Google Panda – Who Got Slapped?

If you haven’t heard, Google recently changed their algorithm to combat content farms. That means websites with a lot of duplicate content got pushed down in Google’s rankings. Google doesn’t like when a website is created and most of the content is copied from other websites. They want the website that published the original content to appear higher in the rankings.

Lets take a look at HowToGetRidOfStuff.com, which is 100% article based and has over 275 #1 rankings on Google and over 500 first page rankings on Google, primarily with searches starting with “how to get rid of” and “get rid of”. Sites like this have been popping up recently. The problem is most of these sites have copied content on them. HowToGetRidOfStuff.com has 100% unique content, so it actually had an increase in Google rankings after the Google algorithm change.

SISTRIX came up with the below list of the top 25 biggest losers from this Google algorithm change.

 

# Domain Change SISTRIX (before) SISTRIX (after) # KWs (before) # KWs (after)
1 wisegeek.com -77% 121,58 28,22 74.024 21.940
2 ezinearticles.com -90% 65,08 6,65 184.508 54.277
3 suite101.com -94% 54,04 3,28 178.373 36.904
4 hubpages.com -87% 55,16 7,40 152.998 50.178
5 buzzle.com -85% 43,25 6,55 86.472 24.423
6 associatedcontent.com -93% 38,29 2,57 216.429 53.512
7 freedownloadscenter.com -90% 30,26 3,01 42.486 7.992
8 essortment.com -91% 25,73 2,32 27.501 7.459
9 fixya.com -80% 28,78 5,83 62.034 36.167
10 americantowns.com -91% 24,88 2,18 26.000 9.799
11 lovetoknow.com -83% 25,75 4,28 49.544 17.833
12 articlesbase.com -94% 19,96 1,16 82.274 31.365
13 howtodothings.com -84% 21,20 3,39 33.222 7.601
14 mahalo.com -84% 20,49 3,23 33.875 9.740
15 business.com -93% 17,24 1,13 21.556 4.813
16 doityourself.com -77% 20,89 4,90 23.256 6.870
17 merchantcircle.com -85% 18,43 2,67 93.347 34.681
18 thefind.com -83% 18,95 3,27 74.506 45.495
19 findarticles.com -90% 16,98 1,74 64.810 20.189
20 faqs.org -91% 16,52 1,46 33.648 11.142
21 tradekey.com -89% 16,83 1,79 37.364 16.268
22 answerbag.com -91% 12,93 1,11 67.314 26.054
23 trails.com -87% 12,05 1,62 38.346 8.511
24 examiner.com -79% 10,54 2,19 70.781 31.272
25 allbusiness.com -88% 8,86 1,08 16.457 6.034

The table shows the domain, percentage loss, SISTRIX before and after the update as well as the number of keywords found from the one million dataset for this domain before and after the algorithm-change. It is sorted by the biggest absolut loss in SISTRIX VisibilityIndex. Comparing these results with the announcement from Google, they seem to have reached their goal: a whole lot of low-quality domains lost significant visibility in the US Google-SERPs.

Let’s see in detail what Google did to the affected domains. The first conclusion is quite straightforward: the number of keywords these domains are ranking for dropped dramatically. Looking at mahalo.com as an example, it went from 33,875 keywords before the update to just 9,740 keywords after the update went public – a decrease of more than 70%. These were keywords like “zealand air“ (3), “digg“ (8) or “tax check“ (4) where the domain fell out of the top 100 results. The second outcome deals with the remaining keywords. Here is a chart on which Google result page the keywords of mahalo.com were to be found before and after the algorithm-update:

It’s eye-catching that mahalo.com did not only lose more than 70% of their keywords – the remaining keywords are also ranking much worse than before. More than two third of all keywords for this domain could be found on result page 8, 9 and 10. That’s the reason the SISTRIX value fell even more than the raw count of found keywords.

There was a lot of worry on Wall Street when Demand Media went public. Most felt they relied on Google way too much and could very easily get hurt if Google made any significant changes in their algorithm. So what happen to ehow.com after this big change? Ehow.com actually gained SISTRIX value (from 270 to 310) and Keywords (from 317,320 to 324,021) during the algorithm-change. Looking at the chart below you will see the difference. Maybe its time to buy their stock.

Google Algorithm Content Farms

More Posts

CW Interview in Miami

Interview on the CW in Miami I was on the CW with one of my business partners, Omar Periu, discussing All In One Marketing.  Want

NBC Interview in Connecticut

Interview on NBC in Connecticut I was on NBC discussing my personal consulting services Want to be on TV? Reach out to me by clicking

ABC Interview in San Diego

Interview on ABC in San Diego I was on ABC discussing my personal brand.  Want to be on TV? Reach out to me by clicking

FOX Interview in Baltimore

Interview on FOX in Baltimore I was on FOX discussing All In One Marketing.  Want to be on TV? Reach out to me by clicking

CW Interview in Miami

Interview on CW in Miami I was on the CW discussing All In One Marketing.  Want to be on TV? Reach out to me by