[Initial Effort]

Hey Guys,

I've noticed that this Sunday's update was particularly harsh on a lot of websites. Just by monitoring the initial rankings of websites in the SESlingshot program, I'm seeing some people took some pretty big falls. I'm seeing sites with no content above the fold getting hit. Like sites with a lot of images or sliders above the fold.

Jacob

[graham23s]

Hi Jacob,

I thought there was no more updates until after the new year, or was that after this update mind you lol

cheers

Graham

[Initial Effort]

Where did you read that about there being no more updates? I must have missed that??

[trakker]

Where did you read that about there being no more updates? I must have missed that??

Well, like most news, it gets skewed a bit upon repeating.

Google (matt cutts) tweeted that there would be NO MAJOR PANDA update before christmas.

Never said there would be no updates at all.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-holiday-break-14455.html

Edited by trakker, 20 December 2011 - 16:53.

[uberfly]

After sitting on this the last few days, I believe this update had more to do with the content on your website, than the backlinks.

We had about 10% of our websites hit in this update, and they were all using a wide variety of link building tactics. However, they all had ONE thing in common. Each one was in the aging process. What that means is that, before we attack a market, we launch a few websites with some blog posts and a few pages and start the link building process. We like to have about 15 pages of content on the website. As part of this process, we also setup Contact Us and About Us pages. However, we hadn't put anything on those pages because we hadn't finished building out the website.

Most of these sites had recently started to do well and some had reached the first page of Google for our main keywords. Google (or a manual reviewer) must have seen these blank About/Contact pages and given us the boot.

If you're website was recently hit, did you also have content issues like us?

Hey Guys,

I've noticed that this Sunday's update was particularly harsh on a lot of websites. Just by monitoring the initial rankings of websites in the SESlingshot program, I'm seeing some people took some pretty big falls. I'm seeing sites with no content above the fold getting hit. Like sites with a lot of images or sliders above the fold.

Jacob

[melontrades]

I notice that when I get a site on page one if I add fresh content the placement will usually stick or improve. And I try to update once week once it hits page 1 for a few weeks anyway.

[trishworks4u]

Hey Guys,

I've noticed that this Sunday's update was particularly harsh on a lot of websites. Just by monitoring the initial rankings of websites in the SESlingshot program, I'm seeing some people took some pretty big falls. I'm seeing sites with no content above the fold getting hit. Like sites with a lot of images or sliders above the fold.

Jacob

I wasn't "hit" with any algo update on any of my sites and do have "images above the fold" on many. They're affiliate review sites and I have banner ads in the sidebar. I also have 2 sites with sliders. No intentions of re-designing any of my sites as they all have Page 1 rankings and the competition isn't doing anything much different w/ their on-page.

I have tried SE Slingshot on one of these sites and, frankly, the kw that I used it on didn't budge at all. I know that all services don't work for all people and all sites, but the fact that it "didn't" work has nothing to do w/ the presence of a slider imo.

[Initial Effort]

Here's an example of a website with the slider that got hit by the update from @ash.



and then recovered after some link building.

[JVall]

If his site was hit specifically because of a slider, then I doubt additional link building would have recovered it. I seriously doubt they just updated their algo to target sites with sliders and images above the fold( I have many and wasn't impacted either).. That would be ludicrious. His site took a dip for other reasons than having a slider above the fold.

Edited by JVall, 21 December 2011 - 15:01.

[Initial Effort]

What I am seeing is an absolutely ridiculous update that seems to be onpage thing and the only way to compensate appears to be more backlinks. Most likely we'll see this tweak undone. I'm not saying it's just a slider, but heavy image use above the fold that you see with a lot of wordpress and business themes. I'm cross comparing against about 300 sites.

[asiammyself]

I thought there was something going on a site of mine ranking on page one got a little shake down 2-3 spots. Trying to figure out is going on and running some extra link building campaigns to see if I can bring it back up. The site does have an image above the fold but I don't know if I would pin it on that. I'll come back with an update if things go back to normal.

[quinnmodel]

Loos Like The Algo was JUST tweaked again ... This time Its a Good one at least on my side!

[bdude]

Not for my money sites. Not good, not good at all. Anyone else?

[SEOInquiry]

I've had some sites hit and others are increasing. One site took a tumble (big one) on the 8th, but recovered on the 13th (came back stronger). It bombed again on the 16th and is still gone. It does have an image slider above the fold.

One note of interest is both times it tanked in G it went up many places in Yahoo and Bing at the same time. When it came back on the 13th it fell considerably on Yahoo and Bing.