Penguin update synopsis

[SamSites]

Sam - thanks for sharing that.

My own thoughts looking at your graph and if I'm understanding it correctly are that for your site there's something other than Penguin going.

Looks like you were already on the downward trend before the Penguin strike on the 24th/25th. In fact Penguin seems to mark the start of your recovery.

I agreed at first. However, reflecting on main post too, it seems google did a number of big changes before 24th - the big day - which affected my site. I can grab a longer distance shot of the visits, as that one obviously only shows a month, but thats because that is the standard for google analytics. Also, I've had these results become the majority result - the "update" causing success after fluctuations before. Has anyone else had like wise?

 

[Ashton]

This is an interesting post from WPMU.org regarding the Penguin update.

Monday 23rd April saw 8,580 visits from Google. Monday 30th saw 1,527

They are an established news source online since March 2008, with over 10,000 Facebook likes, 15,000+ Twitter followers, over 2000 google +1s and 4,000 RSS subscribers and still got smashed.

With backlinks almost entirely composed from wordpress themes and with hardly any variation in anchor text.

The value of these backlinks were killed, as were their rankings.

 

[chippyb]

Seems like there was an update yesterday, followed all the ideas from website in cleaning up etc, so penguin hit first time dropped 8 places, make my site like how google want it they update yesterday site has vanished

Brilliant

 

[Blossom]

I agreed at first. However, reflecting on main post too, it seems google did a number of big changes before 24th - the big day - which affected my site. I can grab a longer distance shot of the visits, as that one obviously only shows a month, but thats because that is the standard for google analytics. Also, I've had these results become the majority result - the "update" causing success after fluctuations before. Has anyone else had like wise?

I agree that there were changes before 24th - one of my sites was going up progressively a few days before from being pretty static for months. Levelled out at Penguin, went up more following (presumably because of people higher up crashing down), and then after a few days started going back down (I think a second update was rolled out a few days after the 25th as a correctional adjustment). Now it's a little lower on the traffic front than previously.

 

[dazc]

Hack posted by rusty brick
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-check-15165.html

It works - try replacing 'keyword -amazon.com' with 'keyword -amazon.co.uk'

 

[chippyb]

Hack posted by rusty brick
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-check-15165.html

It works - try replacing 'keyword -amazon.com' with 'keyword -amazon.co.uk'

very strange work on 2 of my sites, but on one didnt give the orignal rankings but the ranking of the day after the update, still pretty good.

but what does this mean

 

[vizzo]

I don't think it's to do with Amazon at all. It's to do with the - operator.

Maybe if you include the - it's using an old pre-panda database

 

[raymortim]

Just tried it with all my affected sites and seems to show more or less the positions pre-Penguin.

It seems to work with ANY valid domain name (whether or not it is registered) so -ftgtrfgfhg.com works but ftgtrfgfhg.zzz doesn't nor does just -ftgtrfgfhg

People say similar things were possible after some previous updates, anybody able to say what it meant then?

 

[dazc]

Maybe if you include the - it's using an old pre-panda database

That's probably the best explanation.

 

[chippyb]

this update is rubbish, a site with lots of work and lots of unique content got hit and now isnt in the top 100 and another of of my sites that was cack with hardly any content that didnt have any top 100 positions has now jumped up and has loads of rankings now and even 1st page for high keywords, non of it makes sense, they seems to of done the reverse to that they said they were doing

 

[retired_member36]

Does anyone know if there has been any kind of further update, one of my sites that has been number1/2 for months and months is not showing at all for its keywords. It's a low competition and low monthly searches too.

I'm a bit pissed off to be honest with the amount of work I've put in

 

[Django]

Does anyone know if there has been any kind of further update

Been reading a thread on another forum (apologies one of my first posts, so I didn't want to post a link to a thread on another forum...what's the etiquette for this?) that a number of webmasters have seen their rankings revert to pre-penguin...the weird thing is they have changed nothing. No new content, no new links, no diversification of anchor text...

I guess most of these guys that have seen a recovery are American Webmasters, so not sure if it's affecting .co.uk yet, and tbh it seems to be fairly random in that for all the webmasters that have seen rankings go back to pre-penguin, there are an equal amount that haven't. The trend seems to be that EMD's are doing well again...

Just thought I'd make you aware that there are rumblings that the next stage of the Penguin patch is currently rolling out...don't know if anyone else is seeing this?

 

[retired_member36]

Will see how it goes over the next week or so, and if it doesnt improve contact them via webmaster tools for re-inclusion.

The site is about 5 months old now, has been on page one from pretty much the end of the first month, where it moved upto position one / two. Last google update didnt touch it, thats why im a bit shocked as all of a sudden its gone.

There are no dodgy links to the site, the domain is an exact match domain, all content is unique, uses wordpress. There are no html suggestions, no crawl errors, no malware or anything showing in webmaster tools.

 

[chippyb]

Same as mine, google updates have not touch it until last week and I cant find it anywhere, I only cleaned up the site to what google said they were after them bam gone

 

[Blossom]

Will see how it goes over the next week or so, and if it doesnt improve contact them via webmaster tools for re-inclusion.

The site is about 5 months old now, has been on page one from pretty much the end of the first month, where it moved upto position one / two. Last google update didnt touch it, thats why im a bit shocked as all of a sudden its gone.

There are no dodgy links to the site, the domain is an exact match domain, all content is unique, uses wordpress. There are no html suggestions, no crawl errors, no malware or anything showing in webmaster tools.

Have you changed anything on the site at all? You could have triggered an automatic penalty not related to any Google updates.

Typically if you have, your site will still be indexed and ranking for its name/URL, but your keyword rankings will disappear and there will be nothing in webmaster tools to indicate a penalty.

I also heard that the plugins which list 'Incoming search terms' and the like (especially as links) cause ranking drops now, so best removing them if you have any of those.

 

[chippyb]

I did change titles to make the more human friendly and lowered the keyword desity to about 1-2% cleaned up old code things like that, things they wanted and got hit, still all indexed tho just not ranking for the 1st place anymore

 

[retired_member36]

Thanks for the reply blossom, have sent you a PM.

 

[dashu1]

I had a site that had been in top 4 or 5 for ages. Dropped out of top 1000 results after update.

I detuned it a couple of days after the update, since it was an EMD and titles, H1's, links in etc all contained that keyword phrase, but made no difference at all.

So early last week I reg'd a dropped domain that had been a site from 1999 in the same niche, and that has an old .gov link pointing at it.

Stuck up 2 pages as a site, waited til Google indexed it, left it 2 days, then 301'd it at my site that had vanished.

Today some of the inner pages of my old site are showing up in the top 200 results again.

Hardly back to its best, but it is showing up in results.

Don't know if it's coincidence or if the old .gov link and the old site 301ing to it have helped it w.r.t authority and/or trust.

Will let you know if it comes back properly.

 

[Jamie101]

Will see how it goes over the next week or so, and if it doesnt improve contact them via webmaster tools for re-inclusion.

The site is about 5 months old now, has been on page one from pretty much the end of the first month, where it moved upto position one / two. Last google update didnt touch it, thats why im a bit shocked as all of a sudden its gone.

There are no dodgy links to the site, the domain is an exact match domain, all content is unique, uses wordpress. There are no html suggestions, no crawl errors, no malware or anything showing in webmaster tools.

I'm in the exact same position.

I've a site that's nearly 1 year old, it has pretty much always been on page one for its main keyword but over the last few months it jumped up to number 1.

No updates really affected it, obviously it would move up and down a spot or two now and again, but after panda it has disappeared completely. Even when I search site:mysite.com my site is at the bottom of page 1.

The site uses wordpress, all unique content, no dodgy backlinks etc. so I don't know what's wrong with it. Only thing I can think of is that there's a lot of links to amazon on it, but each and every product has a short description that's unique.

 

[chippyb]

I'm in the exact same position.

I've a site that's nearly 1 year old, it has pretty much always been on page one for its main keyword but over the last few months it jumped up to number 1.

No updates really affected it, obviously it would move up and down a spot or two now and again, but after panda it has disappeared completely. Even when I search site:mysite.com my site is at the bottom of page 1.

The site uses wordpress, all unique content, no dodgy backlinks etc. so I don't know what's wrong with it. Only thing I can think of is that there's a lot of links to amazon on it, but each and every product has a short description that's unique.

Try making your aff links no follow, I think That has helped someone else out before, didnt work for me tho