
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  • Profile picture of the author ricoramiro
    I had 3 EMDs fall off the face of the Internet. All 3 used to be on page 1 until big G change their policy :-(

    None of them gets any traffic now and I may not renew the domains next month.
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    • Profile picture of the author CletusVanDamme
      Originally Posted by ricoramiro View Post

      I had 3 EMDs fall off the face of the Internet. All 3 used to be on page 1 until big G change their policy :-(

      None of them gets any traffic now and I may not renew the domains next month.
      Do you get any traffic through yahoo/bing? If you can make some money on it why not keep it?
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      • Profile picture of the author ricoramiro
        Originally Posted by CletusVanDamme View Post

        Do you get any traffic through yahoo/bing? If you can make some money on it why not keep it?
        I don't get traffic from Yahoo but I get some from Bing. I think you're right.

        The websites have been paying for themselves so I'll take your advice and keep them. I just have to work a little harder at SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author sdlive
    EMD UPDATE
    Day 20: Traffic back to normal and seems to be gaining now. I was down 6k in traffic but now got it all back + MORE!

    Did I do changes to my site? Yes. A couple. One example is by upgrading my VPS (server).

    I am benefiting from the Algo change. It seems easier to rank higher. Matt Cutt's been telling us the answer all along from the start.
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    • Profile picture of the author pauluskramer
      could you give us also those other small changes you did?




      Originally Posted by sdlive View Post

      EMD UPDATE
      Day 20: Traffic back to normal and seems to be gaining now. I was down 6k in traffic but now got it all back + MORE!

      Did I do changes to my site? Yes. A couple. One example is by upgrading my VPS (server).

      I am benefiting from the Algo change. It seems easier to rank higher. Matt Cutt's been telling us the answer all along from the start.
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  • Profile picture of the author jfambrini
    My EMD site is back but not on primary keywords. Used to be between number 1 and number on all Toyota Hilux and Toyota hilux Vigo related searches as Toyota Vigo Thailand, Toyota Vigo Double Cab, Toyota Hilux vigo Smart Cab, Toyota hilux Vigo extra cab, Toyota hilux dealer and so on. Dropped to page 3 on all this when the update first showed up then gradualrly clawed up and am now on first page but on bottom half of the page.

    Surprisingly though traffic which had fallen to 25% of its original traffic gradually rose to 50% and is now back to its original strength but in new keywords where I never scored high. Would love to be back on my primary keywords as most of my customers buy Toyota Hilux.
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  • Profile picture of the author wellm97
    After EMD update my keywords derank and I still cant their original position.
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  • Profile picture of the author Periwinkle
    Banned
    what tools do you guys use to monitor your ranking positions?
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  • Profile picture of the author Gareth Mailer
    SEOWales.org #4 next to no activity.
    QuickHouseSale.net #7 next to no activity.
    SEONorwich.net #5ish next to no activity.
    SEOOutsourcing.net #3ish next to no activity.
    And so on.

    Everything fine here, what a lot of panic about nothing.
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