Do I have a Panda filter on a specific segment?

[Matt.Carwow]

Our site gets a decent level of search traffic and doesn't have any site-wide penalty issues, but one of our sections looks like it might be under some form of filter. Unfortunately for us, they're our buy pages!

Check out http://www.carwow.co.uk/deals/Volkswagen/Golf it's unique content and I've built white hat links into it, including about 5 from university websites (.ac.uk domains DA70+). If you search something like "volkswagen golf deals" the pages on page 1 have weak thin content and pretty much no links.

That content section wasn't always unique, in fact the vast majority of it may well be classed as dupe content as there's no Trim data and they look like this: http://www.carwow.co.uk/deals/Fiat/Punto

While we never had much volume, the traffic on all /deals/ pages appears to drop significantly around the time of the May Panda update (4.0).

We're planning on completely re-launching these pages with a new design, unique trim content and a paragraph (c.200 words) about the model.

Am I right in assuming that there's a Panda filter on the /deals/ segment so regardless of what I do to one deals page it won't rank well, and we have to re-do the whole section?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi James,

Am I right in assuming that there's a Panda filter on the /deals/ segment

Unfortunately there is no guaranteed way to say this is the case, but generally if you see a drop in traffic / positions that coincide with an algorithm refresh, then this can be telling.

Is it just traffic to those pages that has dropped, or positions in the SERPs?

-Andy

[Matt.Carwow]

Positions as well.

Some form of filter is the only explanation I can think of for why that VW Golf Deals page doesn't perform. It's better content and has decent links (OSE hasn't picked them up but they're there).

We get c.40k hits/month on our blog and c.25k hits/month on our car-reviews, entirely through organic, but literally zero on the deals pages, where if anything the competition is less and the quality is lower.

I wonder if placing a no-index tag on the deals pages that have thin content would resolve the issue, but we'll be re-launching the whole segment in the coming weeks.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

It is still possible it isn't a penalty from one of the major algorithms and you may be able to solve this by creating a strong internal linking strategy. It helps to formulate one if you use something like MindNode to create an overview of the site and then you can drill in on the pages in questions.

It is possible that a noindex would cure this, but it all depends because even though you add a noindex tag to a page, Google can still read the page and apply the penalty. All it means is that the page won't be indexed.

However, if you are relaunching everything very soon, you might be as well to sit tight and not do anything too rash for a short-term solution.

-Andy