Do Google Panda updates tend to help or hurt your SEO traffic?

[MichaelCorfman]

About a week ago another Google Panda update was rolled out. There is a thread about it in the GPWA forums: Panda Algo Rollout.

For some folks the updates have helped. For others they have hurt. And for some they have not made much of a difference. How about you?

And besides answering the poll, share whether Panda has influenced the way you work on your websites and whether there are any lessons you have learned in the process.

Michael

[edgarf76]

I do not see much of a difference on traffic. I have seen an incline in my SEO Moz DA though.

[xecutable]

Have not seen much difference either. Results r always dancing up and down, plus I've stopped monitoring as much as before.

[slotplayer]

I have seen a little up tick in rankings but the update before plummeted my slot site traffic, so its little consolation.

My h & g mail order site sat at or near the top for years for the best kw, now its around 18. Its listed #1 in bing for the same kw with site links but bing accounts for 10% of the traffic.

I can tell just by my searches that a lot of the old time gaming affiliates have lost rankings.

[-Shay-]

Personally, I cannot get enough of these updates.

My content is ALL unique and helpful, my site is well coded & loads quickly, and I do not seek out or build spammy links (nor do I own a blog network, web 2.0 network, or any other type of network).

I'm not tooting my own horn and I do feel for others, but really - doing things "the right way" and simply building a well thought out, useful, focused site for our target audience is the "trick".

These updates are always welcome, whether Panda or Penguin as both of them impact the sites trying to keep up by doing things via "other tricks".

[edgarf76]

The thing I do not understand is why Google even bothers with the gambling niche, they cannot charge us for ppc campaigns. They have driven their prices up on ppc for everything else. So what is the point? If they cannot profit off the niche then what is the point, The google play apps? But is that real money action?

[baldidiot]

The thing I do not understand is why Google even bothers with the gambling niche, they cannot charge us for ppc campaigns.

Sidenote: You can use PPC for gambling in territories where it's regulated (eg: the UK).

[slotplayer]

The thing I do not understand is why Google even bothers with the gambling niche, they cannot charge us for ppc campaigns. They have driven their prices up on ppc for everything else. So what is the point? If they cannot profit off the niche then what is the point, The google play apps? But is that real money action?

for my retail sites, the free google product search went to a commercial model, now its called google shopping and you need to run adwords or your products could be removed from google shopping. Adwords is pretty powerful these days but can be expensive.

Google also closed their affiliate network (GAN) this month.

Enjoy your rankings while they last.

[AceOdds]

I don't usually see much change in the search results that I monitor apart from the usual dancing. Occasionally I'll notice another site drop down in the results but it's difficult to tell whether this is panda related or something else.

[TravG]

The first helped dramatically and since then I have held my rankings with the other minor updates.

[lots0]

Both...

Over time I have seen penalties where pages have been dropped from the index and I've seen #1 rankings that brought in 325,000+ uniques a day on the same site.... Time changes everything.

How about you Corfman?
Whats your experience you run a perdy big network?

[xecutable]

Holy....... 325,000 seems like a whopping number.

[lots0]

I had a page in 2006 that ranked #1 for [play poker] during the WSOP.
The ranking only lasted a few months (and no I didn't use any blackhat ****). I just got pushed out by bigger or more aggressive sites.
But it was enough to buy me a new truck and still have a pile left over...

[xecutable]

I bet, that comes to like 10.5 mil a month....UVs. Quite impressive.

[lots0]

Hey I'm an impressive kind of guy...

just query my handle...
I've used the same one "lots0" for over 15+ years.

I started out as a professional SEO wayyyyyyy back in 1995/6.
We didn't even call it SEO back then, that came later.

I've had some really big clients (Fortune 500) and was very successful, then I decided to just do SEO/SEM for myself in the gambling niche....
and now I am going to be retiring...

[xecutable]

Yup a lot of stuff comes up, interviews etc .

[sweetbet]

I can understand why some sites have taken a nose dive, and why others are rising in the serps, but there are also rankings that don't make much sense.

[edgarf76]

I believe this is panda related, I have a question on putting keywords in the tags. Is there such a thing as putting too many of the keywords in the alt tag in the image. For instance lets say I am writing about playing slots online and best casino games online. If you put "playing slots online -best casino games online " Is that too aggressive? Can I be penalized for this?