I am Nilesh Patel By Profession as SEO.Professional SEO, SMO, SEM, SMM, PPC, Web Promotion, Online Marketing, Website Marketing and Internet Marketing Services Provider.
Google says a Panda refresh began this weekend but will take months to fully roll out.
Google tells Search Engine Land that it pushed out a Google Panda refresh this weekend.
Many of you may not have noticed because this rollout is happening incredibly slowly. In fact, Google says the update can take months to fully roll out. That means that although the Panda algorithm is still site-wide, some of your Web pages might not see a change immediately.
The last time we had an official Panda refresh was almost 10 months ago: Panda 4.1 happened on September 25, 2014. That was the 28th update, but I would coin this the 29th or 30th update, since we saw small fluctuations in October 2014.
As far as I know, very few webmasters noticed a Google update this weekend. That is how it should be, since this Panda refresh is rolling out very slowly.
Google said this affected about 2%–3% of English language queries.
New Chance For Some, New Penalty For Others
The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, you unfortunately won’t notice the full impact immediately but you should see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time.
This is not how many of the past Panda updates rolled out, where typically you’d see a significant increase or decline in your Google traffic more quickly.
Panda Update 30 AKA Panda 4.2, July 18, 2015 (2–3% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Search engines become smarter all the time. Google is constantly
improving its algorithms in order to give users the highest quality
content and the most accurate information.
Algorithms follow rules. Uncovering those rules – and taking advantage
of them – has been the goal of anyone who wants their website to rank
highly. But when Google finds out that websites owners have been
manipulating the rules, they take action, by issuing those websites with
a penalty. The penalty usually means a drop in rankings, or even an
exclusion from Google’s index.
As a website owner you sometimes know which rule you’ve broken. But for
many it’s hard to work out. Read our guide below to find out where
you’ve gone wrong and what you can do about it.
Google has been tweaking and improving its ranking algorithms since end
of year 2000. That’s when it released its toolbar extension and when PageRank was released in a usable form.
Since then, Google continued to work on the quality of search results it
showed to users as a result of their search queries. With time, the
search engine giant began to remove poor quality content in favour of
high quality, relevant information which it would move to the top of the
SERPs. And this is when penalties started rolling in.
Next was the Penguin update which was rolled out in 2012 and hit more
than 1 in 10 search results. These algorithm changes have forced site
owners to rethink their SEO and content strategies to comply with
Google’s quality requirements.
How to tell if you’ve been penalised
To discover the reasons you might have been penalised, you can watch this video and skip to the next section, or just keep reading.
A penalty can be either automatic or manual. With manual penalties,
you’ll probably be notified that you’ve been doing something wrong that
needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
However, if the cause is a change of the algorithm, you may not always know you’ve been targeted.
Here are some clues you’ve been penalised by Google:
Your site isn’t ranking well not even for your brand name. That’s
the most obvious clue as your site should always rank well on that one
keyword.
If you’ve been on page one of Google’s search results and are dropping to page two or three without having made any changes.
Your site has been removed from Google’s cached search results from one day to another.
You get no results when you run a site search (eg: site:yourdomain.co.uk keyword).
You notice a big drop in organic traffic in your Google Analytics (or
any other monitoring tool you’re using) especially a few days after a
big Google update.
If you don’t have access to Webmaster Tools or Analytics, you can determine if you’ve been penalised by using one of the following tools:
SEMRush – Check if your search engine traffic is decreasing every day
and also if the total number of keywords ranking top 20 is starting to
decrease quickly:
SearchMetrics – If your organic visibility has disappeared, then you’ve probably been penalised.
If you notice one or more of the above factors, then you can be sure
that Google has penalised your site and you need to do something about
it quickly.
What caused the penalty?
When dealing with a penalty, the first thing you need to do is try to
figure out what caused it – spammy links, over-optimising your content,
etc. Only then can you follow the steps to try to fix it.
The most common issue is having bad, low quality backlinks pointing to
your site. To find out what links Google considers to be “bad
backlinks”, check out Google’s Webmaster Guidelines on Link Schemes.
1. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank
These backlinks are considered one of the worst type of links and
they’re the main reason why many large websites have received a penalty.
Although money doesn’t necessarily have to exchange hands, a paid
backlink can also refer to offering goods or services in return for a
link back and even sending free products without specifically asking the
customers for a link back to your site.
A good example of that is the Interflora incident.
The flower company sent out bouquets to make their customers feel better
after a hard day’s work. Happy to receive the surprise, some of the
customers wrote about the gesture on their own blogs/websites and linked
back to the flower company. While you’d think this was just a very nice
way of strengthening the relationship with their customers, Google
tagged it as a marketing technique of buying links and penalised
Interflora as a result.
2. Excessive link exchange
It’s common for company websites that are part of the same group to link
to each other. This is why Google declared war only on link exchange
done in excess. This is an old technique of getting backlinks as a
webmaster would get a backlink easier from a site owner if they also
returned the favour.
3. Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns
There are numerous websites out there that are accepting article
submissions. So webmasters took advantage and started getting backlinks
by writing random articles and finding a way to add their own link.
However these articles were of very low quality which is why Google
decided to take action against those sites that were publishing articles
just for the sake of the backlinks.
Guest blogging was recently added on the list of don’ts mainly because
it has quickly become a form of spam. Webmasters keep sending emails to
all sorts of websites asking to submit their articles in exchange for a
link. Sounds a lot like all the other spam email you never asked for but
keep receiving, doesn’t it? And it works the other way around too.
Webmasters that manage many blogs found guest blogging to be a good way
to make money:
4. Using automated programs or services to create links
There are many tools used by black hat SEOs to create automated links,
such as ScrapeBox and Traffic Booster, but the most common tool is the
article spinner. In order to get content to add links, the spinner
helped webmasters get various pieces of content on the same subject
without having to pay someone to write them.
With such poor quality content around a link, it’s easy for Google to
realise this cannot in any way be considered a natural and earned
backlink.
5. Text advertisements that pass PageRank
These types of links are created by matching a word to an advertisement.
In the example below, the article is about banks in general but when
you hoover over the word “bank” you get an ad to a specific business.
Since the presence of that business link is unnatural, this is one of the types of links that Google doesn’t like.
6. Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links
There are many websites out there filled with articles about various
products and each article has at least one link pointing to an
e-commerce website. The quality of the articles is rather low because
the sole purpose is to just create enough content around a link.
7. Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases
Similar to the previous one with the exception that instead of
contacting someone who has a website dedicated to building backlinks in
exchange for money, these links are added to articles and press releases
that get distributed over the internet through PR websites and free
article submission websites.
There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a
wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy
flowers and a wedding dress.
8. Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
Directories used to play an important role and represented an online
phonebook for websites. It was easier to find a website searching for it
by category. As search engine advanced, the need for these structured
directories decreased to the point where these are now being used for
link building purposes only.
9. Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets
The best example is Halifax, the first bank that Google has hit. They
had these mortgage calculators embedded on various irrelevant websites
just for the backlink.
10. Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites
Sitewide backlinks are to be avoided at all costs especially if the
links are on websites that are in no way related to your linked website.
If you place a link in the header, footer or sidebar of a website, that
link will be visible on all its web pages so don’t link to a website
that you don’t consider to be relevant for your entire content.
Most common footer links are either a web developer credit or a “Powered
by” link where you mention your CMS or hosting provider (see the
example below). There are also free templates out there that have a link
in the footer and most people never get that link out.
Sidebar links are usually Partner links or blogrolls. Since the word
“Partner” usually means that goods or services have been exchanged, this
can be considered a paid link so make sure to always use nofollow. As
for other related blogs, if they are indeed related, there should be no
issue but if your list has links to ecommerce websites or you’re using
affiliate links, you might want to nofollow those.
11. Forum comments with optimised links in the post or signature
Adding a signature link is an old link building technique and one of the
easiest ways of getting a link. It has also been done through blog
commenting. If you leave a comment on a forum or blog, make sure the
answer is not only helpful and informative but also relevant to the
discussion. If you add a link, it should point to a page that is also
relevant to your answer and the discussion.
Collecting the necessary data
Now that you know how to identify those bad links, let’s see how you can go about finding each and every one of them:
This is where Google shows you details on the backlinks it has indexed.
It should be your starting point in cleaning up your backlink profile as
it shows you how many backlinks each website is sending your way. This
is how you can find most of your site wide links – mark them down as
such.
Depending on how many backlinks you have, you will probably need to pay for a good backlink checker tool.
Of course there are also free tools such as BackLinkWatch and AnalyzeBacklinks that you can use if you don’t have millions of backlinks in your profile.
The idea is to gather links from as many sources as possible as each
tool has its own crawler and can discover different backlinks. So, to
ensure you find as many as possible, it is indicated that you use
various tools.
Next get all the reports in one file, remove the duplicates and see how
many links you’re left with. You can sort the remaining links by URL
(coming from the same domain) to find the ones that are sitewide, by
anchor text (to find the exact-match anchors or “money keywords”) or by
any other type of data that those tools provide such as discovery date,
on-page placement and link type.
If you paid for links in the past or engaged in any of the link schemes
Google frowns upon, try to find all the websites that still have your
links by using a footprint. For instance, if you created website
templates that you’ve distributed for free but have added a “Created by
MyCompany” link in the footer, use the link’s anchor to find all the
websites out there that have used your template.
If you’ve got a penalty but haven’t paid for links or engaged in any of
the link schemes, check if your links might be considered spammy because
of the websites they’re found on.
Not sure what spammy links are? Well, there’s no better classifier than
your own eye so if you want to check a potential bad site your link is
on, ask yourself:
Does the site look like spam – low quality or duplicate content, no structure, no contact page, loads of outbound links?
Does your link and anchor text look like it belongs on the site?
Are there toxic links on the site – Gambling, Viagra etc.?
Does the site look like it sells links – e.g. loads of anchor text rich sidebars and site-wide links?
If the answer is yes to any of the above questions, then your link should not be there.
When you go through the links, try to take notes and write down as much information as possible for each bad backlink.
Contacting webmasters
When you’ve checked every bad link and have all the information you
need, start contacting every webmaster and ask them to remove or
nofollow your links. Keep a copy of the email threads for each website
as you will need to show proof that you have tried to clean up the bad
links.
If a contact email is not present on their site, look for a contact
form. If that is not available, try a WHOIS for that domain. If they’re
using private registration then just mark it down as a no contact.
To make the process easier and save some time, here are a couple of automated email tools you could use:
rmoov (Free to $99/month) – This tool helps you identify contacts,
created and sends emails, follows up with reminders and reports on
results.
Link Cleanup and Contact from SEOGadget (free) – Download the bad links
from Google Webmaster Tools and upload them into the tool. SEOGadget
then shows you the anchor text and site contact details (email, Twitter,
LinkedIn).
Remove’em ($249 per domain) – This solution combines suspicious link discovery with comprehensive email and tracking tools.
Be very persistent. If you’ve sent out emails and didn’t get a response,
send follow-up emails after a couple of days. Even if you’re desperate
to get the penalty lifted, keep in mind that those webmasters don’t owe
you a thing and unless you’re polite and patient, you’re not going to
get what you’re after.
Be organised. Create an online Google spreadsheet where you add your Excel list and also new columns to show:
The date of the first email
Response to first email
Links Status after first email
The date of the second email
Response to second email
Link Status after second email
The date of the third email
Response to third email
Link status after third email
If you don’t get a reply from a webmaster after three emails, they’ll probably never reply so it might be time to give up.
Add a column for the email threads. Copy/Paste the entire email
discussion between you and a webmaster in an online Google doc and use
its link in your main worksheet. Make sure to set the Sharing options to
“Anyone with the link” so the Google Webspam team members can access
these documents.
When you’re done, your online document should look something like this:
The disavow file
After you’ve finished contacting all the websites, you’re now left with
the ones that haven’t replied, asked for money to remove the link or
with no contact details.
You should take these websites and add them to the disavow file.
You can add individual pages from a domain or the entire domain itself.
Since it’s not likely that a webmaster would create a bad link from one
page and a good link from another page pointing to your site, you’re
safer just disavowing the entire domain.
Use hashtags if you want to add comments such as:
# The owners of the following websites asked for money in order to remove my link.
# These are websites that automatically scrape content and they’ve also scraped my website with links and all.
# The webmasters of these websites never replied to my repeated emails.
URLs are added as they are and domains are added by using
“domain:domain-name.com” to specify that you’re disavowing all the links
that come from a specific domain.
This should be a simple .txt file (you can use Notepad). When you’re done, go to Webmaster Tools and upload it.
If you need to add more sites to an already submitted disavow file, you
will need to upload a new file which will overwrite the existing one –
so make sure the disavowed domains from your first list are also copied
in your second list.
Be very careful when using the disavow file. Don’t add full domains such
as WordPress or Blogger.com just because you had links from a subdomain
created on one of these platforms.
Also, add a domain to the disavow file only after you have tried your
very best to remove the link (and can show proof you’ve tried). Google
isn’t happy for you to renounce the link juice from certain websites, it
wants to see that you’ve also tried your best to clean up the internet
of all of your spammy links.
The Reconsideration Request
When you have the final status for every website that sent a bad link to
you and have also submitted your disavow file, it’s time to send Google
an apology letter also known as a Reconsideration Request.
You can do this from Webmaster Tools:
There is a 500 word and 2.850 character (including spaces) limit so use
this space wisely to explain what actions you’ve taken to try and clean
up your site.
Things that you should include:
If you paid for links, then name the SEO agency you worked with to acquire links or any other similar information.
What type of bad links you found in your profile such as sitewide links, comment spam and so on.
What actions you’ve taken to make sure no more bad links will be created
such as training employees to not buy or build links, retracting any
free templates that had links in them, adding nofollow to the links in
the widgets you provide.
Link to the Google Online Spreadsheet where you’ve documented your
efforts of contacting webmasters and taking down links. Make sure these
documents are shared with anyone that has the link.
Link to an online spreadsheet where you have a copy of the disavow file you’ve submitted.
Confirmation of reading the Webmaster Guidelines, understanding them and following them from now on.
If you haven’t managed to clean up all your bad links, Google will reply
and give you examples of other bad links. You will then have to go
through the remaining links again using all the tools available and see
what other websites there are now after you’ve cleaned up most of the
other bad links.
Every month more than 400,000 manual actions are applied by Google and
every month the search engine giant processes 20,000 reconsideration
requests. Some of these reconsiderations are not the first ones sent out
by webmasters.
Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get your penalty removed on your
first try. Not many manage to do so. Just go back and repeat the process
until you manage to remove all the bad links from your profile.
How to avoid a future Google penalty
Even if your site hasn’t been penalised, don’t take a chance – go
through the guide and identify your bad links. You can follow every step
down to sending the Reconsideration Request. Since there’s no penalty
message, there is no need for this.
You can disavow the domains that are sending bad links to your site. You
should try to contact these websites first and always save every form
of communication you had with the webmasters.
If a penalty follows, you’ll already have proof that you’ve started to clean up your site.
Update: Google Penguin 3.0 was launched on October 17th. As
predicted, the company confirmed the update would help sites that have
cleaned up bad link profiles in response to previous versions of
Penguin. Owners of sites that haven’t recovered or have
been adversely affected by Penguin 3.0 should follow the steps outlined
below.
There is rarely a dull moment in the world of search engine optimisation
(SEO). Haven’t you heard? A huge Google algorithm change is on the way.
Scary. Last month, Google said a new Penguin update would likely be launched before the end of the year, and now it looks like it may be here this week.
Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said at Search Marketing Expo East that
Google “may” be launching a Penguin algorithm refresh sometime this
week, which he described as “a large rewrite of the algorithm”. Also,
Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land believes that this next update
will be all good news and that it could make webmaster’s life a bit
easier.
Understanding the major implications of these updates is critical to
search performance, so today we’ll talk you through the upcoming release
of Google’s Penguin 3.0 update, what it is, how it can affect your
website and rankings and what you can do to prepare for its release.
What is Penguin 3.0 all about?
Over the past few weeks, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller has been actively discussing:
The imminent and long-anticipated Penguin update
Google’s efforts to make its algorithm refreshes rollout quicker
Helping websites to recover faster from ranking penalties
In a Google Webmaster Central hangout on September 12th, Mueller confirmed that the new Penguin update would roll out in 2014. In the video he said:
Google is working on a “solution that generally refreshes faster” specifically talking about Penguin.
He mentioned that “we are trying to speed things up” around Penguin.
He also admitted that “our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable
time”, referring to webmasters’ efforts to clean up the issues around
their sites being impacted by Penguin.
As you can probably tell from all the buzz on the web, Penguin 3.0 is
expected to be a major update that will hopefully enable Google to run
the algorithm more frequently. This would mean that those impacted by an
update won’t have to wait too long before seeing a refresh.
In other words, those who have taken measures to clean up their backlink
profiles should (in theory) be able to recover more quickly than in the
past.
Here’s what Mueller said in a previous Google hangout on September 8:
“That’s something where we’re trying to kind of speed things up
because we see that this is a bit of a problem when webmasters want to
fix their problems, they actually go and fix these issues but our
algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time, so that’s something
where it makes sense to try to improve the speed of our algorithms
overall.” Can a site recover from ranking penalties without an algorithm refresh?
A day after the September 8 Google+ Hangout, Mueller replied to a post in the Webmaster Central Help Forum, stating that while a Penguin refresh is required for an affected site to recover, it is possible for webmasters to improve their site rankings without a Penguin update.
With Google using over 200 factors in crawling, indexing and ranking,
Mueller said that if webmasters do their best to clean up site issues
and focus on having a high-quality site rather than on individual
factors of individual algorithms they may see changes even before that
algorithm or its data is refreshed.
“I know it can be frustrating to not see changes after spending a
lot of time to improve things. In the meantime, I’d really recommend not
focusing on any specific aspect of an algorithm, and instead making
sure that your site is (or becomes) the absolute best of its kind by
far,” Mueller recommended.
In the thread, “Has Google ever definitively stated that it is possible to recover from Penguin?“ Mueller replied: “Yes,
assuming the issues are resolved in the meantime, with an update of our
algorithm or its data, it will no longer be affecting your site.”
That’s also all the more reason for webmasters to welcome this next update with open arms.
The history of Penguin
Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.
Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.
Overall, what Google is trying to do is to catch and penalise websites
that are trying to rank higher in its search results through:
Keyword stuffing meaning loading a webpage with the same words or phrases so much that is sounds unnatural
Low quality backlinks, often generated using automated software
A large numbers of links optimised using the exact same anchor text
Penguin focuses on the link-related aspects of this list.
Here’s a timeline of the previous Penguin updates:
Penguin 1.0 – April 24 2012 (affected 3.1% of searches)
Penguin 1.2 – May 26 2012 (affected 0.1% of searches)
Penguin 1.3 – October 5, 2012 (affected 0.3% of searches)
Penguin 2.0 – May 22, 2013 (affected 2.3% of searches)
Penguin 2.1 – October 4, 2013 (affected 1% of searches)
Penguin 3 – October 2014?
What can you do to clean up your link profile for future updates? Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said
that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may
be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since
the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop
working on removing bad links.
Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said
that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may
be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since
the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop
working on removing bad links.
So, here are a few things you can do to prevent your site from getting penalised by a future Penguin update:
Do a thorough link clean-up and remove all unnatural links
pointing to your site. When it comes to Penguin, bad links are usually
the cause of the penalty so make sure you remove as many bad links as
you possibly can and then disavow the rest. Here’s a good article with steps to find and remove unnatural links.
Assess the remaining “good” links. Do you still have
enough valuable links for your site to rank well or do you need to build
some more links? Don’t shy away from link building campaigns, just make sure that this time you build links on high-quality, relevant, authority sites.
Other common sense actions to ensure that you have a healthy website. Read this excellent article from Moz
with some great advice on how to ensure your site is healthy and how to
handle life after an algorithm update, whether it’s Penguin, Panda or
any other Google update.
Don’t treat an algorithmic penalty as a manual penalty. Keep
in mind that there may be other factors that might be preventing your
site from ranking well, which may not be linked to an algorithmic
penalty like Penguin or Panda. Check out this useful article with the complete list of reasons that may be causing your traffic to drop.
But if you do get hit, what are the signs? Since this is an algorithmic penalty, if your site has been hit by
Penguin, Google will never notify you which means that you will need to
check your site’s traffic, among other things including:
You’re no longer ranking well for that one keyword you should always
rank well for – your brand name. When this happens, it’s a clear sing
you’ve been hit.
Your site is dropping from page one to page two or three in Google’s search results although you’ve made no changes whatsoever.
Your site has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
You get no results when you run a site search (eg: site:yourdomain.co.uk keyword).
Google Analytics (or any other analytics tool you’re using) is showing a
significant drop in organic traffic a few days after a big Google
update.
Check out our YouTube video on how to tell if you’ve been penalised by Google:
So, what we recommend is that you monitor your organic traffic closely
for at least two weeks after a Penguin update. If your traffic
dramatically drops during this time, it’s likely due to the update. Also
make sure you keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools notifications to
see if you have any manual penalties applied to your website.
If you do discover your site has been penalised, stop what you’re doing
and go fix whatever it is that has caused your site to get hit.
What can you do to recover?
If you’ve been penalised by a previous Google update, we’ve got you
covered with an in-depth guide on why your site may have been hit and
what you can do to recover. This guide walks you through 11 reasons that
might have caused your site to get penalised as well as specific steps
to follow to help you recover after you’ve been hit.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that there are over 200 factors that influence
rankings for a site. It’s not enough to focus on one algorithm and fix
those specific issues but instead look at the bigger picture.
Search engines reward sites that provide searchers with the most
informative, interesting and relevant content for their search queries
and with the best user experience.
So while it’s ok to prioritise site optimisation and quickly fix certain
issues that may arise, it’s even more important to put your users first
and provide them with the best information and website experience they
can ask for.
Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released.
Google said in a post on Google+
that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into
next week, before being complete. Google said that depending on
location, about 3%-to-5% of search queries will be affected.
Anything different about this latest release? Google says it’s supposed
to be more precise and will allow more high-quality small and
medium-sized sites to rank better. From the post:
Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a
few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more
precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small-
and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.
New Chance For Some; New Penalty For Others
The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update
has a chance to emerge, if they made the right changes. So if you were
hit by Panda, made alterations to your site, you’ll know by the end of
next week if those were good enough, if you see an increase in traffic.
The rollout also means that new sites not previously hit by Panda might
get impacted. If you’ve seen a sudden traffic drop from Google this
week, or note one in the coming days, then this latest Panda Update is
likely to blame.
About That Number
Why are we calling it Panda 4.1? Well, Google itself called the last one
Panda 4.0 and deemed it a major update. This isn’t as big of a
change, so we’re going with Panda 4.1.
We actually prefer to number these updates in the order that they’ve
happened, because trying to determine if something is a “major” or
“minor” Panda Update is imprecise and lead to numbering absurdities like having a Panda 3.92 Update.
But since Google called the last one Panda 4.0, we went with that name —
and we’ll continue on with the old-fashioned numbering system unless it
gets absurd again.
For the record, here’s the list of confirmed Panda Updates, with some of
the major changes called out with their AKA (also known as) names:
Panda Update 1, AKA Panda 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
Panda Update 2, AKA Panda 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 8 AKA Panda 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
Panda Update 26 AKA Panda 4.0, May 20, 2014 (7.5% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
Panda Update 27 AKA Panda 4.1, Sept. 25, 2014 (3-5% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
The latest update comes four months after the last, which suggests that
this might be a new quarterly cycle that we’re on. Panda had been
updated on a roughly monthly basis during 2012. In 2013, most of the
year saw no update at all.
Of course, there could have been unannounced releases of Panda that have
happened. The list above is only for those that have been confirmed by
Google.
Secret To Winning Web Analytics: 10 Starting Points For A Fabulous Start!
I want to share where in your web analytics data you can find valuable
starting points, even without any context about the site / business /
priorities. Reports to look at, KPIs to evaluate, inferences to make.
Here's what we are going to cover:
Step #1: Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness.
Step #2: How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report.
Step #3: How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency.
Step #4: What can I find that is broken and quickly fixable? Top Landing Pages.
Step #5: What content makes us most money? $Index Value Metric.
Step #6: How Sophisticated Is Their Search Strategy? Keyword Tag Clouds.
Step #7: Are they making money or making noise? Goals & Goal Values.
Step #8: Can the Marketing Budget be optimized? Campaign Conversions/Outcomes.
Step #9: Are we helping the already convinced buyers? Funnel Visualization.
Step #10: What are the unknown unknowns I am blind to? Analytics Intelligence.
The first time you go through the steps outlined in this guide it might
take you more than 120 minutes. But I promise you that with time and
experience you'll get better.
I am, according to those who know me, a very structured person. In order
to function, I have to live by spreadsheets, task lists and processes.
Without them, I’m lost. It’s just life. Isn’t everyone like that?
But despite my obsession with structure and process, I don’t like giving
clients a one-size-fits-all web marketing campaign. It just doesn’t
make sense. Every website is different and has different needs;
therefore, the online marketing plan will have to be different as well.
The problem is, you really can’t know what any particular site’s needs
are until after you’ve gone through and performed a thorough site audit —
and that can take upwards of 5-20 hours depending on the site.
We can’t really give away several hundreds of dollars worth of work each
time we get a request for a proposal — but we won’t do cookie-cutter,
either. Quite the conundrum!
I’m sure we are not all that different from many other SEOs that will
perform a quick assessment of a site in order to provide some specific
feedback to the prospect. But we always want to make sure our
assessments are meaningful. We don’t want to just say, “Hey, look at us,
we know something!” We want to put together a proposal that addresses
many of their marketing needs, so they understand that we truly have a
grasp of what needs to be done.
Yeah, we could run the site through a couple tools that spit out some basic SEO information, but they can — and likely do –
get that from anyone else. Instead, why not put a bit more effort into
your initial audits, without breaking the bank on time?
12+1 Website Audit Steps
Below are 12 key SEO/marketing areas to assess — plus a quick PPC review
— when drafting a proposal for prospective clients (or for any reason,
really). When reviewing each of these areas, you should be able to
uncover some definite actionable tasks and get a broader understanding
of the site’s overall marketing needs.
1. Keyword Focus
One of the first things to look at is the overall keyword optimization
of the site. Some sites have done a decent job writing good title tags
and meta descriptions — others, not so much. Look through several pages
of the site, glancing at tags, headings and content to see if keywords
are a factor on those pages or if the site is pretty much a blank slate
requiring some hardcore keyword optimization.
2. Architectural Issues
Next, look at global architectural issues. Things you can look at
quickly are broken links (run a tool while you’re doing other
assessments), proper heading tag usage, site and page spiderability,
duplicate content issues, etc. None of these take too much time and can
be assessed pretty quickly. Some of the solutions for these are quick
and some aren’t; and undoubtedly, once you start digging deeper you’ll
find a lot more issues later.
3. Navigation Issues
Does the navigation make sense for the site? Look to see if it’s too
convoluted or maybe even too simplistic. You want visitors to easily
find what they are looking for without being overloaded with choices and
options. Determine if the navigation needs some tweaking or all-out
revamping.
4. Category Page Optimization
Product category pages can have all kinds of problems, from poorly
implemented product pagination to a lack of unique content. Look at each
of these pages from the perspective of value and determine if a visitor
or search engine will find any unique value on the page. You might need
to add some content, product filtering options, or better product
organization to make the page better for both visitors and search
engines alike.
5. Product Page Optimization
Product pages can be tricky. Some searchers might look for a product
name, a product number or a specific description of what the product can
do. Make sure your product page content addresses each of these types
of information searchers. You want to make sure the content of the
product pages is largely unique, not just on your site, but across the
web, as well. If not, there may be a lot of work ahead of you.
6. Local Optimization: Off-Site
Sites that are local, rather than national, have an entirely different
set of criteria to analyze. For local sites, you need to see if they are
doing a good job with their citations, maps, listings and other
off-page signals. You don’t have to do an exhaustive check; a quick look
at some of the main sites that assist with local signals should do.
7. Local Optimization: On-Site
Aside from off-page local signals, you should also look at the on-page
optimization of local keywords. This often goes one of two ways: either
there is very little local optimization on the page or far too much,
with tons of local references crammed into titles, footers and other
areas of the site. Assess the changes you’ll need to make, either way,
to get the site where it needs to be.
8. Inbound Links
No assessment would be complete without at least looking at the status
of the site’s inbound links, though you’ll have to dig a bit to get some
information on the quality of the links coming in. It helps to do the
same for a competitor or two so you have some basis of comparison. With
that, you’re better able to see what needs to be done to compete
sufficiently.
9. Internal Linking
Internal linking can be an issue, outside of navigation. Is the site
taking advantage of opportunities to link to their own pages within the
content of other pages? Rarely does each page of a site stand alone, but
instead should be a springboard of driving traffic to the next page or
pages based on the mutual relevance of the content.
10. Content Issues
This is a bit more of an in-depth look at the site’s content overall. It’s not about the amount of content, but the quality
of the content throughout the site. Assessing the content’s value will
help you identify problem pages and determine whether there is a need to
establish an overall content strategy.
11. Social Presence
Social presence matters, so jump in and see where the brand stands in
the social sphere. Do they have social profiles established? Is there
active engagement on those profiles? Is social media being used as an
educational tool or as a promotional tool? These things matter a great
deal, especially when determining the course of action that needs to be
taken.
12. Conversion Optimization Issues
Web marketing is not all about traffic. If you’re getting traffic but
not conversions, then it doesn’t matter how good the “SEO” is. Look
through the site for obvious conversion and usability issues that need
to be fixed or improved. Just about every site can use conversion
optimization, it’s more obvious (and urgent) for some sites than others.
This assessment helps you determine if your time is better spent here
or somewhere else.
Bonus: PPC Issues
The items above primarily deal with website and optimization issues. But
if a PPC campaign is running, take a look at that and make sure it was
set up and is being executed optimally. Many people don’t believe PPC
can be profitable. Most of the time it’s not, but only because of poor
management. If there is room for improvement with PPC, you’ll want to
know.
It’s Just A Starting Point
Of course, you can spend hours assessing each of these areas, but that’s
not the point. A quick 5-10 minute look into each of these areas can
give you a wealth of information that you can use to improve the site.
This is the starting point, but as you dive into each of these areas,
more opportunities will arise. The point is, you have to start
somewhere. This is the most authentic quick SEO and marketing review you
can give, without getting lost in the details or in an endless pit of
time.
It's official. Panda 4.0 has officially hit the Google search results.
The Panda algorithm, which was designed to help boost great-quality
content sites while pushing down thin or low-quality content sites in
the search results, has always targeted scraper sites and low-quality
content sites in order to provide searchers with the best search results
possible
Panda 4.0, which Google and Matt Cutts confirmed began rolling out
yesterday, has definitely caused some waves in the search results.
However, the fact that Panda 4.0 is also hitting at the same time as a
refresh of an algorithm targeting spammy queries like payday loans makes
it a little bit more difficult for webmasters to sort through the
damage.
With the payday loans refresh impacting extremely spammy queries and
Panda targeting low-quality content, some webmasters could potentially
get hit with both of these or by just one or the other.
While usually people complain about losing rankings, Alan Bleiweiss from AlanBleiweiss.com showed via Twitter that Panda can also bring about some serious improvement to a site's traffic as well.
Prior to Cutts confirming via Twitter
that Panda 4.0 hit, there had been plenty of speculation about a change
with either Panda or Penguin, although many found it hard to pin down
exactly what the change was.
"It was interesting to see the chatter amongst SEOs over the last few days," says Marie Haynes of HIS Web Marketing.
"We all knew that something was going on, but there was significant
disagreement on exactly what Google was doing. Most of the black hats
were saying that it was related to Penguin because they were noticing
huge drops in their sites with the spammiest link profiles."
This would have been the changes to the payday loans update, where the
goal is to target the spammiest search queries Google sees. There was
also plenty of debate on forums and Twitter about whether the shake-up
we saw was Panda-related or Penguin-related. And with the payday loans
update thrown in there for good measure, it was definitely confusing.
"I was really hoping that this wasn't a Penguin refresh because
the majority of the sites that I had done link cleanup on were not
seeing any improvement and if Penguin refreshed and none of my clients
were seeing ranking increases, then that would not be good," Haynes
says. "I was also puzzled because one site that I monitor that has been
adversely affected by several Panda updates saw a vast improvement
today. It does not have a bad link profile and would not have been
affected by a Penguin update. "
"When I heard the announcements that Google had released two algorithms
over the last couple of days – payday loans and also a big Panda update,
everything made sense. And still, so many of us are waiting for that
big Penguin refresh. It wouldn't surprise me if that happens in the next
couple of days," she says.
Google has said previously that they try not to throw multiple updates
at once or within a very short period of time, so it is interesting that
they pushed out two completely unrelated updates – although updates
that could both impact some the same sites – within a couple of days.
Releasing two back-to-back updates makes it a lot harder for webmasters
to analyze the changes and what specifically was targeted in these
updates, and could affect Google's ability to evaluate how well (or not)
the two updates worked. It also means webmasters might have a challenge
knowing what changes need to be made in order to recover search
rankings.
However, Haynes speculated that some of the Panda change might have been
to reverse some of the damage done to sites that had great content yet
were impacted for other on-page reasons.
"I think it's too early to say what this new iteration of Panda is
affecting, but I can tell you that in the case of the site that I saw
big improvements on, no cleanup work had been done at all," Haynes says.
"It was always in 'Panda flux.'"
She says some Panda refreshes would hit it hard and then occasionally the site would show a slight increase with a refresh.
"This is by far the biggest increase, though," Haynes says. "It really
is a good-quality site and I believe that what caused it to be affected
by Panda in the first place was a site layout that caused crawlers to
get confused. Underneath that confusing layout is a site full of really
good content. It may be that Google found ways to see past structural
issues and recognize the good content as the structural problems would
not affect users, just crawlers. But really, that's a guess."
Panda first blazed onto the scene in February 2011,
and was believed to be Google's response to criticism of how well
content farms were ranking. Google later announced that they internally
called it the big Panda update, after Navneet Panda, the Google engineer
who created it.
While there have been many smaller Panda updates and a couple larger ones, each rolled out monthly over a period of 10 days, Google had announced several months ago that Panda would be integrated into the algorithm updates and that the "softer" Panda
would be less noticeable. However, that clearly isn't the case with
Panda 4.0, which has had a widespread impact, both positively and
negatively.
Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz also studied the changes they saw from the latest Panda update, and noticed that eBay got hit particularly hard.
Digging into the May 19th data (and before Google confirmed
anything), I noticed that a few keywords seemed to show losses for eBay,
and the main eBay sub-domain fell completely out of the "Big 10" (our
metric of the ten domains with the most "real estate" in the top 10).
In fact, Meyers notes that eBay's drop was so significant that it
dropped from 1 percent of their queries to 0.28 percent. It won't be
surprising to hear of more sites who have seen a drop due to Panda 4.0 –
especially sites that have been notorious for having low quality
content.
We will definitely see more come out in the next few days as webmasters
and SEO professionals have a chance to evaluate the changes and what
might have caused sites (either their own or competitors) to either rise
or fall in Google's search results. And since we're still awaiting a
Google Penguin update (Penguin 2.0 launched
a year ago this week), I wouldn't be surprised if we see one of those
updates coming soon, especially in light of Google releasing both the
payday loans and Panda 4.0 so close together.
Google announced
on their Webmaster blog that they have updated two of their guideline
documents to improve the clarity around what sneaky redirects are
against Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Google has expanded their guidelines to ensure webmasters are aware that
using sneaky redirects through mobile site detection and redirection,
is not allowed if the content is not the same. An excerpt from Google’s
revised guidelines indicate a situation where “desktop users receive a
normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different
spam domain,” as not in accordance with Google’s guidelines.
Here are the two new examples Google placed in their sneaky redirects guideline page:
Search engines shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different
Desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a completely different spam domain
Google also updated the hacked sites page with an content about redirects that reads:
“Hackers might inject malicious code to your website that redirects some
users to harmful or spammy pages. The kind of redirect sometimes
depends on referrer, user-agent, or device. For example, clicking a URL
in Google search results could redirect you to a suspicious page, but
there is no redirect when you visit the same URL directly from a
browser.”
Google added a warning at the end of their blog post saying that “with
any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take manual action,
including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of
the search results.”
