Havent seen any change either way in any client SERVICE related websites I manage, local serps still dominated by 8-9 various directories and trade brokers (middle men).

Only change I have is a national site hit by pengu 1 has recovered to page 1 TOP, pre pen update. The only change I made on that site was to delete the disavow file because it hadent made any difference since the day the disavow tool was released, very strange! And was a last ditch attempt before I gave up on that site and got a new domain name.

I have seen drastic positive change for my site, compare to last month 250% rise in organic traffic.

This year I have lost almost 90% traffic compare to last year. I have also removed 95% backlinks in last 12 months. But now it seems like recovery.

Lets see how it works.

The last several Panda updates seem to be applied across all english language versions of Google. I've seen the same % patterns in this and the past 3-4 updates for google us, uk, canada, etc.

For an informational site where there is little change based on location (i.e. not predominantly information about local/state/country events) IP location doesn't seem to matter and the site wide effect Panda is applied/increased/reduced across all versions of Google.

Business as usual here (still).

U.S.-based information site with an international audience, at its current domain for nearly a dozen years and at a previous location for more than 16 years. Hit by Panda 1.0 in February, 2011 and currently down at least 60 percent from 2010 traffic levels despite content growth over the last 2-1/2 years.

One point that I find interesting. MikeNoLastName wrote:

Most of the changes WE have seen, are from 500-1000+ (i.e. nowhere) to the top 100. Which we all know are of minimal traffic use below pages 1-3. For example we have seen our top niche keywords which we have tracked for over 3 years, in the last 3 days, go from
A: 1000+ -> 39 b: 22 -> 5 c: 612-> 55 d:1000+ -> 36 e:722 -> 9 f:225-> 25 along with a bunch that went from 30ish to 5-ish in the last 3 days. In addition we have seen a few which jumped up to 20-30 on the first day, continue to climb into the top 10 over the next couple of days.

Our site was never hit that badly: For us, the ranking declines for important keywords or kephrases were fairly modest--e.g., from 1 to 6, 3 to 9, 5 to 11, and so on. Still, that was enough to have an enormous impact on Google referrals, since users tend to click on the top three results.

Since it's mostly been business as usual for our site in the last week (despite an enormous crawl on July 11), I'm wondering if we were ever "hit" by Panda at all.

What if our slips from 1 to 6, 3 to 9, 5 to 11, or whatever had nothing to do an algorithmic "penalty" for our site?

What if those ranking drops were simply caused by a boost for ranking factors that favored corporate content farms, UGC megasites, and exact-match domains?

In other words, maybe we didn't have extra weight added to our saddle by the handicapper: The big-name and EMD horses had their lead bars removed.

That might help to explain why rankings on sites like MikeNoLastName's have jumped dramatically (e.g., from 1,000+ to 39 in one case) but still haven't bumped their way into the top positions where ranking factors seem to benefit megasites and EMDs (at least for the queries that I use).

Something else:

I mentioned earlier that we had significant jumps for a couple of our major (and oldest) subtopics last Friday and Saturday, but those changes evaporated on Sunday and our daily stats have been almost exact replicas of our stats from mid- to late June since then. I wonder if Google might have been experimenting with the planned "authority" boost that Matt Cutts discussed in his Webmaster Video of May 13? I have quite a bit of of authority for those two topics (I've been writing professionally about one since 1996 and the other since 1981), so if Google were to use something like "AuthorRank" as a ranking factor, I'd expect those two subtopics to benefit.

@JesterMagic Same, wek on week around 2-3%, nearly 45% now since may 9th with the "phantom" update. Cannot put my finger on why. Metrics have stayed the same.

I uploaded a screenshot from my Google Webmaster Tools for you guys: [s16.postimg.org...]

The change apparently started on 12, but I started paying attention on 13.

As I said before I was hit on June 29 2012 (4 days after Panda), so I am not sure whether it was Panda or something else. Then I was hit by Phantom update now on May 9 2012.

Rankings look more like before first hit on 2012 but for some reasons these keywords don't bring as much traffic. So although ranking seem to be completely recovered the traffic is more like before May 9.

I also notice that I rank for some new terms.

The site is in English language, international, about 40 percent US traffic. I tend to rank better in the US (although I am not from the US).

There were tons of changes to the site but not with intention to fix anything and changes were made a while ago, so I don't think it played any role here.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:10 pm (utc) on Jul 18, 2013]

[edited by: goodroi at 7:38 pm (utc) on Jul 18, 2013]
[edit reason] Changed link straight to image so no inappropriate ads :) [/edit]

Google Confirms Panda Update Is Rolling Out: This One Is More “Finely Targeted”

In the last few days we’ve been pushing out a new Panda update that incorporates new signals so it can be more finely targeted.

[searchengineland.com...]

I uploaded a screenshot from my Google Webmaster Tools for you guys:
[postimg.org...]

The change apparently started on 12, but I started paying attention on 13.

I am seeing similar to ubound on my WMT.

Google Confirms Panda Update Is Rolling Out

Maybe that's why we haven't seen more reaction here and elsewhere? It's "rolling out," as opposed to "rolled out"?

If the normal rollout period is 10 days or so, what's been going on in the "past few days" (Google's phrase) may have been the leading edge of the approaching front.

dang, no changes on my end. i've had steadily declining traffic since dec 2012. I was sure it was Panda 21. Seems to be something else. Just weird how each month is lower and lower. Like clock work.

"Mod's note: Image link removed because postimg.org displays inappropriate ads. Here's my description of what the graph shows. It graphs both impressions and clicks...

- there's an upturn in both starting 7/11/13 (July 11)
- on 7/12/13, impressions are 1,300, clicks 70
- impressions appear to rise faster than clicks
- on 7/15/13, where impressions have risen to roughly 3,500, a slight downturn begins in both impressions and clicks"

Sorry! On my end it was money making ads, I used them for the first time, so apologies.

I would also add that although impressions raise faster than clicks, in Analytics Google traffic has tripled so far. Thanks!

I'm not sure this is related so much to changes in the algo or just my site, but: my site hit by Penguin 1 is now holding steady with higher levels of Google traffic than it's seen since that fateful day. Not wildly higher, but I have recovered a good bit on a few of the search terms I lost that day. Like, I used to be #1 and now I'm #3, or I used to be #3 and now I'm #5-6.

The keyphrases I have NOT recovered on all happen to be related to one of the niches in those top links Google has separated out (the links to images, maps, shopping, "more"...). I'm beginning to think that's part of the mystery, and I'll probably never recover significantly on those because Google's just handling them differently now somehow and there's no going back.

All in all, I'm pleased. It seems like every month, I get a little boost of a hundred or so more visitors from Google per day. Maybe they're letting me out of Penguin incrementally or testing something?

Traffic recovery for me seems to have leveled off, but I did do some looking at my WMT after ubound's post and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

Impressions are up by 400% for both sites. Site 1 went from 3,000 to 12,000 per day. Site 2 from 1,500 to 6,000 per day.

Site 1 visits are back to 2012 traffic. Site 2 visits are still about 25% less than 2012 traffic.

The only thing I did over the past year that I hadn't done before prior to losing my rankings is that I sent out two press releases for site 1 only.

I nofollowed all outbound links at beginning of this year thinking it was a penguin problem, but once penguin reran and it had no effect, I removed all the nofollows again to restore the sites as they were.

The only logical explanation for recovery for my sites is that there was something in the panda (?) algo that penalized/filtered my sites for popular keyword phrases. This update seems to have corrected that and removed the penalty/filter. Of course, I still have no idea what.

I'm so glad I didn't take more extraordinary measures as suggested by various seos on google groups.

I really wonder what's going on. I don't think I've seen so many reports of improvement since I started coming here regularly.

Dymero, maybe we can finally all agree that there have been some "false positives" in the past couple of years, and Google is finally correcting it?

(And that's not Google bashing. It would be silly to think Google has absolutely perfected pattern recognition/detection.)

maybe we can finally all agree that there have been some "false positives" in the past couple of years, and Google is finally correcting it?

I'll agree with the first part, but I wish they'd work harder on the second part. :-)

What happens is Google will run the update on a particular day, let’s say on the 4th of the month. Then Google will slowly push out that impact over 10 days or so throughout the month. Google will typically repeat this cycle over monthly. SMX Advanced [searchengineland.com...]
Just a reminder that updates are expected to be rolled out over a 10 day period. I think this is day 3 or 4 , so others who have seen no recovery may have movements over the next 6 days.

I see an increase in two sites, but in all sources... I find extremely strange. From Spain

Same for Spanish language sites ... much more pronounced.

What happens is Google will run the update on a particular day, let’s say on the 4th of the month. Then Google will slowly push out that impact over 10 days or so throughout the month.

OK, how about some help for a liberal-arts type: What's the difference between "running the update" and "pushing out the impact" of the update?

Does "running the update" mean propagating the new software to the data centers, and does "pushing out the impact" meaning using that new software to digest (and, presumably, score or otherwise manipulate) data from pages that Googlebot has crawled since the last update?

I don't know about the technical process, but as I understand it the effects will roll out through the 10 days or so. That may mean some locations / languages will complete earlier than others. I guess we'll have to wait and see over the next 6 or so days before making a judgement.

>The only logical explanation for recovery for my sites is that there was something in the panda (?) algo that penalized/filtered my sites for popular keyword phrases. This update seems to have corrected that and removed the penalty/filter. Of course, I still have no idea what. <

This is exactly how we feel. It was like for almost every even slightly competitive keyword combination (and our niche has a 10million plus results per search) we had lost ALL authority to rank. Stupid, unrelated terms we would rank ok for. Our site name we always ranked 1 for. And there was one 3-word phrase for our most popular inner page we continued to rank in the top 3 for, but that was IT! Now it is like they are allowing us to rank, nearly as well as two years ago, for our key niche term and combinations.

>maybe we can finally all agree that there have been some "false positives" in the past couple of years, and Google is finally correcting it? <

If you mean "false negatives", I agree completely. It was so frustrating, that somehow I kept feeling like G "just wasn't GETTING the concept of our site." As if they were floundering in trying to find one relatively narrow central theme to cover the entire multi-thousand-page site, and not quite getting it, even though the main keyword appeared at least once on every page. For a totally unrelated example, how does G realize a site is an Italian Food Magazine when there are separate articles ranging from pasta recipes, traveling around the US for the best Italian restaurants, specific grocery shopping and personal gardening? The equivalent in that scenario we would be ranking 1st page for useless (for us) unrelated terms like measuring cups, NY city and fertilizer, but never for "Italian food anything".
The only other thing I could think of was perhaps they thought we were keyword stuffing or intentionally over optimizing and thus locking us out of the main term.
If you look at my first posts on this thread, I thought it was something we did (we've been trying everything) but since lots of others are seeing the same, I may have to chock it up to G algo changes. Although as a couple of others mentioned about "authority" changes and authorship, it IS rather coincidental that we just in the last month (as I mentioned earlier) registered our two primary writers (hundreds of articles each) with G+ and they are now showing with photos. I wonder if anyone else affected by this happened to start with G+ lately and it was enough to put us over the gray edge?

My second conspiratorial theory was that since we just recently this month started adwords ads with the words we used to rank for, that maybe G realized these were the terms we SHOULD be associated with all along since we were willing to pay for them.

site: informational, USA,

For a totally unrelated example, how does G realize a site is an Italian Food Magazine when there are separate articles ranging from pasta recipes, traveling around the US for the best Italian restaurants, specific grocery shopping and personal gardening?

If every page is discussing something about Italian food, it ought to get the hint, even if the page doesn't specify a keyphrase with the words "Italian food" in it. A combination of the content about Italian dishes and Italian restaurants, and the like, and the links going to your site should provide those hints.

Were you using one keyword as your primary across the entire site? If so, it would probably result in an over-optimization penalty.

Dymero, maybe we can finally all agree that there have been some "false positives" in the past couple of years, and Google is finally correcting it?

(And that's not Google bashing. It would be silly to think Google has absolutely perfected pattern recognition/detection.)

I do feel vindicated. And that's all I'll say about that here.

This is exactly how we feel. It was like for almost every even slightly competitive keyword combination (and our niche has a 10million plus results per search) we had lost ALL authority to rank. Stupid, unrelated terms we would rank ok for. Our site name we always ranked 1 for. And there was one 3-word phrase for our most popular inner page we continued to rank in the top 3 for, but that was IT! Now it is like they are allowing us to rank, nearly as well as two years ago, for our key niche term and combinations.

If you mean "false negatives", I agree completely. It was so frustrating, that somehow I kept feeling like G "just wasn't GETTING the concept of our site." As if they were floundering in trying to find one relatively narrow central theme to cover the entire multi-thousand-page site, and not quite getting it, even though the main keyword appeared at least once on every page. For a totally unrelated example, how does G realize a site is an Italian Food Magazine when there are separate articles ranging from pasta recipes, traveling around the US for the best Italian restaurants, specific grocery shopping and personal gardening? The equivalent in that scenario we would be ranking 1st page for useless (for us) unrelated terms like measuring cups, NY city and fertilizer, but never for "Italian food anything".

I could have written this about my own sites.

Mike, I have a G+ page, but it's my least used form of social media. There's no way that helped me.

I've used adwords on and off for years for my most competitive terms. I don't think that helped either.

There really is NO explanation for me other than one day I ranked, then I didn't for about a year, then all of a sudden, I ranked again. All the while, I just kept doing what I do, creating new pages pretty much every day. Bottom line. It wasn't me. It was whatever Google did with its algo.

There really is NO explanation for me other than one day I ranked, then I didn't for about a year,

Around 5:08 of this video [youtube.com...] Matt Cutts said that the new Panda would look for "additional signals of quality" that would soften the effects of Panda.

Any ideas on what those additional signals might have been?

We got a lot of first page rankings back, where we where before panda. Unfortunately it does not direct transfer into more traffic, no , today traffic is off ( -50% again compared to yesterday ) . Maby because ist beginning of vacation in germany.

This new Panda looks ok, many spammers are still gone but some good sites are back. But this seems only for 1-3 word queries. The long tails are still not usefull and occupied by brands.

ecom, germany

See discussion here of the SearchEngineLand blog post from earlier today with the official Google announcement of the "softer", more "finely targeted" update...

A Good Panda... Google confirms a softer, better targeted update
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4594365.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Any ideas on what those additional signals might have been?

Nothing that I haven't said for a year in response to being called a spam link farm, my sites were ugly, I needed quality content, I have ads above the fold, etc.

The fact of the matter is that in my niche community, my sites are VERY popular. But not through signals the Google webspam team would be able to see, necessarily - newsletter subscribers, Facebook followers, Pinterest followers, etc.

Now, if Google started using Google Analytics or WMT data, it would see the traffic patterns resultant of those things. But Google has long maintained it doesn't. So I don't know what it would see differently from what it originally didn't like without utilizing some other resource. Organic backlink building before and after remains the same. Isn't that what everyone says Google uses? Backlinks?

I'm still seeing downright goofy results for some of the informational queries that I use regularly, with exact-match domains being enough to boost worthless pages to the top of the SERPs. (Maybe those EMD pages are escaping Panda because the sites have too few pages to activate "content farm" filters or to show up on the antispam team's radar?)

I'm seeing unusual shifts in rankings for many info/affiliate websites (some of them are 4-5 months old, while other ones are 1+ year old). Basically their main keywords are suddenly disappearing from Google entirely - they can't be found anywhere in the Top 500. Then, 30-60 minutes later, they are back where they were (top 3 of 1st page) for 5-10 minutes, and then disappear again. These are not "thin" sites by the way, rather very informative and well-structured.

This has been going on for 2 days now for at least 15 different websites that I'm monitoring, including one of my own sites. Anyone noticing similar behavior?

[edited by: hasek747 at 3:33 pm (utc) on Jul 19, 2013]

Since I posted my Google Webmaster Tools impressions/clicks chart yesterday, impressions rose even more. Traffic seems to be settled though, so it's only impressions. Another thing that happened today is that my new site (like two months old) received a huge boost today (huge for its size that is).

All in all, I am actually afraid of getting happy and excited, because I now know this can be taken away from me at any moment. One good thing that happened while I had very little Google traffic is that I stopped worrying about breaking their rules. I linked where I wanted to link. I made sponsored reviews. I commented on other sites with my URL without worrying about how Google will see it. I bought traffic. I republished quality non-original content. It was liberating. Now I am back to watching stats and worrying about guidelines.

I wish to know what triggered that filter in the first place.

Now I am back to watching stats and worrying about guidelines.

I am not. I will continue to do what I've been doing and not worry about Google anymore. I'm looking at my restored placements and extra traffic in Google search as a bonus.

I wish to know what triggered that filter in the first place.

Now that would be some nice information to have!