(18)
So we know that 65% of you were hit by Penguin - by you, I mean the readers here. 65% of the sites on the internet were not. The original Penguin update touched down on April 24th.
Since then we had two updates to the Penguin algorithm. I believe both were basic data refreshes. The first was on May 25th and the next one didn't happen until much later, on October 5th.
We have heard of some Penguin 1.1 recoveries and even a recovery on the last update. So I figured, I run a poll and find out how many of you recovered from a Penguin update.
Please have your SEO friends take the poll as well.
A WebmasterWorld thread also discusses this with some claiming recoveries after removing paid links and waiting for a data refresh, whereas others have not claimed any recovery.
Please take the poll above.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Jaan Kanellis
10/12/2012 02:48 pm
This seems like a such a small update with only .03% in queries affected. It would make sense to somehow notate larger versus smaller updates when naming them. Also it seems sometimes they refresh data versus a change in the actual algorithm. Hard keeping up on Google speak.
Neville Pettersson
10/12/2012 02:56 pm
It would be interesting to hear from the 2 people who recovered.
Cody Sharp
10/12/2012 03:01 pm
Our SEO keyword rank was destroyed by the last update (Oct. 9th). Not because of our site (which is B2B and has no ads) but because of the sites that linked to us. It sucks. These are old links from years ago but the sites apparently have too many ads above the fold. These links were not purchased or anything. Google just no longer likes the way their sites look. Their rankings likely got hurt badly by the last update making their link juice worthless to us which killed off our rankings. Ugh. Meanwhile we have been rising quite a bit in Bing. Maybe we will just start focusing more on Bing going forward.
John Brown
10/12/2012 05:24 pm
google trying to get rid of small business from their serp. Their war with exact anchors, content quality (priced by software(!) - it show how it values us), begin of war with onpage seo... Hard to see web future now.
Jenny
10/12/2012 05:55 pm
How can anyone be sure they recovered after the smokescreen that Google laid out for us this month so many updates. Its very hard to tell the way the SERPS have been dancing.
kim langholz
10/12/2012 09:09 pm
I were in the top 5 on seven of my keywords. Then penguin came, and i was thrown down the pages to number 200+. I then removed all my affiliate links, created more great content, did some linkbuilding, and after five weeks i was back in the top3. I then added a few affiliate links and has stayed in the top3 ever since.
pakblogger2012
10/13/2012 06:02 am
I did not know the late or delayed effect of Google penguin update.I was happy that Google penguin has not affected me.But to my bad luck,on 10th October morning ,something looked very worrying as at that day traffic dropped to almost nil for my blogger HVAC system. I dont know how to recover from it, Please guide me in details.
Sachin Bisaani
10/13/2012 06:07 am
Its not that easy to recover. We have removed our back links from low quality sites, submitted re-consideration request thrice. I think Google is busy in enhancing their adword revenue. Testing background colours, launching credit cards for adword users in USA now launched in UK.
Sachin Bisaani
10/13/2012 06:10 am
Adjust yourself, Its very difficult to recover, Start all again I mine start new blog forget old.
Deepak Rana
10/13/2012 09:26 am
Not Yet Recoverd
adeel zahoor
10/13/2012 06:56 pm
No response from Google..!!
Peter Watson
10/14/2012 01:10 am
For many, many webmasters out there, the issue isn't 'recovering' from Penguin, but a recovering from the manual penalty. There will be no positive or negative effect from Penguin until Google reverses the manual penalty either fully or partially for effected websites. I have been trying to get a response from Google for over 5 months as I believe my site is now in a condition that does not violate Google’s Quality guidelines, but not even 1 single reply from Google yet. I am at their mercy! Any suggestions Barry?
pakblogger2012
10/14/2012 01:20 pm
You mean ,I should get new blog ,all new contents and backlinking? HVAC system
Travel Center UK
10/15/2012 09:45 am
Its very hard, we have affected but difficult to figure out the reason. The worst part is the EMD update we did nothing wrong but buying exact match domain.
james
10/15/2012 03:55 pm
While this poll is interesting and all, we need to hear things from the 18 people that recovered. What steps were taken? Was it a gradual recovery or an overnight recovery? Did you get back the same rankings you had before, or did you simply replace the lost traffic with increased rankings you kept? Was there a mix? My site lost just about all of its long-tail rankings, but kept the "money" rankings, which don't seem to bring in the money as far as eCommerce goes. I personally would like to see a poll /questionnaire that directly asks people that lost their long-tail rankings.
Keith Wallace
10/16/2012 08:31 pm
As one of the folks who saw a full recovery, I figured I should speak up. One of my sites is a wine review site, and was hit by Penguin 1.1. Not sure why we got hit, and probably will never figure that out. I don't do much in SEO, since my niche isn't very competitive and most of our traffic comes directly. What I did to fix the problem is the following. I left the front page as it was but setup 301 redirects (noindex,follow) for every other existing page to a mirror of the site (different url, different host). I then started adding new pages to the original site. I also opted to go against some of the scrapers. I deleted our feedburner feed, as it was overrun by scrapers. I added copyright notices to the new feed. I filed DMCA complaints with Google. Most importantly, I think, I continued to write quality content. When the update came on October 5th, our traffic from Google started increasing on both sites, and now both sites are seeing more traffic than before getting hit with penguin 1.1.
Mash Bonigala
10/25/2012 07:04 pm
Hi Barry, After 8 months we recovered and manual penalty was removed earlier this month and we came back from page 28 to page 2. Then suddenly yesterday we went back to page 23!! Is that possible? Could you recover and go back for no reason? During these 3 weeks we have been posting quality content and nothing else. The only other thing we did was submit to disavow tool last week. Please advice. Mash
Bill
01/29/2013 05:49 pm
Things are getting worse I have met at least 20+ people who are leaving America because of this Mexico is a jumping off point at $3K a month to live well Alot of women Ive met online love Eastern Europe and say that Poland is female friendly and safe. I have 3 friends in Thailand for under $1500 a month and 1 guy who got hit said Goa India on the beach is cheap and is hoping things will change All these people use to make over $100K a year online Some were victims of Panda (Bloggers) and never recovered fully - interesting, the ones that did the best Google actually found loopholes to stop paying them. Thank god they had other options Peguin was the one that set the expat wheels ablaze. I know of more people that want to relocate but for family reasons will not. They now live like slaves in America as Google does not even recognize there companies anymore. If 30% of US wealth is Walmart heirs Image what Amazon and Google is becoming I would be interesting to find out if there a a place for all us internet entrepreneurs to actually make money if Google stays big business. It has been 9 months and alot of Americans I know are running out of money Will all of us 1 time successful companies end up living in Vietnam for $2000 a month my friend in Chai Mang Thailand said he has seem more internet people in the last month than his last 3 year living there. #1 reason - their income fell online after Panda/Peguin - they are all waiting out the storm. I think they will be waiting in vain Mexico has 2 million ex-patriots mostly due to the recession It will be interesting to see how many more Americans leave for cheaper and better living as Google keeps ignoring small businesses that built the web.