Panda 4

murph · May 21, 2014

Any UK webmasters noticed anything yet?

Skinner · May 21, 2014

Some of my old affiliate sites (well aged and updated) have popped to page 1 (and some in top spot) on exact match searches.

murph · May 21, 2014

Skinner said:
Some of my old affiliate sites (well aged and updated) have popped to page 1 (and some in top spot) on exact match searches.

Congrats... when MC says "starting today" just wondering how long the palpitations will last this time...

Skinner · May 21, 2014

these sites typically sit around page 2-3, so be interesting.

I only noticed because I had a £5 commission come in at 12:46pm, so I googled the term and noticed that sites moved from top of page 2, to top of page 1. Lets hope the commission's roll in while I'm there

I googled a few others, and not found any which have dropped massively.

Murray · May 21, 2014

Here's a good little summary

http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=6ca3c43ebcab6285ad8a18a73&id=38d8751106

Skinner · May 21, 2014

So Panda is about how google perceives the quality of the site, I wonder if the age of the site (not the name), with regular (ish) updates, plays a part in that. One which which I haven't updated in 2014, has dropped a little, not drastic.

I don't really concern myself too much with google games, I just do what I do

Murray · May 21, 2014

Also an interesting article from Dr.Pete @ moz

http://moz.com/blog/panda-4-payday-loan-2-and-ebays-very-bad-day

julian · May 21, 2014

feels shameful to be doing seo in 40's - you guns game..

Retired_Member39 · May 21, 2014

julian said:
feels shameful to be doing seo in 40's - you guns game..

Age really is just a number.

murph · May 22, 2014

So... Anyone else seen any movements within the .co.uk index?

murph · May 22, 2014

Seems like some big sites got hit by this: http://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2014/05/21/panda-update-4-0-winners-and-losers-google-usa/

Ebay down 33%

Skinner · May 22, 2014

I have one in the health sector which has moved up to middle of page 1, from bottom of page one which I noticed today. I have just moved that from the .co.uk to the .com (which I bought), so could be related to that.

Also had a EMD wiped out, from page 1/2 its now not even on the first 10 pages, so first casualty.

retired_member33 · May 22, 2014

The Payday update is a funny one imo.

Have a look at the current rankings for the term payday loans and you will see Money Saving expert, The Guardian, a bunch of Google News items, Adviceguide and Stepchange on page one.

There also are a few payday companies but it seems most are other sites...

So Google went from banning a lot of blackhat (and proper) sites which would send people looking for a loan to the right page to compiling a list of trustworthy sites which are related to loans?

Not the best user experience I think... If I am looking for a loan I am not looking for advice but looking for a loan.

I have to point out, I am not a supporter of the blackhat sites but this "Payday update" seems to have wiped out a lot of sites which were genuine and is now showing slightly relevant sites.

Murray · May 23, 2014

ProDomains said:
There also are a few payday companies but it seems most are other sites...

Ahh, but then maybe people are more likely to click on the adwords

works out well for google

retired_member33 · May 23, 2014

Murray said:
Ahh, but then maybe people are more likely to click on the adwords works out well for google

Don't be evil....They must have thrown that out of the window years ago

retired_member33 · May 23, 2014

Something else... Not entirely related to this update.

I have heard of companies buying searches for a certain brand/keyword(and then clicking on a certain site) to manipulate search results.

Interesting one

timter51 · May 23, 2014

One market that I used to rank a lot of affiliate sites in with great results was ghd hair straighteners, used to have a bumper season every Christmas, but this update seems to have really begun sorting that out. My last site that was ranking well was hit by the last panda update, but up until this new update, google serps for searches like "cheap ghd straighteners" were still flooded with spammy sites (mostly china fakes sellers). Now though, page 1 looks pretty decent - GHD official site, Argos, Amazon, eBay, Gumtree, HotUKDeals, and just 3 spam sites (one has managed to cling on to #2, but it's a dead site). This is definitely one historically ultra-spammy market that Google have successfully begun clearing up.

Murray · May 23, 2014

timter51 said:
This is definitely one historically ultra-spammy market that Google have successfully begun clearing up.

A lot of DMCA complaints at the bottom, have they always been there? or was it cleared out with DMCA's rather than updates

timter51 · May 23, 2014

Murray said:
A lot of DMCA complaints at the bottom, have they always been there? or was it cleared out with DMCA's rather than updates

No they've always been there! GHD have been waging a constant war for years, mainly against the counterfeit sellers, but also against trademark infringement (nearly came a cropper once myself). Over the last year or so, the sites dominating the rankings for these sorts of terms moved from standard emd / kwd phrase domains (which is what I used to do), to the hosted blogs (like the one in #2) and hijacked dropped domains (like the one at the bottom of page 1 on burnfootholidaycottages.co.uk) which is what the counterfeiters moved to, and I couldn't be bothered.