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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.

  • WillyF


    I woke up on Friday morning to see that my traffic from Google on Thursday was down 30% on one of my sites. Traffic hasn't bounced back, and I'm wondering why I've been lumped in with the content farms. My site only has original, high quality content. It has a great link profile with tons of links from .edu page, and I've always played by Google's rules. I can't understand why my site has been negatively affected, which makes it hard to do something about it. Right now, the only thing that I can come up with is to work really hard at building more links. Were you affected? What are you doing about it?

    | WillyF
    0
  • imageworks-261290


    y'all, what is the recommended amount of time in which content on a website should be refreshed? TY

    | imageworks-261290
    0
  • ShaMenz


    I decided not to worry too much about the statements from google indicating that they were going to consider key word rich domains as a negative for ranking since any of the sites I work on that have them are totally relevant to the content on the sites. However, since recent Google algorithm updates I see these domains have suddenly slid from top 3 positions to page 4 or beyond in Google SERP's. Nothing has changed on these sites in the intervening time and no change is evident in Bing or Yahoo SERP's. Is it just my imagination, or are others seeing the same thing for keyword rich domains? and has anyone yet determined the best way to deal with this problem?

    | ShaMenz
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  • Nobody1560986989723


    Hi there, Please can someone point me to some current and reasonably accurate articles or guidance on optimising for Bing, as my optimisation work on one client is reaping rewards in Google, but being partially ignored by Bing and I really want to be able to better understand their ranking factors. Many thanks, Martin

    | Nobody1560986989723
    0
  • andystep


    This morning I ranked highly (Page 1 UK Google) for over 50 keyword search terms for my website http://www.careworx.co.uk This afternoon my rankings have bottomed out and dropped pages?  I have not been de-indexed it appears and many of my sub-pages are still highly ranked. Would anybody know what has happened?  I know of Google Panda but I would've seen results drop before now so I'm very concerned.  Don't seem to have lost any links etc and am careful to balance SEO with a mix of techniques to keep Google happy and again, have not been de-indexed. Can anybody offer advice please, or let me know how I can rectify this.

    | andystep
    0
  • StuartAnderton


    Our high quality (IMHO!) editorial technology site got hit by around ~20% of Google search referrals when Panda went live in the UK on the 12th. But the last couple of days it's returned to "normal". Is that the effects of our frantic scrabbling around trying things, or have Google tweaked the algorithm again, to remove the editorial sites which got caught accidentally?

    | StuartAnderton
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  • sprynewmedia


    I have a predicament.  The site I manage (www.duhaime.org) has been hit by the Panda update but the system seems fixed against this site’s purpose.   I need some advice on what i'm planning and what could be done. First, the issues: Content Length The site is legal reference including dictionary and citation look up.  Hundreds (perhaps upwards of 1000) of pages, by virtue of the content, are thin.  The acronym C.B.N.S. stands for “Common Bench Reports, New Series” a part of the English reports.  There really isn’t too much more to say nor is there much value to the target audience in saying it. Visit Length as a Metric There is chatter claiming Google watches how long a person uses a page to gauge it’s value.  Fair enough but, a large number of people that visit this site are looking for one small piece of data.  They want the definition of a term or citation then they return to whatever caused the query in the first place. My strategy so far… Noindex some Pages Identify terms and citations that are really small – less than 500 characters – and put a no index tag on them.  I will also remove the directory links to the pages and clean the sitemaps.  This should remove the obviously troublesome pages.  We’ll have to live with the fact these page won’t be found in Google’s index despite their value. Create more click incentives We already started with related terms and now we are looking at diagrams and images.  Anything to punch up the content for that ever important second click. Expand Content (of course) The author will focus the next six months on doing his best to extend the content of these short pages.  There are images and text to be added in many cases – perhaps 200 pages.  Still won't be able to cover them all without heavy cut-n-paste feel. Site Redesign Looking to lighten up the code and boiler plate content shortly.  We were working on this anyway.  Resulting pages should have less than 15 hard-coded site-wide links and the disclaimer will be loaded with AJAX upon scroll.  Ads units will be kept at 3 per page. What do you think?  Are the super light pages of the citations and dictionary why site traffic is down 35% this week?

    | sprynewmedia
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  • randallseo


    I feel like although directories carry a lot of weight and links, I'd think that my client would be able to gain a top position, since none of the others are competitor pages, nor are the directories engaging.

    | randallseo
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  • bubliki


    I'm interested, weather bad network neighborhood could cause some penalties in Google indexing and search? For checking your site neighbors follow this URL (enter your site URL in the end): http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=domain.com

    | bubliki
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  • dbuckles


    .

    | dbuckles
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  • dirkla


    Does anyone know if there are websites that have recovered from the Panda update?

    | dirkla
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  • hellemans


    Hi all, I just noticed some extra links in the SERP where a webpage was showing events in the city. Does anyone know how these events can be indexed and placed by google in teh SERP? I have attached a screenshot, the underlying pages don't seem to be that special. I was wondering if there are special guidelines when optimising for events. It seems that Google will only show upcoming events for the next few days... Any help is greatly appriciated! Cheers!

    | hellemans
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  • 360ryan


    I just finished reading the Beginners Guide to SEO at SEOMoz and joined as a Pro Member.  I have created a campaign for my new SEO project and feel like I have a good understanding now of on-page optimization.  I am going to start fixing title tags and on page content for our top 50 pages and start a new campaign to go after some keywords.  Our website is 360dwellings. I am struggling to determine what the best keywords are for us to target.  Right now our primary markets are Denver and San Diego, we also display listings for all of Colorado as well. We had originally gone after competitive keywords like "Denver Homes for Sale".  What I am learning is that even ranking bottom of page one for that term doesn't bring a ton of traffic. Meanwhile, we rank well for a lot of niche content like "5280 best neighborhoods" "Denver Lofts for Sale" and "Denver Neighborhood Map". My questions is do we completely abandon going after big keywords like 'Denver CO Homes for Sale", and 'Denver Real Estate" and go as far as removing them from title tags?  We have pages for every Denver neighborhood like Park Hill and the Highlands, but there is no search data for these searches in Google Keywords.  My gut says that if each of those pages ranked for terms like "Denver Highlands Neighborhood Homes for Sale" that it would bring good targeted traffic.  Does anyone know of search terms for Real Estate that are low competition but have some search volume? Thanks!

    | 360ryan
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  • libertybathrooms


    Hi We are pulling in content snippets from our product blog to our category listing pages on our ecommerce site to provide fresh, relevant content which is working really well. What I am wondering is if we are going to get penalised for dupicate content as both our our blog and ecommerce site are on the same ip address? If so would moving the blog to a separate server and / or a separate domain name be a wise move? Thanks very much

    | libertybathrooms
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  • askthetrainer


    After the Google Algorithm was updated my site took a week hit in traffic. The traffic came back a week later and was doing well a week AFTER the algorithm change and I decided that I should do a 301 redirect to make sure I didn't have duplicate content (www. vs. http://) I called my hosting company (I won't name names but it rhymes w/ Low Fatty) and they guided me through the supposedly simple process.. Well, they had me create a new (different) IP address and do a domain forward (sorry about bad terminology) to the www. This was in effect for approximately 2 weeks before I discovered it and came along with a subsequent massive hit in traffic. I then corrected the problem (I hope) by restoring the old IP address and setting up the HTACESS file to redirect all to www. It is a couple weeks later and my traffic is still in the dumps. On WMT instead of getting traffic from 10,000 keywords I'm getting it only from 2k. Is my site the victim of some penalty (I have heard of sandbox) or is my site simply just lower in traffic due to the new algorithm (I checked analytics data to find that traffic only in the US is cut by 50%, it is the same outside the US) Could someone please tell me what is going on?

    | askthetrainer
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  • jjwelu


    Realized some major slipping on some of my most important keywords- mn realtors and minnesota homes for sale- my site is joeandcindy.com    After months of working on traffic, blogs etc, wondering what could slap me 10-25 spots in just  a few days.  There were no errors showing up on the report that I can see.  Just looking for some quick advice on what I might be missing and some quick action steps I might take to reverse the trend.  Thanks!

    | jjwelu
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  • Storitz


    We have 100 to 150 words of SEO text per page on www.storitz.com.  Our challenge is that we are a storage property aggregator with hundreds of metros.  We have to distinguish each city with relevant and umique text. If we use a modular approach where we mix and match pre-written (by us) content, demographic and location oriented text in an attempt to create relevant and unique text for multiple (hundreds) of pages on our site, will we be devalued by Google?

    | Storitz
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  • seozachz


    We have a large content article section on our e-commerce site that receives a lot of visits but also have very high bounce rates.  We are wondering if this is hurting the rest of our site's rankings. **When I say bounce rates I mean what ever metrics Google is using to determine quality content (specifically after the Panda update). ** We are trying to determine if having the content articles on our domain hurts us.  We only have the content articles for link building.

    | seozachz
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  • C-Style


    Post Farmer update.........where is the best place to syndicate articles now? I'm in the insurance industry so it helps if it's an insurance-related site. Any help would be appreciated.

    | C-Style
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  • ErinTM


    I have believed for years that a high bounce rate (from search) could lower your rankings over time. Makes sense; if users bounce right back to search after looking at your page Google should think that page wasn't very useful and will push your down the SERPs. But, how do they determine this? If a user comes back after 30 seconds that's a bounce? Or is my premise incorrect and Google does not take bounce into account? Erin

    | ErinTM
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  • Dan-Petrovic


    After going through numerous post-algo update articles I find one price comparison site to have gone though unscratched - NexTag.com Question: What contributed to their success? Was it sheer domain authority, content quality, unique toolset... or something else?

    | Dan-Petrovic
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  • CareerBliss


    Our company recently had a "company name + scam" listing as #2 in suggested search, and yesterday, it miraculously disappeared. Has anyone else noticed similar changes in suggested search results? I hope it stick, I'm just trying to understand exactly what caused that 1 listing to vanish.

    | CareerBliss
    0
  • CareerBliss


    I've added NOODP and NOYDIR metas to our pages... but Google is still somehow showing the correct title tag that is on the page, but is changing the CASING of the | Domain.com portion. In some instances, they are still showing a different title tag all together. Why would they be ignoring the <title>tag on the page and placing an uncased version of our domain name at the end?</p> <p> </p> <a download="MxQjo" class="imported-anchor-tag" href="http://imgur.com/MxQjo" target="_blank">MxQjo</a></title>

    | CareerBliss
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  • Jvalops


    I would like to know whether it's ok to sell same products from 2-3 websites. Design and URL structure will be different but same e-commerce platform. Would google penalise or drop the rankings, etc. How google deall with this sort of thing? If problem arises how can we get around it? Thanks

    | Jvalops
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  • csblev


    I can't seem to find an authoritative answer on this.

    | csblev
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  • Cyle


    So I have an employer who owns a retail site and his category URLs are horrible.  So, I am suggesting to him to create a new page with a pretty URL and 301 redirect the old page to the new page.  I am suggesting this to him, because this will help increase CTR for the targeted keyword & help him rank higher for the term.  He is apprehensive about this cause he thinks this will cause him to drop in ranking.  Does anybody know any resources or have any past experiences that will back up my suggestion or his for that matter?

    | Cyle
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  • voitenkos


    Hello , I am about to create a website with product reviews for a certain niche. What i want to know: Is it better for me to have a site with all reviews , like nicheproductsreviews.com and then have nicheproductsreviews.com/product-one-review.html and nicheproductsreviews.com/product-two-review.html or buy multiple domains to have product name in the domain name, like  product-one-review.com and product-two-review.com As far as I understand, first approach consolidates all pages on the same site , consolidating all the link juice to it. However, second approach lets me have the product name in the main domain URL. Which way is better for SEO and why?

    | voitenkos
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  • craven22


    I've performed countless SEO tactics, post tons of unique content. social bookmark tons of it. Facebook, Twitter, etc. Implement new sections to my site all the time in the past month I've implemented a dating site and a discussion forum. Yet my traffic pretty much always stays the same. We are at a level where our site is now the best place on the web to find disability news, and I can't really think of how else to improve it without simply having it more active. Is my niche just too small? http://ablemagazine.co.uk

    | craven22
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  • BradBorst


    Does Google or other search engines index Wordpress pages that use frames?  Here is the site in question: http://www.source-nutrition.com/son/

    | BradBorst
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  • robertrRSwalters


    Hi I was at the linklove conference and I heard some worrying stories about the way content is formatted on a page being a factor in ehow has avoided being slapped. It was the first time I had heard the expression "below the fold..." I am producing some very sexy SERP's results and other sexier metrics are up too but I am concerened that thefurnituremarket.co.uk has a ton of images on the home page and the nice content is below all of them.. firstly is this content..."below the fold"? secondly I know the site is old but do you think when this panda update hits the UK... were will be penalised for the look of the site.. I know there was talk yesterday at the conference of coming up woth a tool to check this out... my gut says that this will be a factor... sooner rather than later hence I am looking at magento and how we can skin it to look nice and present products better.. I would be really interested to know what exactly is "below the fold" on the furnituremarket.co.uk and some thoughts on the whole ehow formatting issue..

    | robertrRSwalters
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  • MattBB12


    On March 3rd, the hits on my UK site crashed to 40% of the previous number. I am guessing it may be down to the google algorithm change:- http://wisestartupblog.com/seo/google-algorithm-change-february-2011-losers-winners/5081 However, I am aware this happened on 25th Feb in the US. Do you know when it happened in the UK. Could it have suddenly started affecting me on March 3?

    | MattBB12
    1
  • jpc1004


    I've had a few articles made up about Microsoft Training for the training company I work for.  What's the best practice to submitting these articles, any tips on how best to use these articles to boost seo for our website? All help is greatly appreciated. Jack

    | jpc1004
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  • Goetzman


    Just curious 🙂

    | Goetzman
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  • seo_ploom


    So I know have seen how my websites have taken a nose dive from the google farmer update most likely with traffic significantly hit.  Example site is callcatalog.com.  What recommendations are there to deal with the new world order?  How can we look at optimizing, changing, modifying our process to improve rankings and traffic?

    | seo_ploom
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  • Gyi


    In light of Google's recent "social search update", I am curious to know how many Google users perform searches while logged into their Google account thereby showing "social results".

    | Gyi
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  • donnye


    I'm ranking in the top 3 for a keyword in Google but when I change my location to a state of city I'm at the bottom of the page. Can anyone help? I made sure that the state I want to rank for is both in my title and body. The page has been up for almost a year and is a PR3. It is not my home page but a sup page under "areas we serve." I'm looking for someone who can explain how I can optimize for a state or city. Thanks

    | donnye
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  • netex72


    Hi, I have a client, in Maryland, that wants to rank on the first page for "yoga teacher training".  But to my understanding Google (don't know about Yahoo! & Bing at the moment) is prioritizing local listings first based on the user's IP (or preferred city if using a logged in Google Account). Am I right about the priority of local listings?  Is that a common occurrence now? Is it possible for my client to rank for yoga teacher training for someone searching in New York, for example, or is this a huge chalenge? Thanks for any advice!! Kindly, Michael

    | netex72
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  • Goetzman


    I'm trying to figure out the best method for externally linkback anchors to my site for local results. What would be the best way to do this for some local SERP love: Cheeseburgers Chicago, IL Cheeseburgers Chicago Cheeseburgers Chicago illinois

    | Goetzman
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  • 94501


    I work with a site that saw their super competitive top terms drop off page one with the Farmer update. So, #4 to #12.... that kinda thing. In the last year they've added a huge catalog of 500,000 item pages. The catalog has climbed to a 76% bounce rate, where as the handful of top pages is in the 20s +/-. To date, I haven't had much of anything to do with the catalog. That makes for a sitewide average bounce rate of almost 70% which has almost doubled in the past year as the catalog has ramped up. The catalog gets a ton of search traffic and sells a lot of items via that organic traffic. I'm advocating for a variety of measures, including cleaning up the catalog: 301ing out of stock pages to the homepage 301ing 100% bounce rate pages who've had hundreds/thousands of visits over time.. Improving the user experience. Offering rainchecks for out of stock items. They generally don't believe that the huge bounce rate (bad user experience stats) is hurting their top terms on their top pages. They see it as two different issues. Any thoughts on how to present evidence that the catalog is the culprit? In researching it, I found these two quotes: "In particular, it's important to note that low quality pages on one part of a site can impact the overall ranking of that site," the Google spokesman said. and... "Google spokesman told PCMag that sites that believe they have been adversely impacted should "extensively evaluate their site quality." Not only that, but the item descriptions are straight from the manufacturer, so the pages aren't that unique text-wise. Any industry standard on catalog page bounce rates? Not that it's the only possible area of SEO improvement, because it's not. I thought those quotes were pretty conclusive, but I guess not. Is there some straight-from-Google additional info to suport this? Or, am I just wrong to focus on user experience... bounce rate, pages, time on site, etc? Thanks! Mike

    | 94501
    0
  • DanHill


    Our site is recognised as a news source for our niche - was just wondering if anyone had any idea how long the news story stays on the front page of the SERP once Google picks it up?

    | DanHill
    0
  • Hondaspeder


    Searching for any variation of the companies name or domain name returns the correct www.domain.com/ as the result domain, but searching for any variations of site:domain.com/ returns HTTPS://www.domain.com/ Even if I search site:domain.com -blog -product -forum -store -everything -etc I've done that all the way down to 3 results, none of them are HTTP://www.domain.com/ WTF?!?! does this mean? I know it means duplicate content, but beyond that. If I 301 to correct domain, or remove the HTTPS version in google webmaster tools will anything drastic happen?!!? Thanks!

    | Hondaspeder
    0
  • christinarule


    Is there any real difference in uploading an images directly to your google places page or linking an image from another site? I have heard that you get better results if you upload a photo to photo bucket then to insider pages then post that link to your google places page. To me it just seems a bit odd to do things this way. I get that it's suppose to give you more back links however I don't think it would necessarily be relevant or useful for the user. Any thoughts??

    | christinarule
    0
  • ThomasHgenhaven


    Has anyone noticed any changes since the Farm Update from Google allegedly affected 11.8% of all US queries? Seems like we got some extra long tail traffic from the US - but its too early to tell if that is a coincidence or a more permanent change. I guess its one of those days where its good not to be a content farm 🙂

    | ThomasHgenhaven
    0
  • ThomasHgenhaven


    Hi mozzers, I am currently working on a phd, and one of the professors asked me for help. He would like to know how many Danish school websites (n=1500) links to a certain section of a government website (the relevant section has around 1600 pages). The problem is, that the government website is coded very poorly from an seo perspective with lots of strange URL variables, entailing OSE can't give valid data. So, what would be the best way to check how many of the school websites link? Throw all 1500 website through Xenu, or is there a smarter solution? Maybe the link out feature on Bing? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciate. Thanks!

    | ThomasHgenhaven
    0

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