Google Update or Just Me?

[Chris.C]

So I have just posted on my blog about some recent data I noticed on a few of my Australian based minisites in relation to ranking drops for the exact match phrase of the domain of those minisites:

http://www.internetmarketingstrateg...tralia-reduced-their-domain-exact-match-bonus

Has anyone else noticed any ranking drops (particularly for exact match terms) in the last couple of days?

Or would it have more to do with:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html

In which case I'm surprised given that the affects I have noticed seem to be centred on the exact match term of the sites more so than all the keywords. Could this be due to the exact terms often being more competitive?

 

[the_other_james]

We notice no significant change across the board on our top 10 sites. I believe that Google will keep feeding people information over the coming months and years as nobody wants to offend the almighty Google so they will keep scurrying to change and maneuver how Google wants them to. Yes the content and link farming sites needed to get hit. The stuff with the relation to the domain names, particularly .au domain names, and long tail etc is a massive smoke screen and distraction in my opinion by Google. They will keep chipping away and more than likely have a 10 year plan.

Google is competing in their own platform of AdWords and it's allowed.

Google is buying domain names. < Pay attention. It's called strategy people. They will focus on driving down value of websites and domain names as they see fit for their overall strategy of "making the internet a better place" and "do no evil". Hello? Why would they do this? To buy at a discounted price later. I've seen Google at work in a domain name acquisition. If you think they play fair- think again.

 

[Shane]

I noticed a few changes last week too, but in my case it was for the better. One of them was an exact match domain. These sites contain a lot more original content than the average domainers "minisite" though, so that could be the difference.

 

[James]

Full panda update was rolled out in Australian and UK SERPS a few days ago, minor updates have been happening for the past month and a bit.

If you have low quality sites with low quality content (or duplicate content) and low page number mini sites then yes you would have been hit.

I run a few article sites and I had to make some big changes recently to counter Panda updates. Serp traffic dropped to like 5% on one site so big changes needed to be made.

I was a SMX sydney drinks last night chatting to alot of SEOs from around AUS and many others have seen similar changes.

 

[the_other_james]

Nice sharing James- and you forgot to remind me- I forgot all about it :/

 

[Oz.]

Google's Battle Against Content Farms Goes Global for English Users - April 11

 

[payattention]

No changes here aside 1 keyword moving back to #4 after moving to #1 a few days prior but I think it's unrelated.

 

[Chris.C]

I run a few article sites and I had to make some big changes recently to counter Panda updates. Serp traffic dropped to like 5% on one site so big changes needed to be made.

What did you do to counter the update?

 

[GerBot]

I think it is important to remember that your site might drop as a result of being 'once removed' from the panda update.

let me explain.

Your site is of good quality content, not duplicate or auto generated.

However if the sites that link to you are auto generated and they're hit by the panda update the link juice they send you will be proportionally reduced.
Therefore your sites drops in the SERPs.

I see a lot of SEOs confusing a direct hit with an indirect hit.

 

[zhenjie]

Only one of my sites did get a SERP drop across all keywords. No surprise it was an autogenerated content site. Rest holding steady.