PANDA UPDATE - Personal Observations.

[jdoughs]

Well this was a pretty thick algo update. Word is that Google Mad Scientists were working on this update for over a year, which is very long considering that they usually roll out changes daily.

Here is some things that I've saw on my own sites, and other sites I know that moved places.

Possible reasons for falling: (I've seen these things in common on most that have fallen)

• Sites with rss fed content, or spun content. Unique sites mostly won on this update UNLESS they had more fluff above the fold taking away from their content).
• Heavy advertised sites, or sites with heavy ads above the fold.
• Sites with the same content above the fold on most pages (ie, large nav menus, large ad blocks, large 'recent posts' blocks etc).
• Sites with weak or mostly sidebar/footer inbound links (This would be obvious, as sites are devalued the link power they push is also devalued, so the links that had you ranking before, now aren't enough).
• Sites that overly stuffed or pushed for keywords. Where I've noticed this it was usually pretty evident that it was 'spammy'.
• Sites that have poor navigation, or are 'messy' to the bots. Today's web is user friendly, this why bounce, time on site etc is popular.
• Sites with little or NO 'buzz' about them, if people aren't talking about you somewhere, something is wrong, google sees this easily spidering the social arena. (Color lightened as I'm not positive on this on, but follows suit with what I'm seeing so far)
• Sites with a strong percentage of inbound links from sites like above, will cause you to fall also.

I suspect that many 'good' sites that took a hit did so because of the way the content is displayed. I have sites with GREAT unique content that took a hit, sites that have been anchors for many years in google. They DO have large percentages of 'useless' stuff at the top of pages though, ad spaces, some link banks, some with massive (300+) category nav bars etc. All of this stuff apparently is taking away from the weight of the content, which does make sense.

It's been pretty widely accepted that this was a massive content/linkfarm update, and these observations would help explain why good sites are being dumped as well, it's the way the content is being displayed. Have some quality stuff above the fold, push huge nav menus and add banks BELOW the content.

I'll be trying a couple simple fixes on some of my sites that disappeared this week, but am curious to hear other opinions.

[__PMI__]

Thank you for sharing your observations.

You covered some things that I found: rss/spun content and heavy keywords.

[Mindoro]

• Sites with a strong percentage of inbound links from sites like above, will cause you to fall also.

I agree with the rest but this sounds dangerous if it true. After that its easy to shoot other sites.

Buy 2 or 3 PR6 Sites put 20 feeds inside and link to your competitors. Perfect with the same IP

I can not belive that Google will be so stupid. If you know one site where you belive it get penalty of that just show me please. I will have a look at it

[redwhiteandblue]

My findings so far: many of the sites that lost out were sites I already knew were thin sites and was planning to redo, but one lost out that I wasn't expecting.

It lost a lot of positions, but on the other hand a sub page was now ranking higher than ever, #4 for a term I wanted the home page to rank for. Having read the suggestion that the amount of ad space is being taken into account, I reduced the sizes of the banners it uses site wide, from the 728x90 format to 468x60. The next day it lost that one position and was put back on page 10. So I changed the banners back, and now that page is back at #4 where it was. Go figure!

However at the same time I also cleaned up the CSS which pushed the first banner on the page below the fold on a 1280x1024 screen, so it may have been that.

[jdoughs]

• Sites with a strong percentage of inbound links from sites like above, will cause you to fall also.

I agree with the rest but this sounds dangerous if it true. After that its easy to shoot other sites.

Buy 2 or 3 PR6 Sites put 20 feeds inside and link to your competitors. Perfect with the same IP

I can not belive that Google will be so stupid. If you know one site where you belive it get penalty of that just show me please. I will have a look at it

Not sure what part you don't think is logical, but if all the pages you have your backlinks from are devalued, of course you will lose juice from them.

[jdoughs]

A new thing I've found from my stats today while looking more closely at my sites.

All siteswith a dmoz listing bumped DRASTICALLY for their dmoz used anchor text (the actual anchors used in dmoz to link to the sites).

This to me says very strongly that links and authority played a part in this update. And if trusted authoritative sites have had their juice increased, then it's not far fetched to think sites with lesser, spammy links, were devalued.

[napakin]

I am sure that trusted, quality links are more beneficial now than ever. On the flipside, low quality links from blog comments or spammy sites will prove damaging.

One of our biggest sites that we've been optimizing for many terms got slammed by the Panda 2.2 update. I can only attribute it to some bad link neighborhoods, as we had no scraped content, and we aren't a "thin" site really.

[123anddone]

i have many sites dropped down too, but can't understand way when i have 1-3 ads per page, no huge internal linking, unique content and everything is looking fine, still thinking that sites that are linking to me lost value and i got dropped.

Sites with weak or mostly sidebar/footer inbound links (This would be obvious, as sites are devalued the link power they push is also devalued, so the links that had you ranking before, now aren't enough).

by this you mean that i need to add some extra navigation links between posts? or anywhere that is in page ? not in sidebar or footer ?

[vrocks]

i have many sites dropped down too, but can't understand way when i have 1-3 ads per page, no huge internal linking, unique content and everything is looking fine, still thinking that sites that are linking to me lost value and i got dropped.

Sites with weak or mostly sidebar/footer inbound links (This would be obvious, as sites are devalued the link power they push is also devalued, so the links that had you ranking before, now aren't enough).

by this you mean that i need to add some extra navigation links between posts? or anywhere that is in page ? not in sidebar or footer ?

I have blogs like RhinosGirls.com with 300-400 outbound links, 900 internal links (its a blog!) and it does well, the sites I link into all do well... But then I constantly update the site with very high quality content. Sometimes I will go as far as to write a short story. I'd have to think that Google takes a lot of things into consideration...

What I am noticing right now is that MANY people with PR2 sites now have PR0 sites and when I look at the content in the site and what kind of sites link into it I can see that it is all bullshit. From the beginning I have always made link trades that made sense for more than just the sake of link trading... Many of my trades are A <=> B trades. You know... the kind most real sites have?