LOL my already penalized sites even got more penalized. Meh, why are you snatching our bread and butter Google? We're far more informative than the paid sites that you rank and give attention to.
And lol, the niche site which ranked all of a sudden recently (although didn't earned me anything, poor niche choice, so not much sad) 4-5 days on page 1 #3 spot or so is now over 200+. Whatever the G team worked on, they worked hard on spotting the loophole I guess, consider lot of us are penalized.
Like Tim89 my sites are still rising, though it early days. Those who've seen drops - how was aggressive was your anchor text? It's known to be a major factor..
@namdas - Good point, all my sites that were hit had higher than recommend anchor text % (because they were pre-penguin sites) and they were sites that had been hit by previous penguin updates too.
So i managed to dilute the anchor text, get them back to page one and G battered them again. Thanks!!! haha
Sites with low anchor text % have not been hit, at least for me.
@gooner How low is low? I'm afraid I started to rank another niche site (new, week old) and if it'd be hit. My biggest fear is about that 29% anchor text which SER unknowingly created somehow.
@pratik - It seems all my sites that were hit were 20% and over. All old sites with thousands of links. I tried to dilute the anchor but it takes time when you have tens of thousands of links.
I have other niche sites,old and new, with low anchor, like less than 10% and they were all fine. Some of them even jumped up massively (probably because other sites in niche got hit).
@Tim89 - You could be right, here are the only factors that separate sites that were hit from those that weren't:
1) Age - All hit sites were older than those that weren't (2+ years). 2) Anchor text % - As mentioned before. 3) All previously hit by Penguin.
My impression so far is that 3) is they key factor in my case. It seems those sites are "marked", for other people it will be different causes of course.
1) Sites that were old(?) made since last panda update got hit. Brand new Sites (less than 2-3 weeks) Ranking just fine.
2) Last night I checked thousands of keywords manually so I could see for myself. Have you guys seen the results? lol I've seen keywords with all video's on the first page. Seen results where it's the images ranking above everyone. Seen results where all my T2 Links were on the first page. Give it a week before you start to see the real results settle down and you'll see actual results of penguin. It's very similar to the last one.
3) @ron called it that sites don't last more than a year now days sometimes even less than that.
Both of my sites which got penalized, I was tracking my competitors too. Both of them were ranking in first page, one even #1 in both niches. But today, they're doomed too! Above 150+. But one which had about 10% anchor text variation is still on page 1.
My site has been bitch slapped too however the site is barely 1 year old. It is most definitely anchor text variations. My sites have never been slapped by previous penguin updates. Also My tier links are ranking higher than my actual site.
My tier links all have very high anchor text variations 80-90% general/domain anchors. My conclusion is that the anchor text is the biggest deciding factor.
Comments
Are you gonna use the same content from your website and just transfer to a new domain or use new content?
https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/386231794883780609
So far it's only been specifically older sites with already high number of links.
Newer sites are as yet unchanged.
So i managed to dilute the anchor text, get them back to page one and G battered them again. Thanks!!! haha
Sites with low anchor text % have not been hit, at least for me.
I have other niche sites,old and new, with low anchor, like less than 10% and they were all fine. Some of them even jumped up massively (probably because other sites in niche got hit).
Both of these sites that raised in the SERPS had around 50% exact match anchors...
@rodol as mentioned above, rough stats for text ratios were around the 50 - 50 percent mark.
1) Age - All hit sites were older than those that weren't (2+ years).
2) Anchor text % - As mentioned before.
3) All previously hit by Penguin.
My impression so far is that 3) is they key factor in my case.
It seems those sites are "marked", for other people it will be different causes of course.
What do you think?
1) Sites that were old(?) made since last panda update got hit. Brand new Sites (less than 2-3 weeks) Ranking just fine.
2) Last night I checked thousands of keywords manually so I could see for myself. Have you guys seen the results? lol I've seen keywords with all video's on the first page. Seen results where it's the images ranking above everyone. Seen results where all my T2 Links were on the first page. Give it a week before you start to see the real results settle down and you'll see actual results of penguin. It's very similar to the last one.
3) @ron called it that sites don't last more than a year now days sometimes even less than that.
My site has been bitch slapped too however the site is barely 1 year old.
It is most definitely anchor text variations. My sites have never been slapped by previous penguin updates. Also My tier links are ranking higher than my actual site.
My tier links all have very high anchor text variations 80-90% general/domain anchors. My conclusion is that the anchor text is the biggest deciding factor.
Anyone trying to rank foreign keywords with English content?