Google has started to roll out its new algorithm aimed at penalizing overly SEO’ed sites and it’s hitting hard on as they say “the bad guys” but some “good guys” are suffering too.
Search results are quite weird at the time of writing this but I hope things will start to normalize soon.
Here’s what Google is saying:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
But What to Do If you’re Site Has Been Hit by This New Algorithm?
In the video below Rand from SEOMOZ gives you 6 things you can do to prevent the penalty or to recover form it if you’ve been affected by it.
The most important thing is that if you’ve been doing things the right way then DON’T PANIC, check your rankings daily for the next 3 or 4 days and if your site is still missing from page 1 then make sure you follow the steps shared in the video.
And although Rand is talking about doing these changes before the update hits, I believe that if you’ve been hit already making this changes is the first step towards recovering your rankings.
Were you affected by this new update? What do you think about this new algorithm change? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment below.
Thanks.
Comments 38
Thanks for keeping us up to date on the latest SEO news!
BTW, your new Keyword Digger is killer!
Author
Thank you Rudy
Hi Alex,
Funny – I just made a post on my blog on the exact same topic (although my post was more of a rant).
I agree, the search results are definitely very weird at the moment and I also think it is best to avoid panic, and wait a few days to see if it settles.
To me this update has taken the Google results backwards rather than forwards. I’m seeing more scraper sites, 404 errors and irrelevant results on the first page than ever before.
I think I’ll be doing my searches on Bing now 🙂
Cheers,
Suzanne
Author
You’re right Suzanne,
Search results are REALLY BAD right now and that’s why I’m sure things will start to correct themselves very soon.
Google does not want to loose users to Bing
My Favorite Site got penalized by G, it was in the top 3 G’s Serp with good offpage and Onpage SEO(realy good content and with 1600 words too), and now ranked at 701!
And guess who replaced my site?some pages with very low quality content(only about 300-400 words).
Madre mia!espero ke puedo hacer algo para mi pagina!
Author
Hi Bosco,
Give it a couple of days and I’m sure if you’re doing things the right way your site will reappear on page 1 if not make sure to review/check the parameters mentioned in the video and correct things if necessary.
Tu pagina web era en español o en ingles
yes, im changing my Keyword density right now, it was about 3% and now its about 1.1%. Im also changing my meta title n meta desc, so it wont repeating the KW twice and look more natural an lets see
Mi pagina es en ingles, tambien tengo las otras paginas en ingles y aun estan en no 1 Serp google(GRACIAS A DIOS). perdon por mi mal espanol, solo aprende espanol de mi esposa 🙂
Muchas gracias Alex
many of my friends get suffered by panda update. and of course that affected on traffic and conversion. maybe the video above can resolve their problems. i’ll tell my friends about this, maybe they need this thing to resolve their problems.
Thanks for your share Alex.
Author
Hi Edward,
Remember that the Panda Update was more about quality content and this update is targeting over optimization of sites.
Thanks for the video Alex.
Rand is very entertaining and informative. Gives me a lot to think about as I build out my niche Amazon sites.
SKD and SKCA are key to my process.
Jeff
This is great and I really appreciate that you have been keeping us up to date. Personally I think all these changes are good, but when they hurt those that have been doing the right thing and lost their rankings into the great black hole really tells us all just how much power and monopoly Google has regarding SEO.
Thanks Again
Shane
Hi Alex, and thanks for showing the very interesting video!
I had two sites ranked #2 and #3 in Google.se (Sweden) that both dropped to page 5 and 6 respectively.
The interesting thing is that the pages showing up there are CATEGORY pages from my WordPress sites (the same for both of them), not the home-pages.
They were build totally separately. On separate servers, with different themes and plugins and totally different links. The only thing they had in common was that they both were in the same Google Analytics account and with the same AdSense account.
I am totally at loss for what could be wrong. I had no spammy links, and a lot of interesting, unique and relevant content.
Now, the first pages n Google.se’s result for this kw are full of BS and even one of my syndicated Web 2.0 posts with a snippet with links to one of the dropped sites, ranks on the first page.
Hi, thanks for this post… some of my sites gone from first page, this video bring me some light.
Thanks for the update Alex.
Google pretty welll wiped me out yesterday with only 2 of my sites surviving unchanged. What did they put in my place where one of my sites was? A forum comment on page 1 , yep that was a big improvement.
Don’t know what to do to get them back and I’m getting to the point that I don’t know if I want to. I’m getting a little tired of pouring hours of my life into trying to build authority sites only to have them dope slapped into oblivion.
Thanks again Alex.
Author
Hi Tom
I know what you mean, it can sometimes be frustrating, but I know that the search results will normalize soon.
Just wait a couple of days and if your sites are still not in page do an assessment of your sites with the help of the video in this blog post.
Good and timely information. Thanks Alex. When will we all understand that Google is striving to present the the “best answers and most germane information” to each of our searches and not be hampered by electronically re-produced facsimiles of what we pretend rather than honestly intend to present. A regular reading of Google’s Mission Statement could alleviate much of the angst.
Hello Alex,
Thanks very much for the video, it has put to light a lot.
I love your SKD and SKCA, there are great products.
Kaiser
its good to know i am not only one here.i was going tp rent my site to a local doctor imagine a week later i go and see him saying btw you are in 50th position 🙂
We have the tendency to look at these updates only from the website-owner point of view.
But what about the regular Google user point of view? I will just say this – the last few days searching for stuff on Google, and of course finding what I needed, took me much more time then usual.
As a website owner – some of my websites dropped, some gain serious positions. But as a Google user I believe things are getting worst.
Philip Nikolayev from the SeoChat forum also wrote an interesting open letter to Google about their changes: http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/seo-anarchy-or-web-freedom-an-open-letter-to-google-458102.html
Author
Thanks for sharing the link
It certainly appears that Google’s new algorithms are now promoting negative SEO and zero content sites. But why would they penalize their best sites and give blackhatters new ammo to eliminate their competition? It seems that Google wakes up in a different world everyday. Maybe my thinking is too rational for a corporation of their size, but it would seem that with all the money that Google makes, they would be able to roll out a new change in such a way as to slowly delete ONLY the sites they want to punish and not the sites that actually create the “user experience” they are after. So now, according to what is happening with Google’s search, people like me that have quite a few unfinished sites should now be ranking quite well right now! OMG, I gotta go, I have some affiliate ads and CPA offers to put up! Thanks for the update! Talk to you later!!
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the update. It is just in time, as I am starting to SEO a new clients site.
Many thanks. 🙂
Olghi
Really good share and some really valuable information in there. In a nutshell, his saying “dont be evil”.
Thank you for this top information on overdone seo and yes I have been guilty of it too so now I have the opportunity to re think and go about making sure my sites are as user friendly as possible. Years of entrenched behavior is going to be hard for some people but it will be a case of do it or get sat on by a big fat panda who knows kung-foo.
Cheers
Jonathon
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the this information. I really needed it. I had two sites that was on page 1 and now have all but disappeared completely. I think one is 572 and the other 631 or something like that.
I will wait a day a two and see what happens.
Herschel Lawhorn
Wow Great video , and one of my concerns is going to be real , Ezine and the others could be penalized by google , ups
Super informative as always..I am keeping a log book of theses updates to be certain to use in upcoming blogs.
I really don’t know what to do now. Few of my webpages drop in ranking (due to New Major Algorithm Update) and one of my site got delisted and I know the reason for that. But the point is we have spend so much time and money to do what we thought what right and now Google came and penalize us. All our effort was gone.
I do not know how to resurrect my delisted site now.
Thanks for the thought.
Author
Hi Michael,
If you know why your site got de-indexed then change it and submit your site for reconsideration to Google via their Webmaster Tools.
i have senuke running all my backlink campaigns, what do you suggest?better to pause all my campaigns or just let it run?
Author
Hi Bosco,
I’ve never used SEnuke
Rankings of lot of our good sites had dropped.
Those were sites that have very good original content, lot of original Facebook likes by users but still rankings dropped!
Come on Google users like that content but your crappy robots do not?
I have already changed by default search engine in browser to BING.
If you will see Bing then you will find its current results are much better then this new Google.
My wife’s site got hit hard losing about 70% of traffic and sales overnight. It is extremely frustrating to have spent years cultivating a content rich niche site that really helps thousands of people to see it get whacked by Google for no apparent reason.
It is obvious to me that Google wants to promote sites that are filled with Google ads or that somehow benefit Google’s bottom line rather than real sites.
I am waiting for things to settle out and then I plan on doing away with Google Analytics and anything else that would give Google extra insight into the website.
Frustrating…
Author
Hi Graig,
Google has launched a form to submit to Google if you think your site should not have been hit by the Penguin update.
Here’s the link: https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEVxdmdRWFJRTjRoLWZVTHZkaTBQbkE6MQ&ndplr=1
Thanks Alex – I submitted two of my sites that got hit the hardest. Thanks for the link….we will see what happens.
Excellent post and the video was well done.
Here is where it does not make sense. If Google is now punishing websites it believes is buying forum, blog network, blog comment etc… back link.
This will open up a huge market for negative SEO services. There will be a bloodbath of websites being spam bombed by their competition. Why would Google intentionally destroy their search engine?
If Google is devaluing back links then one must work to create new ones from Google friendly sources. But is Google going a step further and penalizing websites it is going to get ugly!
Google is a Search Engine that earns revenue from PPC. People use Google to find info not paid ads. If the organic results suffer people will start looking for alternatives. Remember Google, PPC does not exist without organic!
Author
Hi Jeffrey,
No one knows for sure, but IT’S MY OPINION that negative SEO with backlinks can’t hurt your rankings.
If a website has dropped in the rankings do to the “Penguin Update”, it has more do to with the fact that the backlinks that were driving the ranking were de-indexed or are now being ignored by Google
So what I think is happening is that Google is not counting backlinks from places they consider to be sources of spam links and that’s why negative SEO with backlinks is not possible because it’s not that Google is penalizing you for having bad backlinks, it’s that now they are being ignored.
Thank you for very useful post Alex!