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How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

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Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#31

Post by coliveira »

bxr wrote: post #27
coliveira wrote: post #26

I think this is all nonsense. Google's work should be to separate good content from bad content. Now, they are inverting the relationship and saying that web masters should be responsible to handle that information to them. This is wrong in several levels. First, Google starts to dictate what is acceptable or not in their index, using tools like webmaster central and all the "semantic web" talk -- Why should I care?…

Why should I care? You shouldn't. Nobody is forcing you to try and appear better in google's results.

You probably didn't read what came before this sentence... The point is exactly that, with a good web search engine, content writers shouldn't have to do anything other than writing content in order to appear on the search results. Google is the one that should be actively looking for content and ranking it accordingly, instead of myself doing any work other than writing.

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#32

Post by coliveira »

extension wrote: post #28
coliveira wrote: post #26

I think this is all nonsense. Google's work should be to separate good content from bad content. Now, they are inverting the relationship and saying that web masters should be responsible to handle that information to them. This is wrong in several levels. First, Google starts to dictate what is acceptable or not in their index, using tools like webmaster central and all the "semantic web" talk -- Why should I care?…

Google is in a tough position. If they keep their algorithms secret, they are accused of not being transparent. If they reveal their algorithms, they get gamed by spammers. If they reveal only vague hints and guidelines, they are accused of manipulating content. And if they don't use ever more elaborate algorithms, they get overrun with spam. By becoming defacto ruler of the internet, Google has put themselves in a p…

I agree with that. But Google is weakening its position by creating these extra semantic levels that only benefit people that are making a lot of money in this game.

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#33

Post by ackkchoo »

patio11 wrote: post #17
spolsky wrote: post #6

Because of the lucrative nature of affiliate payments and commissions in the travel industry, one of the biggest sources of what Google considered bad content was sites linking to hotels. Look at this page: [ http://www.travbuddy.com/hotels ]. All those links to "Hawaii Hotels" and "New York Hotels" look exactly like an old-school linkfarm. Ask yourself this: if you're Google, and somebody is typing in "Hawaii Hotels…

So, 1) Not much content on that page exclusive of navigation. 2) Not enough site trust. 3) Not enough links pointing directly to that page, the category (state) pages, or leaf node pages, like the individual hotel ones. Prior to Panda, a domain with a lot of links could have virtually infinite leaf node pages with no links but laser-targeted content and rank a large portion of them. These days, "lots of links to our…

Hi Patrick - thanks for your feedback and analysis, I really appreciate it.

You're absolutely right that there is not much content on that page exclusive of navigation, but in its defense the whole point of the page is navigation :) And it is just one page out of hundreds of thousands of pages on the site, many of which do have a lot of content.

I like your point about leaf nodes. Many of the domains that rank now either have a small # of pages total, or are extremely large brands with a lot of "trust", however Google defines it. In fact, these factors seem to outweigh having any original or useful content on the page itself in many cases (see post below).

If the problem is about too many leaf nodes, then cutting down "thin" content nodes (pages with little content, photo pages, etc) should have a positive effect. We've done a lot of this, so it will be interesting to see if that is the case.

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#34

Post by bxr »

coliveira wrote: post #31
bxr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should I care? You shouldn't. Nobody is forcing you to try and appear better in google's results.

You probably didn't read what came before this sentence... The point is exactly that, with a good web search engine, content writers shouldn't have to do anything other than writing content in order to appear on the search results. Google is the one that should be actively looking for content and ranking it accordingly, instead of myself doing any work other than writing.

>You probably didn't read what came before this sentence

I did. I guess what I'm saying is: why does it matter to you if google's search algorithms aren't perfect and could operate better with a bit of metadata from the site? After all, you're free to opt out from playing along. If, like you suspect, it means that their algorithm is optimized for web spam, they'll sort it out eventually.

It just sound like your bitching that the cost of doing buisness has gone up in the meantime, and if only google could be perfect you wouldn't have to worry about it. But this is what you get for relying on the behavior of someone that owes you nothing.

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#35

Post by grok2 »

An observation based on mentions of "low quality" in Amit Singhal's blog post at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guid... -- you mention that you have no-indexed thin content pages, but is it possible that if Google sees that the volume of "noindex" pages is high compared to the overall volume of pages on the site, that Google still views your site as overall of "low-quality" (relative to the other sites it indexes for the same keywords)?

Rather than noindex pages, I am thinking using robots.txt to prevent access to these pages might be better -- Google can't perhaps then tell what to make of these pages you've hidden via robots.txt. Just thinking...not really an expert on this.

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#36

Post by chocoheadfred »

grok2 wrote: post #35

An observation based on mentions of "low quality" in Amit Singhal's blog post at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guid... -- you mention that you have no-indexed thin content pages, but is it possible that if Google sees that the volume of "noindex" pages is high compared to the overall volume of pages on the site, that Google still views your site as overall of "low-quality" (relative to the o…

I think that makes a lot of sense and worth a shot. Might be worth removing (many) more pages until your rankings come back to see as a test.

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#37

Post by chocoheadfred »

ackkchoo wrote: post #33
patio11 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, 1) Not much content on that page exclusive of navigation. 2) Not enough site trust. 3) Not enough links pointing directly to that page, the category (state) pages, or leaf node pages, like the individual hotel ones. Prior to Panda, a domain with a lot of links could have virtually infinite leaf node pages with no links but laser-targeted content and rank a large portion of them. These days, "lots of links to our…

Hi Patrick - thanks for your feedback and analysis, I really appreciate it. You're absolutely right that there is not much content on that page exclusive of navigation, but in its defense the whole point of the page is navigation :) And it is just one page out of hundreds of thousands of pages on the site, many of which do have a lot of content. I like your point about leaf nodes. Many of the domains that rank now ei…

I wonder what would happen if you no-followed, no-indexed all of the non content rich pages. Good thing is that you don't have anything to lose :)

Re: How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

#39

Post by creativeone »

ackkchoo wrote: post #13
spolsky wrote: post #6

Because of the lucrative nature of affiliate payments and commissions in the travel industry, one of the biggest sources of what Google considered bad content was sites linking to hotels. Look at this page: [ http://www.travbuddy.com/hotels ]. All those links to "Hawaii Hotels" and "New York Hotels" look exactly like an old-school linkfarm. Ask yourself this: if you're Google, and somebody is typing in "Hawaii Hotels…

Hi Joel - Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful and you do make a lot of valid points, especially about travel affiliates. We definitely aren't trying to rank for "Hawaii Hotels". Those links are intended as a sitemap to help people find our review pages, many of which I believe we do have valuable, original content. As a concrete example following the Hawaii theme, we used to rank pretty well when someone s…

Let users rate the quality of reviews, like amazon does.

Also, get backlinks into your site for keywords like hotel reviews. To do this you can tell your reviewers to post on their blog twitter or Facebook that they just wrote a smashing review, and then place a link to their review.

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