Does this look like a Penguin drop to you?

[srmaximo]

Hi Folks,

This is my first post here.  Psyched to be part of this great community.

I have a site that's seen a steady drop in Google organic traffic since September of last year.  Slow at first, then picking up speed in late January, then in a free-fall in May.  Things are finally flattening out, but I'm left with 30% of my former traffic.  See graph.

I've been thinking that this was caused by Penguin.  Back in 2006-2009, I used free directory submission services, and it looked like I was finally getting penalized for it.

However, from the research I've done so far, it looks like websites hit by Penguin see a decrease in traffic over a couple days, not six months.  Should I concern myself with disavowing those spammy directory links, or focus my energy elsewhere?

There are other plausible explanations for the decline.  I haven't posted much content on the site in recent years, and have let my blog go fallow.  Obviously, this needs to be fixed.  My question is, in addition to my content development and quality linkbuilding efforts, should I be worried about those spammy links?

For the record, this is a high-quality informational site with lots of high-quality links mixed in with the spammy ones.

Thanks for any insight you can offer.

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[Gavin.Atkinson]

Can't say I'm any kind of expert, but I have been dealing with Penguin penalties on a couple of sites and I can tell you that your traffic graph looks nothing like the Penguin penalties I've seen.

If you had been hit by Penguin back in late September you'd have lost 80% of your traffic over two or three days. Penguin penalties seem to apply very quickly.

This looks to me more like progressive slow discounting of your site in the search rankings (have you been tracking your keyword rankings?) which would be more likely to be cause by bad backlinks or association with spammy sites (by being in the same IP range). I think these are Panda rather than Penguin.

However, I have not seen the impact of the most recent Penguin "tweaks" that Google has been rolling out this year. The easiest way to check is to overlay the dates of the Penguin and Panda updates on your traffic graph. Any impacts will usually be seen within 48 hours of the update (when Google next indexes your site).

[srmaximo]

Interesting.  I haven't been tracking my keyword rankings systematically, but the ones I keep my eyes on have dropped since last year.

[MickEdwards]

Unless you can be sure that you have been actually hit by a penalty (manual or algorithmic) I would also take time to look at:

1. Google update collateral damage - your link profile could be full of devalued links which takes time to filter through.

2. on-page SEO is weak - page load speed, chained 301's, possibly indexed duplicate tag/query string pages etc etc (i've had over 50% improvement on organic traffic ensuring this area is spotless and as optimised as possible)

[Kingof5]

Hard to give an answer without seeing the traffic graph for the time periods you mentioned the drops. If the drop in May was around the 22nd to 25th, it likely was a Penguin update. We got hit by it at that time.

Other things could've been dragging the site down over the last year and then Penguin may have hit and caused the free-fall. Definitely get rid of the directory links and any other links you think Google might penalize you for in the future.

[srmaximo]

David, the steep decline in May was over the 22nd and 23rd, so it does look like Penguin 2.0 nailed me.  See screenshot of a more zoomed-in traffic graph.

It sounds like Penguin is at least partially the cause of my problems.  Time to start disavowing.

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[Gavin.Atkinson]

I still don't see it. Can you post a graph showing just the two weeks either side of 22/23 May? Penguin traffic drops are, in my experience, usually pretty steep. This still looks too gradual.

[Gavin.Atkinson]

This attachment shows what happened to one of my sites that was hit by a Penguin update. This is what I would expect to see (I've seen similar graphs from many others who were also hit).

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[srmaximo]

Sure thing.  Here it is.

I think the drop looks less dramatic in this shot--it's harder to see the change in trend--but over a three-day period from May 21-23 the traffic dropped by about 20%, discounting the gradual steady decrease in traffic happening at the same time.

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[srmaximo]

Ouch.  I'd say my drop looks consistent with that pattern, though much less dramatic.

[Gavin.Atkinson]

Still not convinced. Here's an example of a Penguin 2.0 traffic drop graph from 22 May. Much sharper drop away than yours.

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