Do I have a Panda filter on a specific segment?
-
Our site gets a decent level of search traffic and doesn't have any site-wide penalty issues, but one of our sections looks like it might be under some form of filter. Unfortunately for us, they're our buy pages!
Check out http://www.carwow.co.uk/deals/Volkswagen/Golf it's unique content and I've built white hat links into it, including about 5 from university websites (.ac.uk domains DA70+). If you search something like "volkswagen golf deals" the pages on page 1 have weak thin content and pretty much no links.
That content section wasn't always unique, in fact the vast majority of it may well be classed as dupe content as there's no Trim data and they look like this: http://www.carwow.co.uk/deals/Fiat/Punto
While we never had much volume, the traffic on all /deals/ pages appears to drop significantly around the time of the May Panda update (4.0).
We're planning on completely re-launching these pages with a new design, unique trim content and a paragraph (c.200 words) about the model.
Am I right in assuming that there's a Panda filter on the /deals/ segment so regardless of what I do to one deals page it won't rank well, and we have to re-do the whole section?
-
It is still possible it isn't a penalty from one of the major algorithms and you may be able to solve this by creating a strong internal linking strategy. It helps to formulate one if you use something like MindNode to create an overview of the site and then you can drill in on the pages in questions.
It is possible that a noindex would cure this, but it all depends because even though you add a noindex tag to a page, Google can still read the page and apply the penalty. All it means is that the page won't be indexed.
However, if you are relaunching everything very soon, you might be as well to sit tight and not do anything too rash for a short-term solution.
-Andy
-
Positions as well.
Some form of filter is the only explanation I can think of for why that VW Golf Deals page doesn't perform. It's better content and has decent links (OSE hasn't picked them up but they're there).
We get c.40k hits/month on our blog and c.25k hits/month on our car-reviews, entirely through organic, but literally zero on the deals pages, where if anything the competition is less and the quality is lower.
I wonder if placing a no-index tag on the deals pages that have thin content would resolve the issue, but we'll be re-launching the whole segment in the coming weeks.
-
Hi James,
Am I right in assuming that there's a Panda filter on the /deals/ segment
Unfortunately there is no guaranteed way to say this is the case, but generally if you see a drop in traffic / positions that coincide with an algorithm refresh, then this can be telling.
Is it just traffic to those pages that has dropped, or positions in the SERPs?
-Andy
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to best add affiliate links in a way that minimizes panda risk?
We have a site of about 100.000 pages that is getting several million of visitors per year via organic search. We plan to add about 50.000 new pages gradually in the next couple of months and would like to add affiliate links to the new pages. All these 50.000 new pages will have unique quality data that a team has been researching for a while. I would like to add in the area under the fold or towards the end of the pages in an unobstrusive way affiliate links to about 5 different affiliate programs with affiliate links customized to page content and of real value to visitors. Since affiliate links are one of the factors that may trigger panda I am a bit nervous whether we should add the affiliate links and if there is any way of implementing the affiliate links in a way that they may be less likely to trigger panda. E.g. would you consider hiding affiliate links from google by linking to intermediate URL (which I would mark as noindex nofolllow) on our domain which then redirects to the final affiliate landing page (but google may notice via chrome or android data) ? Any other idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
With the New Panda update supposedly only weeks away, is it wise to No Index my products I have not had time to rewrite the product descriptions for ?
Hi Mozzers, I read on SEJ yesterday than apparently the Panda update was due in the 2 - 4 weeks. I still have a large of my products which I have not got around to rewriting unique product descriptions for. I know these product descriptions are duplicated on other affiliate sites so do it think it in light of the panda update coming , would it wise to put a NO INDEX Meta tag on these product pages until I get around to rewriting the descriptions. That way, I may not hit my Panda and it will buy me a bit more time. Just an idea , but thought I'd run it by. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
How to know website is hit with panda or penguin?
My Website traffic and keywords dropped day by day. How can I know website is hit with panda or penguin. Website is - 24hourpassportandvisas. com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Long urls created by filters (not with query parameters)
A website adds subfolders to a category URL for each filter that's selected. In a crawl of the website some of these URLs reach over 400 characters. For example, if I select shoe size 5, 5.5 and 6, white and blue colour, price $70-$100, heel and platform styles, the URL will be as follows: www.example.com/shoes/womens/filters/shoe-size--5--5.5--6/color--white--blue/price--70-100/style--heel--platform There is a canonical that points to www.example.com/shoes/womens/ so it isn't a duplicate content issue. But these URLs still get crawled. How would you handle this? It's not a great system so I'm tempted to tell them to start over with best practice recommendations, but maybe I should just tell them to block the "/filters/" folder from crawlers? For some products however, filtered content would be worth having in search indexes (e.g. colour).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Panda Recovery Question
Dear Friends, One of my customers was hit by the Panda, we were working on improve the tiny content on several pages and the remaining pages were: 1 NOINDEX/FOLLOW 2. Removed from sitemap.xml 3. Un-linked from the site (no one page on the site link to the pour content) As conclusion we can't see any improvement, my question is should I remove the pour content pages (404)? What is your recommendation? Thank you for your time Claudio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
Problems with ecommerce filters causing duplicate content.
We have an ecommerce website with 700 pages. Due to the implementation of filters, we are seeing upto 11,000 pages being indexed where the filter tag is apphended to the URL. This is causing duplicate content issues across the site. We tried adding "nofollow" to all the filters, we have also tried adding canonical tags, which it seems are being ignored. So how can we fix this? We are now toying with 2 other ideas to fix this issue; adding "no index" to all filtered pages making the filters uncrawble using javascript Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so what did you do to combat this and was it successful?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Moving Part of a Website to a Subdomain to Remove Panda Penalty?
I have lots of news on my website and unlike other types of content, news posts quickly become obsolete and get a high bounce rate. I have reasons to think that the news on my website might be partly responsible for a Panda penalty so I'm not sure. There are over 400 news posts on the blog from the last 4 years so that's still a lot of content. I was thinking of isolating the news articles on a subdomain (news.mywebsite.com) If the news play a part in the Panda penalty, would that remove it from the main domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
What has this subdomain done to recover from Panda?
I found that doctor.webmd.com was affected by Google Panda, and then recovered (if you look at traffic on compete.com). What do you think they did to recover?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0