Hit by Panda 4.1 and it couldn't be more wrong!
-
Hi,
I'm scratching my head with this one, I have a website with around 40 pages of unique content produced by a professional copywriter who works magazines and PR agencies - each page has around 750/1000 words - according to Google the reading age is intermediate as you would expect from a good copywriter, I have anchor points jumping around the page to information the user shows an interest in - this happens I have video recording and heat maps.
I also receive 100s and on some pages 1000s of social shares from Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and G+. I wanted to build a site the way Google wants you to so I have done no link build at all, everything focused onsite so I just spent the last 2 months making the whole site responsive for mobile and tablet devices - I also spent time getting the load time down and 'was' in the process of hooking into a CDN for extra performance.
Ive done everything I can to make the site just good and its reflected in the social sharing and natural links from sites such as huffington post.
On the 23rd my sites rankings which were solid for over 2 years have crashed, but what's worse is ive been dropped and replaced with sites using the same tactics as the Payday Loan industry, and it seems great favouritism has been given to sites containing Adsense - I can see ranking one page sites with less than 300 words content and 3/4 ad units above the fold and sites which have taken chunks of content off Wikipedia and rank.
Thumbs up Google, great job.
-
Thanks for letting me know others are experiencing the same. If I find anything interesting I will be sure to let you know on this thread - Likewise if you notice anything interesting would be appreciated if you could come back and share also.
-
Hi there, I know that I can't help but just wanted to let you know that we are in a similar situation. We have an e-commerce site (so slightly different) but we have no dodgy back links, have been as clean as possible and each and every description we write is original. We have a lot of content and none of it is duplicated anywhere on web.
On Sep 23 we dropped from #1 or #2 down to page 2. Yet in our place are some sites with copied content. The top 2 spots seem to have gone to newer sites which do have original descriptions which has me wondering if we should be changing our product descriptions on a regular basis (any ideas?)
One last note if this is also about customer behaviour we have pretty good interaction, a lowish bounce rate and good engagement for a retail site.
So like you I am at a loss to see why we have been penalised by an change which is supposed to help small sites with original content and good engagement!
-
Hi JVRudnick,
No worries, see the above post and thanks for showing an interest in my problem/discussion.
-
No worries,
I can share here for you to look at and to help others who may also be interested (or disagree).
So the domain is Followuk.co.uk and seems the whole site has taken a hit but to make this more targeted im looking at the page Followuk.co.uk/bank-holidays - and the target term for this page is -> Bank Holidays 2015 in Google UK and although this may seem a small term this term and its variations receive millions of queries a month.
I could except the drop if it was related to the link profile as currently a little weak but according to my analytic's traffic dropped on the 23rd (inline with the panda rollout) which targets thin/low quality sites if im correct.
Now where it becomes interesting is im not complaining about not being higher up, but the fact I WAS on page 1 and had been for over 2 years, on the 23rd the page was demoted to page 6/7 while thin/low quality sites have been given higher positions or stayed neutral.
In this case the Panda update looks to be doing more damage then good for example take the second result - http://www.year-planner-calendar.wanadoo.co.uk/2015-public-holidays-bank-holidays-bank-holiday-dates.htm
Surely this comes under the types of sites Panda is looking to target -> thin, low quality, advertising heavy, spammy etc - BUT Google's algo thinks this is the second most relevant 'quality' site it should show to it's millions of users querying those terms and its not the only site like that in the top 10.
And I just want to say I dont think I should be number 1 or 2, 3 because there are better sites which deserve those positions but do I think I should be in the top 10... Yes.
I would love to know if Google thought the above was the right thing for the algo to do because to me looking at it as if I was an outsider (which I try) this is a straight out.
Fail.
-
LIke iQ above, yes, I'd like to see the URL too...if you'd PM me too I'll take a look/see and get back to you as well...
Jim
-
Do you fancy PM'ing me details of your site & search terms for me to take a look? I would be interested to see cases like this.
-Andy
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
-
Wrong pages ranking for specific keywords
Hi moz community We're currently experiencing a lot of our pages ranking for the wrong keyword in the SERPS. Take "womens ski wear" for example, the page rainking via Google links to https://www.dare2b.com/womens/jackets-coats/ When we have an optimized page here https://www.dare2b.com/womens/shop-by/activity/ski/ that imo is more suitable and has the correct H1, meta tile etc. So I'm at a loss to see why google see the jackets page more relevant? Any help on this much appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | KMCBRIDE0 -
Yoast SEO doesn't recognize images
Hi, I'm currently adding alt tags to my images but the Yoast SEO plug in in Wordpress states on all my pages “No images appear in this page, consider adding some as appropriate.“ while I do have images on my pages. What could be the problem? Best, Rik
On-Page Optimization | | bbuildingbusiness0 -
Should Title Tags Differ From H1's?
I never thought this was an issue, but now, I'm not so sure. Is it a problem for your title tags to be identical to your H1's? From Moz' OnPage Grader section on "H1's and Title Tags," I thought they were supposed to both match your keyword. Any thoughts? Thanks, Ruben
On-Page Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Less than 1 subdomain Moztrust
This is the website http://www.gbzconsulting.com Not quite sure about the reason that my site is receiving almost 0 subdomain Moztrust. However, the on-page optimization tool show that the home page is ranked A. Any idea what I am missing or what I should do to improve?
On-Page Optimization | | Tel0 -
Google pulling in wrong title tag!
Has anyone else seen their title tag different in the SERPS to what you have called it in the <title>?? </p> <p>I work for MITIE and when you type in "facilities management" it shows our title tag as "<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mitie.com/services/strategic-outsourcing/integrated-facilities-management">Integrated <em>facilities management</em> - Mitie</a>" and it should be "<span>MITIE | Facilities management - Facilities management companies - Facility management UK" </span></p> <p><span>The only thing I can think of is that it's picking it from the H1 on the page but why it'd do that! The page is here www.mitie.com/services/strategic-outsourcing/integrated-facilities-management</span></p> <p><span>Any ideas?</span></p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
Duplicat page content issue I don't know how to solve
I've got a few pages (click here to see the fist on with the others as side bar links). They are all thumbnail pages of different products. The tiles are pretty different but the page content is virtually the same for all of them as is the meta description tag. I'm getting error's on the SEOmoz crawl for those pages. I know the meta tag shouldn't be a problem in SEO but is the content of the page going to cause me issues? Are the error messages from SEOmoz a result of the page content or the meta description? The pages are very similar but they are different enough that I want to separate them onto different pages. There would be too many links on that single page as well if all the thumbs where on the same page. Should I just ignore the error messages?
On-Page Optimization | | JAARON0 -
We dropped from a page rank of 4 to 3
We dropped from a page rank of 4 to 3 because of the Google Freshness update. Are there any insights anyone can give me? Our site is www.totalvac.com
On-Page Optimization | | totalvac0 -
Numbers in URL's - Search friendly or not?
Hi Mozzers, I have a client who has just launched a new website and we are having difficulties in making the URL's search friendly. I wont get into the technical aspects, but I'll explain the potential solutions the developers have given me. current: www.site.com/en/product/browse-by-product/37/22 Where 'en' stands for the English version of the website, 37 is the product category for example 'hard drives', and 22 is the product name or example 'seagate' Option to fix; www.site.com/en/p/product/hard-drives-37/seagate-22 This optional fix reduces the word product down to p, reduces 'browse by product' to 'product' and inserts the category and product names. Note the category identifier '37' has to be included in the URL, and the product identifier '22' also has to be in the URL. Obviously this is not great, but it is required at the moment. Best case scenario would be to have the URL like this... www.site.com/en/hard-drives/seagate So my question is, how far off the best case scenario is the option to fix? Scale of 1 to 10 would be good?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeyDorrington0