Massive Google Panda Changes
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On second look at some of my really short tail generic phrases, we have climbed to first and second from page 2. Awesome.
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Looks like EMD's are getting hit hard as well.
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Not much happening in my SERPs yet.
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My traffic from google dropped today by 50%. Mostly for terms containing "2012" and "compatibility".
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I'm of the opinion that Google are implementing a lot of "Absolutes" into their algorithms, which is stirring things up dramatically. I'm sure that there are huge placement errors being made in the process, but I guess their attitude is if more spam is being removed than good sites then what's the problem.
I think that now, just having a few "bad signals" could throw a site down the rankings. For instance, if your site has a few suspect links coupled with perhaps an over optimised home page for a particular keyword, then that could probably do it. This could explain why some apparently useless and unoptimised sites are getting into the top 10, after all if they're unoptimised they won't have any bad links or any over optimised/bad signals.
It's going to be a hectic and confusing time ahead for SEOs.
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No need to rub it in
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mmm this stuff doesn't bother me that much, I have never been hit by any Google updates, I stick to my guns and plough through it.
All my SEO revolves around quality, unique content and it works well. Lots of it onsite connected with social tools, lots of it through guest blogging (every blog I inspect to the best I can), also try to have best on the web for articles, tutorials etc also with social sharing tool.
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Yes that's definitely the way to go and if that's what you've always done, you'll probably be ok. I think problems are starting to crop up where tactics used in the past are catching up with people. That's what I'm witnessing.
It seems strange that Google are penalising sites for having shady links/tactics in the past whilst ignoring good recent content, credible links and white hat methods that should imo outweigh any older bad signals.
Wil Reynolds has put up a good post about his recent SERP experience http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/7-lessons-i-learned-while-being-banned-in-google-for-12-hours
Definitely worth a read, as is his first comment.
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@Prestige : thanks for sharing this.
Why is everyone criticizing the blogspot site that ranks No. 1? It is a partial match domain which does not employ any SEO "tricks". Therefore, not subject to the over optimization penalty. Nor is the site plagued by paid links, link exchanges, or comment spam. (Well, the comments probably started yesterday).  Plus, look at all the "buzz" this site is getting.  At G, any press is good press (no matter how adverse).
On the serious side, I wonder whether the site benefited from the new site boost in a topic area where I'd assume all of the competition got heavily penalized.
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Just a note that 4/25 4/24* was what has now been dubbed the "Penguin" update and what we were previously referring to as the "Over-Optimization Penalty":
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623
Panda 3.5 hit around 4/19 and looks to have been relatively minor.
*Wow, sorry - I meant 4/24. I have a tracking system that post-dates everything by one day, and I sometimes forget to subtract one
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What's an EMD if you don't mind me asking?
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EMD = Exact-Match Domain. There are some Penguin cases where if you had a domain like "makemoneyonline.com" AND you were aggressively targeting "make money online" in inbound anchor text, you could run into trouble.
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