Anyone else hit by Panda 3.3?

[PeterAlexLeigh]

http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078

or indeed any other other 40 changes Google have announced?

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html

Unfortunately I have in a bad way. Almost exactly a year after it first happened with Panda!

I'm Angry!

[BCA]

I think I have too, can you explain what you are experiencing specifically?

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Well mainly, a site that was ranking top 4 for it's target keyword has dropped to page 2.

It's also lost site wide ranking for numerous other keywords.

As it's site wide, it seems pretty clear to me that the Panda has struck again.... Blasted Panda!

Similar story for you?

[BCA]

In part yes....early February my site was hit with a penalty for "unnatural" links. Come to find out about 3 years ago prior to my involvement with the sites - there were some silly linking methods done with hidden links. I got them all cleaned up but the site is suffering from a ranking perspective which leads me to believe that there is something bigger going on.

I dropped from #2 to page 2 for a top keyword - and then back several pages for many others. Its just a bit frustrating especially after you see traffic going up and positive advancement and now back to square 1.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Yes, tell me about it. This site is back to the same place it was about a year ago.

It's even more frustrating to see competitors using completely black hat and spammy tactics and still sitting in positions #1 #2 and #3

[darkgreenguy]

I'm experiencing similar ranking drops.

• Top-5 rankings for many competitive KW phrases have dropped to page 2.
• Top-10 rankings for many competitive KW phrases have dropped at least 10 spots.
• Top-20 rankings for many competitive phrases have dropped back several pages.

I'm almost 100% sure that this is not a linking penalty.  I think it's a Panda low-quality content penalty.   My site has approx 200 pages.  I'm going to try to clean up (remove) all pages on my site that could even conceivably be considered "low-quality", and then wait and see what happens... or maybe I should wait a month to see if Google completely reverses course again.  

[darkgreenguy]

When you say:

"It's also lost site wide ranking for numerous other keywords"

...are you talking about long-tail kws, or mostly highly competitive kws?  My long-tail keyword rankings haven't fallen much - it's the highly competitive, high-traffic kw rankings that have dropped.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

All of them pretty much. Competitive keywords have dropped and so have any long tails. Pretty bad state of affairs!

[PeterAlexLeigh]

I think I may do the same. Although the site doesn't have many thin pages, I'm gonna get rid of any that might seem unnecessary and see what happens from there.

I've really gone off Pandas