Google's Panda - A Case Study

Google’s Panda – A Case Study
Jonathan Stewart
Head of Search & Social Media
www.reviewcentre.com
jonathan@reviewcentre.com
http://twitter.com/jonaths

What I’m Going To Talk About
(1) What is Panda?
(2) How it affected Review Centre
(3) The actions we took
(4) The results
(5) Other observations

How to Pour Water From a Pitcher

“An algorithmic improvement designed to help people find more high-quality sites in search”
AmitSinghal

Panda Timeline
July 23rd
May 10th
Feb 24th
June 16th
April 11th

Search Metrics
“Reviewcentre.com is in absolute numbers the biggest loser”
Search Metrics

“You’re not a good SEO until you’ve been hit by a penalty.
A real big one.”

Panda Theories
User Metrics
Aggressive ads
Poor Site Design
Weak Content

Panda Effect
Sitewide penalty
All pages effected
EXCEPT forum pages
Short-tail, generic KWs hit hardest
“Review” KWs not hit

Panda Effect
Google UK traffic
KWs Including “review”
KWs Excluding “review”

What Did We Do?
Site Redesign
Decreased Ad Density
Improved Social Sharing
Noindexed Weak Content
Removed Duplicate Content

New Website Design

Noindex
“In cases like this, Google’s MaileOhye recommended using a <meta name=robots content=noindex> …until they have unique and high-quality content on them.”

The Panda Cycle
4weeks
6 weeks
~4 months
5 weeks

Results
Went live on the 25th May
July 27th reverted to previous Adsense layout
We’ve seen no reversal of Panda 

23 Questions of Doom
Would you trust the information
presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert…, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Was the article edited well?
How much quality control is done on content?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators?

Cumulative Panda Theory
Panda Score
Websites

Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Panda Score
Websites

Was the article edited well?
Panda Score
Websites

Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Panda Score
Websites

Recap
Actions we took
Site Redesign
Blocked Weak Pages
3 months on - no return from Panda!
Reducing Adsense
No Impact After 2 months
What next?
Consolidating Content

Panda Resources
Google’s 23 Questions for Pandalized Websites
Is Panda Crushing Your Website
The Panda in the Room
Google Usage of User Engagement Metrics
Panda – Nothing Seems to Work
Panda Slapped Quality Sites
Traffic Trends for Pandalized Sites
DaniWeb – 110% Recovery
Google Panda Update Recovery

http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk	1169
http://www.jonathanstewart.co.uk	579
http://paper.li	8
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	4
http://tweetree.com	2
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	1
https://my.scribeseo.com	1
http://www.twylah.com	1
http://ranksit.com	1

Google's Panda - A Case Study

by Jonathan Stewart on Sep 12, 2011

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