Google Penalty World

Robin Good: This is pretty interesting.

“Given the fact that Google updates impacted at maximum 12-13 percent of U.S. searches, how is it that 40 percent of SEOs and website owners are reporting an impact?”

How is the overall impact of a Google Panda or Penguin update/data refresh measured, beyond Google’s own numbers?

PM Digital’s Clay Cazier proposes a method of measurement using Google Organic Click Turbulence and invites SEOs to participate.

"The purpose of his research was to determine whether Panda and Penguin actually had the negative impact reported by SEOs. Early in 2012, digital marketers were surveyed to determine which of Google’s search changes had affected their business. Fifty-four percent voted for Panda. In May, 65 percent of SEOs reported less traffic after April’s Penguin update.

Do opinion-based surveys reveal the true state of search after an algorithm change, though?"

...

Here is the hot take:

"This fear and doubt Google has put into organic with these updates has certainly resulted in increases in paid activity.

There may be an echo-chamber effect, where activity in forums and on blogs results in decision-makers moving budget to paid”

This is what most Savvy SEO's and webmasters have been saying all along. It has nothing to do with fear and uncertainty. Google pushed out the quality sites specifically to get the site owners to pay for clicks.

If you can afford to pay an SEO top dollar and afford to pay for premium content, you can afford to pay Google for clicks. If Google takes your $100,000 investment and pushes it to page 3 of results you are left with only one thing to do, pay for clicks."

Tom Foremski was right: http://googlepanda.masternewmedia.org/p/844989047/panda-is-not-an-accident-google-business-strategy-is-to-go-against-the-small-independent-publishers-zdnet

Read the full article here: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2216573/Google-Panda-Penguin-A-New-Way-for-SEOs-to-Measure-True-Impact

(Thanks to Giuseppe Mauriello for suggesting this article)

"Penguin has now been reverse engineered. The results are shared including what is likely wrong and what you can do to fix it.

This is totally different than what most of the SEO world is telling you to do these days."

(Source: http://www.senuke.com/blog/?p=276)

Josh Bachynski reports in this video that the biggest surprise for most people will be the fact that Penguin has NOTHING to do with your backlinks, as it only targets on-page factors.

Key take-aways from the video:

1) You need to fix on-page issues as the top priority

2) Penguin-based negative SEO is not possible

3) No need to delete links - Google is already taking care of that by devaluing those

4) Add quality links to your key content in ways that make them look "natural" to Google (30% exact match query, 30% partial match, 30% url-based, 10% generic/other stuff)

5) Do not overoptimize - Google knows what your page is about - don't overdo it with keywords. Check with Google Webmaster Tools and see what Google thinks your page is about.

6) Try always to look and be as "natural" as you can be. 

Must see. 9/10

Watch the video for a complete explanation: http://vimeo.com/42939368 

(Thanks to Nicoleta Leon for pointing me to this) 

Robin Good: If you have been wondering whether you have been hit by one of Google recent algorithm updates (Google Panda and Google Penguin), this in-depth article by Glenn Gabe provides lots of valuable insight and specific advice on how to verify whether your site has been hit by an algo update and specifically by which one.

"Based on how Google rolled out Penguin and Panda recently, I’m finding it’s common for webmasters to be confused about which algorithm update hit their websites.

Penguin 1.0 and the latest Panda updates were so close that it’s easy to believe you were hit by one, when in fact, it could have been the other.

Use the techniques I listed in this post to help you determine which update really hit your site..."

Must-read. 9/10

Full article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/penguin-or-panda-how-to-determine-which-google-algorithm-update-impacted-your-website/43751/ 

A new infographic detailing the differences between the Google Panda and Penguin updates and how you can optimise your website to avoid being penalized by any of the two.