That Penguin
-
Without trying to rub salt into the wounds of anyone hit hard, on the flip-side did anyone get some good news.
We have one particular client that was effected in an immense positive way today, for the last four months we found it difficult to outrank one of their competitors ... but they have vanished of the face of the earth today, well Google's earth .. which meant our client moved up the SERP for a number of their key-phrases, which gave me a sense of immense delight.
I could see exactly what they where doing, not so natural link building, creating a lot of sub-directories, naming each index file by the key phrase and linking all their internal links, while disturbing all their backlinks form the same source to each index page ... I wondered of they stayed under the radar cause each term was a sub-directory almost.
No doubt they will be back, but not after a clean up and a restructure to their website
Anyway I digress, anyone else seen any major improvements
-
I lost one, but gained one. It was awesome to see that traffic spike back up after almost a year
-
Just to add my 2 cents. I have seen the same thing as a number of people reported. No major hit - unlike with Penguin 1.0 - but on my primary site I have seem a drop in 1-4 spots for my keywords across the board.
Luckily, this is massive hit we saw last year in Penguin 1.0. The odd thing is however (and I don't know if anybody else has seen this) is that my sites that were hit by Penguin 1.0 seem to have recovered a lot. Many are back on the first page. I had not touched them in over a year.
My primary site I have has most of its links from very high quality sites in education since it is our niche. Top universities like Stanford, Harvard, etc but we have also paid for some ads - no follow - on some related forums. The links are no-follow, but they seemed to be showing up as links in Google Webmaster tools. My guess is that Google did not punish my site per-se, it simply stopped counting those links which should not have been counted in the first place.
If this is the extent of Penguin 2.0 it was not too bad for me. Nothing that can't be recovered from in a month of 2 of good SEO, and these kinds of fluctuations are to be expected. Of course if the roll out is still going on and the SERP shifts drastically again I may change my tune.
Good luck to everybody as we wait for the algo to finish its work.
-
haha It was about 9 am when I replied! I hope not too many people are headed to the bar at that hour.
(But tonight? Yes, tonight I'm going to party like a rockstar, party like a rockstar!)
-
Most happy people are heading out for beers.
They will not be posting here.
-
I agree that it's active SEOers that appear to be hit, I have a few drops in a couple of rankings on client websites but nothing major. There seems to be some really odd results too which I wouldn't rate as good quality but local results but not in Google+ Local. My own personal site which I do very little work on has done well but I think this is also due to other sites losing rankings rather than my excellent strategy!!
-
Thank you! I know most people who have posted so far are the ones who aren't happy but I think it's important we know that for every site that moves down, someone moved up and is pleased with the change. We try to do everything "by the book" but since the book doesn't exist, just do what we think is best - and it seems to work, though a bit slowly sometimes.
-
Wow, that's great news ....Congrats
-
Yes, THANKFULLY I got good news. I had a client come to me after losing 98% of their traffic in a 2 day period after Penguin 1. We have been fighting a losing battle since including disavowing old spam links, removing links, adding new and relevant links and citations, redoing some of the on-page work, etc. NOTHING has moved the needle.
Finally, yesterday, nearly all of their main keywords jumped from what Analytics said was "Average Position 400" to a few on page 1, 2, 3, lots on 5 and 6 and a lot in the top 100. Most of their keywords have recovered including ALL their most important ones. Now we have work to do but at least we know where we're at and we're not flailing in dark.
This was the client I've had the single most trouble ranking in my business' history so I'm having a really good day.
-
I have taken a slight hit position 1 to position 2 or 5 on keywords I was strong on... It seems that some of my competitors sites which are crap seem to have gained. It seems the active SEO ers have had a hit... However I think I will bounce back...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How is your site holding up post Penguin 4.0 roll out?
Hi team I was reading an article this morning from Barry Schwartz at SERoundtable about the impact of Penguin 4.0 and how webmasters are reporting minimal effects since launch. There was another article posted this morning about how the roll out may have began before the launch date, which would make sense as MozCast was reporting high temperatures leading up to Friday, specifically 9/12 to 9/15. I was wondering how everyone's traffic / rankings are performing after news broke on Friday, 9/23? Were you see fluctuations before that? What are you focusing on most now that Penguin 4.0 has launched? I understand we are a few days in and this is a real time / ongoing rollout, but I would be interested to hear what everyone has been seeing so far, if anything! Hope you all are doing well and I'm looking forward to hearing from you! Good luck!
Algorithm Updates | | PatrickDelehanty
P0 -
Penguin 3.0 Site Dropped after Update
Hi We was hit by the Penguin update a long time ago and we lost a lot of traffic/positions because of this. For a long time we worked really hard to identify all off our links that may have caused us to recieve this penalty. After Months of work we submitted the disavow file and reconsideration request and in June 2014 we recieved confirmation from google in webmaster tools that the manual spam action had been revoked. over time we then started to recieve more traffic and better positions in the serps, however since penguin 3.0 we have dropped again for a range of keywords. many going from page 1 to 2 or page 2 to 3/4 Any ideas what we should do here , any help will be really appriciated as I'm totally confused We havent done any link building at all since the penalty / recovery
Algorithm Updates | | AMG1000 -
Penguin Refresh - any ideas when?
Has anyone heard when a Penguin algo refresh might be happening? I used LinkRisk and identified about 1,000 toxic links (not put up by me) and disavowed them. Then my rankings tanked a bit. (yes, I know they must have been helping me.) But I think we are probably under a Penguin algo penalty since 2012. Earned some good links, and disavowed some bad links. So I'm hopeful that a Penguin algo update will give us a traffic boost.
Algorithm Updates | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Google Penguin update
When Google Penguin update will run again. The last time was in October 2013 and I'm still really curious now. Or have they stopped this and this is now continuously just like the panda?
Algorithm Updates | | NECAnGeL0 -
Have I been Hit by a Penguin? No Warning in Webmaster / Some Pages still Rank
Hi all, I have recently signed up to MOZ as I have seen a large drop in the turnover of a site I work with as well as a slump in visitors. I know part of this slump is the transition from google product search from being free to paid and chewing through our adwords budget quicker. The other part though seems a little more tricky, I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. As you can see in the attachment webmaster tools is showing much decreased visibility, and MOZ agrees with this. Key terms that have lost rank have done so by around 4-10 positions. The content on the site has all been hand written by myself, however some of the pages are a little "stale" so I am currently running through re-writing every product page on the site (1000 products or so) all my product pages grade a minimum B with 99% A on the Moz page grader. I am keeping my fingers crossed that fresh content should assist in getting google interested again? However my real questions is, Is this Penguin? or is this just stale content? dmDdMr5.jpg pYkzck0.jpg 9f4mgM9.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | speedingorange1 -
Ranking effected by Penguin 2.0
Hello Everyone, I am amazed to see that all the ranking of keywords got down after Penguin webspam algorithm updated on May 22, 2013. Is there any suggestion how we will recover and get the ranking back. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | lucidsoftech0 -
What Does Penguin Look Like Long Term in Analytics?
Happy New Year Moz'ers! Our agency has recently had a number of new clients who were hit by the Penguin updates. These sites came to us over the last two months so they've been dealing with Penguin for months. Looking at Google Analytics for each client, I'm seeing a lot of the same patterns - mostly a large first drop in traffic after the update and then a long, steady decline in organic traffic over the months that follow. I have seasonal factors for traffic dips for each client but I'm curious as to what other Moz'ers are finding long term. Do you see a large traffic drop followed by a sustained plateau? Do you see a large traffic drop followed by a long, slow decrease over the weeks or months that follow? Do you see something else? Thanks! <jason @sonray=""></jason>
Algorithm Updates | | DragonSearch0 -
A rating on report card - Massive drop in rankings (Is it Penguin?)
Hi All, I would really like a second opinion on my current issue and I'd be very grateful for the communities knowledge please . I have a been running a successful campaign for one of my clients, increase in natural SERP's, etc. But since the 24th of April they were hit and hit hard and continued to decline now. They had many top 5 listings for terms and now most are not in top 50 serps. Openly I know they have a bad or not great backlink profile which was inherited from the past agency, but we're working on this using white hat techniques, contextual copy, brand etc. The copy is a great, contextual and no where near spammy at all... Very nicely written, factual, etc. What I don't understand is this SEOmoz's On-Page report card gives an A rating for the target term which is also a secondary term but was ranking high. Factor Overview <dl class="scoreboard clearfix"> <dt>Critical Factors</dt> <dd>4 / 4</dd> <dt>High Importance Factors</dt> <dd>6 / 7</dd> <dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt> <dd>7 / 9</dd> <dt>Low Importance Factors</dt> <dd>8 / 11</dd> <dt>Optional Factors</dt> <dd>2 / 5</dd> <dd> On-Page Keyword Usage for </dd> </dl> Title 1 URL 0 Meta Desc 1 H1 1 H2-4 0 Body 1 B / Strong 1 IMG ALT 0 Total Keyword Usage for this Page = 5 Fall from grace is SERP 5 to 25 and still going down. So the questions are: 1. Has this happened to you? 2. Could it just be down to their bad backlink profile which now needs much more attention? 3. Is this Penguin for sure? 4. What would you recommend? If anyone requires any further info please let me know and thank you in advance. Cheers,
Algorithm Updates | | JosephGourvenec
Joseph Gourvenec
SEO and Search Specialist0