Shoing strong for last 2 years for search terms NOW GONE! What happened?

[MarieHaynes]

If unpublishing causes the pages to either be removed from your site or noindexed then yes, that's the same thing.

[Jeepster]

"Thin content" question:
I run a real estate website and carry about 4,500 property pages (each page consisting of between 5-13 photos and about 50-300 words of a property description) Might the pages of ~50 words run the risk of being deemed "thin content" even though they have photos on them?
I also have around 200-250 article pages that are far more text-heavy.
FWIW, I don't think I've been hit by Panda 4.0. (I've slid from about #8 to #12 over the past 2 weeks but I suspect that's more to do with sluggish content marketing/link-building).

[MarieHaynes]

It's hard to say what Google views as thin.  Here are some factors I would consider when making that decision:

-Is the content the same MLS description that is on multiple sites?  If so, then I'd noindex it.

-Do users engage with your content?  Short content can be useful.  If Google sees that people are actually engaging with your site then they will have no problem with thin content.

It sounds to me like these pages are probably ok.  But I can't say for certain.

[Jeepster]

Thanks for the response, Marie

I asked the question as I was wondering whether I'd need to add "boilerplate" text to each description to fill it out. I'd rather not as a) it's not very scaleable and b) I'm not sure it would add value to our users per se, as in the main people want to see pictures. Here's an example of one of the shorter descriptions we run.

-Is the content the same MLS description that is on multiple sites?  If so, then I'd noindex it Of the 4,500 pages, 95-98% are content that's unique to our site (the other ~2-5% are managed by individual realtors who I'm guessing probably copy and paste descriptions from their own sites. We're not in the US so aren't part of the MLS network).

-Do users engage with your content? Mos' def.

[MarieHaynes]

On a quick look my gut instinct is that this is ok.  However, on a site: search I'm seeing that you have over 19,000 pages indexed in Google.  That's a bit of a Panda flag for me as most likely there are not 19,000 unique pages that add value on your site.

[BBuck]

Well, I removed the suspect content, and after 2 weeks, nothing. Then I added Google Authorship to each page, and the NEXT DAY the site is back in the top positions for our target terms, and the leads are pouring in. Was it the Google Authorship? It certainly felt like it. But I thought that was not a ranking factor.

Anyway, thanks for all the support! BB