Have I been mauled by the Panda?

[Nick_Ker]

Here's a thought - you thought you had 500+ links, everyone else sees a much lower number when checking reliable sources. Maybe you lost some of those links are no longer there. MajesticSEO says 82 http://bit.ly/phYeGp which is almost the same as Yahoo Site Explorer, and OSE said even fewer. You can insist that you have 500 all you want, but if YSE and Majestic aren't seeing your links, you can safely bet that Google isn't seeing them either. If Bing thinks you have more, that would explain why you are doing well in Bing searches. Once Bing gets an accurate count, that may change.

Also, you pointed out that many of your links are from the same IP. Those probably don't count for much. The links that ARE showing are not very good  quality or relevant - school uniforms?

Google told you no MANUAL action was taken. That doesn't mean your site has escaped the normal automatic quality and authority checks. Since your links are mostly worthless, that would explain why you dont rank for anything. No manual penalty - but the algorithm has no reason to believe your site is better than the hundreds of other sites you are competing with. Again, compare your link profile to your competition.

I know you want to believe that there is some external issue or a magic bullet, but your answers are all right in front of you, some are even in your own posts here (your links are from same IP, forum spam, etc).

The short answer is still the same: you need links. Good ones.

Another thing you might try is to make 100% certain that your content is unique.

[AlanMosley]

look at image on last thread, i have 500+, i have 700+ now as i have been redirecting some. when i ranked better, i had less links.

but i thing your missing the point,

My site did rank much better, not having  good links can explain bad rankings, but not a drop in rankings.

if you look at this search, you will see thatsitsolutions.net.au on first page or top of second, i made that site about a week ago, it has no links, and almost no content, yet my real site is almost last in the whole index.

http://tinyurl.com/3rgpofp

I used to come up first. you cant explain that with bad links, i mean they are better now then they were then.

Content is all orginal on root domain

[Nick_Ker]

Your new site is irrelevant to the problems you are having. If your main site has dropped due to poor quality signals (garbage links, etc) then of course just about any other site with a similar domain will do better. This is especially true if Google's algorithm has flagged your site as crap. Note that I am talking about the machine algorithm NOT any manual penalty.

Here's what you are missing: You don't have 700 or even 500 GOOD links. You have about 82 inbound links according to the most reliable sources and the links are mostly crap.  Why do you keep insisting that Yahoo, OSE and Majestic are all wrong?  If you want to check one more, try backlinkwatch.com. Even it says only 46 links to your site.

Getting more bad links will not make you rank any better than fewer bad links, whether it is 700, 500, or 3. You do understand the quality issue, right?

You even acknowledge that "not having good links can explain bad ranking". You don't have good links! It is as simple as that. Maybe you did have them at one time and they are gone, or maybe Google didn't notice how lame your links were until recently. Either way, you will need some legitimate, good quality links if you want to improve your rankings. You offer SEO services on your site so this should not be news to  you. If it is news to you, then it is probably a good thing nobody can find your site.

I am beginning to think you are joking or something. You refuse to accept facts, advice and reality. Good luck with that.

[AlanMosley]

At the time of first posting I had 500+ links I now have 700+, for the last few years up
until the problem I had 100+, see image

But your whole argument that all of a sudden I would drop from first for my business
name to almost last when my links have not changed is not realistic.

What facts? You haven’t presented any, you came in with a flawed argument, now trying to alter the facts to fit it.

I have heard you theory, and your thinly disguised abuse and dismissed them both

capture.png

[gfiorelli1]

To not rank for your own business name is a sign a automatic penalization. The fact links have not changed (as you say) suggests that the penalization is because of the links (as far as I have not seen any apparent misuse onpage). Panda in not working in this case.

[AlanMosley]

My expirences are that when you rank low in the hundreds, even one or two links from my own c-block will give a big boost, or cause when you enter the top 50 thinks get much harder. I have added a lot of links, a lot of them are just profile links from microsoft news groups, and it has not budged.
i have pointed my profile links at many pages before and made them move.

I have seen sites drop out before , but only temp, its been the best part of a month now.

The sub domain I metioned has been removed from google, I checked and it is constantly showing no pages in the index.

I did see a temp small jump in rankings, so i am still hopeing although i have read much the same as you suggested, that moving duplicate content to a subdomain is a fix and suggest its not the problem.

As for the links, I have anouther 2 site, that have much teh same links, one has the same subject matter, and they rank much better. i would think that they would suffer the same fate.

[AlanMosley]

Edited this post as itwas a false alarm, i thought my rankings had returend, they had not.
Althought they are not quite as bad as they were yesterday.

[loopyal]

Hello Alan.

No, I don't think so.

It is the wrong pattern for panda, from what I have seen.

At least you are showing up in the results.

I believe if it was panda, that you would have to go to the end of the displayed results and click on the link that displays all of the results, including the results that were previously hidden.

Then you would show up, in a relatively high position.

The change you describe doesn't fit that pattern.

What I described is the only pattern I think is panda.

[AlanMosley]

This is  a very old htead, i changed the domain from .net.au to .com.au and all rankings came back, i never did find out what was wrong, but something was wrong alright

[ArlenRitchie]

Alan, thanks for posting an update for everyone on this topic.

I have a few follow-up questions for you about your rankings recovery:

1. When you moved domains, did you do all the typically suggested best practices (e.g. 301 redirect each page to its equivalent on the new domain)?

2. Did you use the "Change of address" form in Google Webmaster Tools to tell them you moved your domain?

3. Did you do anything else that you think may have contributed to your rankings recovery or that you think helped in transitioning from your old domain to your new domain?

[AlanMosley]

I simply put a 301 for the domain name, and kept the site the same in place on the same server.

I did not use change of address.