How We Have Attempted to Recover from Google Panda

I run a large site that was unexpectedly affected by Google's "Panda" update. There has been a lot of talk on the subject, but most of it is FUD, and I haven't seen many large sites lay everything out for discussion. This is the first post (of many planned ones) about our experience with Google's "Panda" update.

Hopefully it will generate some good discussion from those facing a similar situation, and help some other people out.

Hi Jerry - I don't know anyone who works in search quality at Google, and they have said a few times that they aren't going to make any manual exceptions. I've filed a "reconsideration request" with Google, and only got a boilerplate response saying our site has "no manual penalties". Unfortunately, any spam report, reconsideration request, or communication via the Webmaster Tools interface seemingly goes to a black hole. I wouldn't even know who to contact or how to contact them.

I can understand why they can't reveal too much about their algorithm, but at the same time if they want to build a "healthier web ecosystem" I think they have to do a better job of communicating with legitimate webmasters (this is going to be the subject of a future post). There is so much uncertainty out there that I think even legitimate site owners are afraid to speak out for fear of being punished, when instead they should be working together with Google to help improve things. It's like the attitude is: if you're doing well, don't say anything or you might draw Google's scrutiny (especially because you're probably doing something shady), and if you are doing badly don't say anything either because Google will just punish you more (because they have not told you why you have been punished in the first place). So instead people are driven to anonymous postings on random forums where wild misinformation spreads.

The intent of this post wasn't to focus on why our particular site wasn't ranking well anymore in Google, but to try to see if there were other website owners out there who feel comfortable coming out with their stories, and to share anything they may have learned. Again, there is so little real information coming from Google that most people I know have just been grasping at straws, so it would be great to hear other people's stories. I recently read about another seemingly legit site with lots of good content punished (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=...), so there must be more of them out there.

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" to do a search, is your Hawaii Hotels page really something they want as a top result? I don't think it is. Your content is not really "canonical" for Hawaii Hotels, it's just a page that lists a few reviews you've managed to collect.

It's all speculation on my part, since I have no inside information, but essentially, I think you're sort of poisoning your own reputation at Google with all those links.

Google's intention with search, to return exactly the most relevant information for any query, seems a bit like the strive for a grand unified theory of physics. It's a noble ambition, but there are going to be a lot of mistakes and missteps along the way; it's probably going to take an awful long time to arrive there, if it ever happens; and when we do get there a lot of people are going to be upset by it. I really appreciate that you've stepped forward with both information about the effects of the changes and what you've done to remedy the situation. I'm keen to see your followup posts, and I will be keen to see what future changes Google implements and how they improve things for you, me, and everyone.

But as time has shown, holding out hope for Google to do anything specifically helpful has been a disappointment in so many instances I've lost count.

The top result I'm getting goes to TripAdvisor. Arguably, TripAdvisor is much bigger and has tons more reviews than TravBuddy. I can't speak to its quality but that does speak to its "canonicalness".