Panda Hit sites continue to spiral downwards
When Panda was launched in Feb 24, 2011 and many websites including starredreviews, mahalo and others were hit, it looked like a one time activity and the web traffic will stabilize after the 40% or so decrease in traffic. However, many website owners feared that the worse was yet to come. The websites hit by Panda continued to move spirally downwards as the time moved on. Take a look at the web traffic from Mahalo.
As you can see the reduction in traffic is not a just one time act with stabilization in traffic. It continues down and down and there does not seem to and end.
The mechanism works as follows. A keyword that used to rank on position 3, before Panda hit, for example, now comes on position 9. Well not in all cases. In some cases it goes back to position 35 – loosing all the traffic. The webpages that looses a huge ranking loose them for once and all. Story finished. The bigger problem is not the webpages that looses from position 3 to position 35. Ironically, the bigger problem are the webpages that loose rank from 3 to 9. Why ? Read on.
Immediately after the Panda hit the traffic seem to stabilize. The webpages that now rank like – on page 35 are completely lost. But the webpages that are on position 9 or so, still get some traffic. As the time moves, there are more new webpages for the same search terms. Chances are there will be a webpage that will come on a site not Hit by Panda. As the new webpage comes it, it is likely to rank higher than the webpage that that was hit by Panda and used to rank at, say, position 9. Now as the new webpage on another websites comes it, and ranks at, say position 6, the panda hit site moves to position 10. Another new page on another website ( not hit by Panda) and the SERP for the Panda hit site moves to second page on the search result. And this is dangerous for the Panda hit site. It continues to spriral downwards, even when these websites work on improving the quality.
Working on the Panda hit site is like attempting to rescue a sinking boat. There is no easy solution.
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