No doubt that the Panda algorithm updates are changing the balance of the web in big ways. We have had a few reports here of sites recovering 70% or so of their former traffic - but even those are rare.

The Panda story is not yet fully written, and no doubt that this "quality" algorithm addition will be continually tweaked for quite a while. Even before version 1.0, Google engineers did say this would be a year long focus.

My site's been replaced with scrapers and autoblogs. thanks G

Understand this is an opportunity website for me to earn some income.

MrSavage, how is this blog monetized? Could that have any relation to the penalty it is currently experiencing?

The Results on G have been so bad since about March that I don't personally use them anymore. I have been pretty happy using Bing. When bing has bad results for something I'll come back to G only to find worse results.

Even though my traffic has been up 20% since panda, it really killed the g search.

I hope to see bing improve on market share.

Ever since Google built Caffeine and took on the huge job of crawling nearly everything they could find, they have been mightily challenge to ride that bucking bronco. Bing is better on some searches, often because their not trying to handle so many URLs.

Thanks for the replies. I'm sincere in what I'm writing and saying. I will certainly update if I do see some sort of optimistic rise in traffic.

To answer regarding whether the monitization of the site and whether that is what the issue was. It's possible, and I've certainly cleaned up that part of the site over the past week or two. On a side note, if Google is going to act like, well you have too many ads or too many revenue generating opportunities, then that's an issue with competition in my mind. So in their own way, because you are selling as an Amazon affilate you're going to be penalized and have ranking reduced? I get how too much is a bad thing in some instances, but to me it's a "slippery slope".

I could list here the compliments I get for the site. They are all telling how great and useful the site is. Never a negative email. Understand also that I'm talking about averaging 1500+ unique visitors over the past portion of the year. So things appeared just fine to me. It was a solid website and performer. Then the product got popular and I dropped to 600 uniques a day. That's when Google likes to sink the little guy and rise up the "mega blogs" and "big boys" to dominate the rankings. Then when things simmer down the bottom feeders like me get a sniff again. So, back to the story. I was at 600 uniques for a couple months, but then for about 5 days, I was back in the thousands a day. Boy I was happy, life was good, I felt like things were back to solid footing. That is, until after those 5 days to where I'm at now which is at about 250 uniques a day, and most of those are BING. It's almost gut wrench to me to see something so solid go to complete crap and having simply no clue if I can or should attempt to get back to a part of my former glory. It's a helpless feeling quite honestly. Yes, free traffic, but again, it's what the market and ecosystem is or at least was. It's like somebody in the financial world just tweaking the system and seeing stocks plummet to the ground. At least in those situations you might have a clue what happened. With Panda and Google you can only guess and guess again and pray. You never know and you will never know how the system ticks. At least when you got a penalty before you could actually track it down and in most cases it was deserved. In my case, this is simply unprovoked attack. Now if I see another day of 2000 uniques, do I get excited or do I just turn off my computer and realize it's not solid and it's an anomaly.

Again, I will post back what happens with this. I will also submit to Google regarding this. My site was sloppy because I guess it could be. Now it is no longer sloppy and there is nothing left other than adding regular content. I just hope to hear success stories from people such as myself. I built my hopes on a false economy it really looks like. Wish I knew back then how it would have turned out which would save me a bit of blah feeling I'm having right now.

Edit: I also have this sinking feeling that the sites that I do have that are seeing traffic, are going to suffer a similar fate. Afterall, it's not like we all have time to add content every single day. It's those "big sites" with staff that can pump out multiple posts daily. Leaves us out in the dark doesn't it? We suck because we can't do fresh daily content? Let's see how that turns out with Panda in a while.

Lastly, I've had sites in the past which I had been removed from Google index and only relied on Bing traffic. I never thought I'd see those days again where I have to decide on keeping a site and whether Bing gave me enough traffic to make it worthwhile. In the past a good ranking image in Google gave me more traffic than a good ranking in Bing. Wow, I'm Bing reliant now?

MrSavage - I did not get hit by panda - I have nothing left to be hit practically.

I feel your pain.

Your best bet is to spam link as much as you can - as many domains as you can afford.

Putting all your eggs in 1 domain is a no no - google could shaft it and you - at any time.

In order to mass spam - purchase tools to automate it for you - and also - you can often purchase dirt cheap blasts from around the net.

Do this on domains which are there for a quick buck - hit them hard then when google bins them - you bin them - but keep on rolling out new domains.

There are some fantastic spin tools out there which can re-write articles for you and other forms of content.

I treat some of my domains like this - and I treat others with care.

Niether way is solid business really if youre a small guy (like me) and the goal is basically getting SE traffic and nothing else.

I try and take it with a pinch of salt these days - but I do get wound up massively from time to time......

MrFewkes I am lucky in the sense that I am not completely reliant on the site mentioned here. However, it was certainly a site which made my mind wander. It's like a apple tree. Some are better than others and if you have a great apple tree, it can provide enough apples and you don't really need another apple tree.

I wanted to also mention that what Tedster said about Panda being a year long project as a glimmer or hope. A work in progress. They have to do what they got to do and I hope that in a month or two I can share how this ended in a good way. My focus in on daily content as best I can.

I updated a site one time between each crawl for a couple of months. Every time I saw the gbot had been - I added another page.

This caused an increase in the frequency of bot visits - but it didnt help my ranks one bit.

Personally - if panda is a year long project - then I would expect things to get worse as the year progresses - not better. There is a lot more to panda than discussed here - and it is NOT in favour of site owners.

You got friends MrSavage. After the last Panda, Bing does at times pass Google. I, too have been hit every-Panda-time on that one site. I suspect that Google wants to kill the pandalized sites, unless one of them performs a miracle and Google can measure it. My site has gotten better in every aspect I can see on each panda but rankings keep going down.

There's no other explanation why they went live and give Panda so much power (60%-70%-80%-90% traffic drop) right away. Panda is experimental, yet the effect is real and can crush your site. They could have very easily given panda a + or - 20%-30% not crush sites. I wonder what makes them so sure they got it right at the first shot?

I'm 3.5 months past the time I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

...but rankings keep going down

That is a painful reality for some pandalized sites. I wonder what the difference is between sites that get repeatedly hammered like that and sites that show some upward movement after taking an initial hit.

I though I avoided Panda nicely with my most important site, it's been around a long time and is both unique and useful still. I'm not so sure I avoided Panda afterall since my traffic used to be in the mid to high thousands and is trolling around 2500-3500 lately and declines a little each week (from Google only).

I wonder if the visitors I'm losing are the most likely to buy a product... hmmmm.

I haven't seen a single downwards spike in traffic but the flow has continued to erode and it's not going to my immediate competitors, our rankings haven't changed in comparison.

That is a painful reality for some pandalized sites. I wonder what the difference is between sites that get repeatedly hammered like that and sites that show some upward movement after taking an initial hit.

Those reporting and holding a gain especially for the 2/24 hit have been very very limited. Reading Google forums you see some that thought they came out or got increased traffic (in the June mega-shuffle) got hit the week after. I think you remember the reports on Uk /US serps on June 6-7th, 16-17ths ans then 19th. Until we see stats, and it's true that many have no reason to share them, all is up in the air. I try to track a known group of pandalized sites and see a constant downward trend. Summer might be interfering too though.

One thing has become clear, content as we understand it, isn't the issue and will not help you, at least not right away. IMO, even if you put the greatest articles one can write, have Googlebot visit them and you will probably still be pandalized the next round.

This month, I have done a lot of opposite things from 'what we should do' and not care about Panda. I wi$h I had done it a year ago, because people got away with it.