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Panda Vol. II: Ehow.com got hit this time

11 comments

Johannes Beus

When Google announced to apply the Panda update to all English speaking countries at the beginning of this week, they also mentioned to change some of the filters for the US, too. As these 2% of U.S. queries are affected have sizable impact on important domains, I’d like to throw updated visibility data into the discussion.

As with our other analysis, the following data is based on observing ranking information before and after the update. The keywords are chosen to reflect an intersection of the local search behavior and we’re quite confident to have a highly reliable data set. Let’s get right into our findings.

Ehow.com got hit this time. They were among the sites at which the farmer update was aiming but somehow survived the first round. Like in the UK, they lost massive visibility in the US since this week:

Overall the impact of this second Panda update in the US wasn’t as big as the first time but for affected domains the consequences could be harsh. Here is a list of further domains affected:

Losers

#	Domain	Change	SISTRIX before	SISTRIX after	# KWs (before)	# KWs (after)
1	ehow.com	-66%	411,56	138,70	489.294	228.592
2	greatschools.org	-56%	37,38	16,56	36.574	15.697
3	brighthub.com	-91%	17,45	1,49	59.574	16.004
4	markosweb.com	-85%	18,54	2,71	13.057	5.867
5	superpages.com	-68%	17,64	5,64	61.493	32.171
6	medterms.com	-53%	22,46	10,49	9.637	4.416
7	life123.com	-94%	11,70	0,72	60.281	20.764
8	tech-faq.com	-57%	17,19	7,33	10.290	4.666
9	spike.com	-64%	14,72	5,28	10.711	5.203
10	thefreecountry.com	-87%	10,05	1,30	5.099	1.153
11	managementhelp.org	-66%	13,25	4,54	2.661	959
12	videojug.com	-90%	9,50	0,91	19.767	6.582
13	10best.com	-87%	9,38	1,19	10.996	2.996
14	quintcareers.com	-70%	11,62	3,44	4.457	1.609
15	mortgageloan.com	-58%	13,51	5,73	4.320	1.624

As the now free results in the Google SERPs aren’t let white, there are also winners from the update. Here is a table with the biggest winners:

Winners

#	Domain	Change	SISTRIX before	SISTRIX after	# KWs (before)	# KWs (after)
1	wiktionary.org	28%	126,18	161,18	30.817	33.685
2	yelp.com	8%	133,36	143,62	170.209	174.139
3	dailymotion.com	31%	27,27	35,80	64.191	71.795
4	etsy.com	8%	94,85	102,29	79.669	81.986
5	sears.com	12%	60,80	68,00	46.791	49.899
6	huffingtonpost.com	8%	85,07	91,69	111.429	114.950
7	latimes.com	9%	45,24	49,38	99.068	101.657
8	boston.com	20%	20,30	24,44	38.359	39.569
9	mashable.com	15%	19,53	22,42	25.079	26.786
10	tomshardware.com	13%	21,44	24,29	56.282	59.782
11	pcmag.com	9%	29,50	32,29	28.723	28.928
12	cbsnews.com	8%	36,33	39,07	55.828	56.955
13	computing.net	29%	8,53	11,01	21.682	24.174
14	reuters.com	9%	28,22	30,64	56.925	58.852
15	ask.com	12%	19,38	21,78	89.568	92.988

Like last time, Google seems so have reached its goal: ranking quality content better than before. It’s interesting to see how similar businesses fare in the US and in the UK. Yelp.com is among the winners in the US while Qype, a European company doing a similar business here, is one of the biggest losers the the UK. If you’re interested in having a deeper look at the affected domains, request a demo account for the SISTRIX Toolbox and we will supply you with unparalled insights.

Update 04/18/2011:
Demand Media has published a statement where they point out that traffic to ehow.com hasn’t declined 66%. I’d like to emphasize that although our data usually correlates quite well with actual traffic numbers it is a view from the outside and Demand Medias’ own data is of course correct.

Johannes Beus - on Sat (04/16/2011) at 10:24 AM

Comments & Trackbacks

Ryan Clark

04/17/2011 at 08:37

Very interesting data this round and I've been seeing the US drops as well in the past week. Sites like Mahalo, Fixya and others like it are showing huge drops as well. This should be an interesting month! Thanks again for taking the time to get this data out.

Michael Maiello

04/17/2011 at 17:16

Yelp and Huffpo are "quality?"

Robert Urban

04/17/2011 at 18:31

I know it is still early, but this new algorithm seems to be really hurting companies who utilize the redirection plug-in on Wordpress. This plug-in is traditionally used for tracking. All these links are regular redirects and not 302 redirects, but Google does not consider them to be natural links. (on a lighter note, Google has said that Panda was named after an engineer who made a breakthrough in the algorithm development.

04/17/2011 at 19:37

I have to echo the comment above - Huffington Post is "quality"? It already turns up high in SERPS, even though a lot of its content is "aggregated" or plain-old SEO spam (like the article "What time does the Super Bowl start?"). How in the world do they deserve to get to receive even higher placement?

Ryan Clark

04/18/2011 at 01:28

@Michael Yelp is a pretty damn well put together site with a majority of a big use to companies and users.

@DB Huffington Post has a lot of great content and some stuff like you said...for the most part it's pretty high up there for producing tons of content. The user responses on the site as well is a good example of productive content.

Ryan Wilson

04/19/2011 at 03:32

I'm surprised free article hosting sites like ezine didn't make up more of the top 10. I guess panda doesn't focus as much on content spinners, which seems to make up a lot of what you find on those sites.

Susan B.

04/19/2011 at 04:01

@Michael - great question, totally agree!

@RyanClark - Yelp might have a "nice" design, but quality content?? Meh. Have you not been keeping up with the flack over positive user comments/reviews being removed (by insiders) when businesses weren't towing the Yelp is the next big thing (so get with it) party line?

Will Spencer

04/19/2011 at 08:06

Robert:

I cannot see any way that Google could be able to see a difference between 301 redirects created and managed with the Wordpress Redirection plugin and 301 redirects typed directly into .htaccess.

DB:

No kidding! If Google considers HuffPo "quality", it's time to find a new search engine!

Bob Roberto

04/20/2011 at 10:32

This is very alarming to all bloggers. Small blog sites may have no chance to the top if they have no good content. What shall the small blogs do?

On the other hand, small blogs with very good contents may now have a chance to be seen on the Google search results.

Jordan Kay

04/21/2011 at 08:23

Hmmm, well not much has changed for me, I still see them ranking on tons of health related queries. They shouuld be ranking more on topic sites rather than random spam sites with millions of articles. Simple.

Url Idea

04/28/2011 at 10:53

This should be an interesting month! Thanks again for taking the time to get this data out.