Curious what risk we are for Panda 4.2 update

[abargmann]

We are curious to know what the MOZ community thinks about our level of unique content on the following profile and if the community thinks we are currently at risk / susceptible for a Panda 4.2 Penalty. We have profiles on over 4,000 colleges (https://www.noodle.com/colleges/coUD/williams-college) some are more populated with content than others. We've already taken action to noindex several hundred thousand profile URLs (https://www.noodle.com/tutoring/tc2d9be/eye-level-center-of-tribeca) which currently publish less original content.

Curious how other major vertical search websites approach this problem (a la Glassdoor, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc)

As always - the feedback from this community is priceless!!

[Todd_McDonald]

From my experience I could see this being a risk, but, it sounds like you are aware of the important factors to consider.

I'd want a good portion of unique content on any of those types of pages that is:

• Different from other places on the web
• Different form other pages on the site

I'd also focus on making sure the content is utilizing correct grammar, punctuation and reads well.

I'd think carefully about your plan for indexation and crawling based on how users actually search as well. URLs like this:

• https://www.noodle.com/colleges/williamstown-ma_location/comparative-literature_subjects

Don't seem like they'd be likely targets for searchers (I didn't check volume..just a guess that there isn't much volume there). Meaning, while this page is likely useful for someone once they hit the site, it seems like it's fairly long-tail and might pick up few searches. While that's not necessarily bad, it's easy to get a large chunk of dynamically generated pages out there that:

• Attract few (if any) organic searches
• Waste crawl budget
• Put you at risk for algo adjustments because they can start to have very similar content, show little user activity, etc.

While I haven't looked to see how some of the other big players in vertical search that you mentioned are handling this stuff, I do know that clients we've worked with in the past playing in these spaces have found benefit from carefully crafting architecture for users and bots to make sure the site aligns well with how people are actually searching and that that is the content available.

I would also wager a guess that Glassdoor and other big players are getting a lot of benefit because of their off-site signals (large link profiles, brand mentions, branded searches, good user signals, etc.). That would help them be seen as legitimate if there was question about their content.

Make sure you're providing good value for users that makes you the place to go, make sure you are building your brand signals, and make sure you have a strong plan that aligns your site with how users are actually searching.

Hope that helps!