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Panda Update: Ecommerce sites at risk & an Analytics report to show how it’s hitting your US traffic today

The Panda Farmer update has not hit the UK yet but when it does the effect it will have on everyday websites could be huge. Ecommerce sites are particularly at risk.

We’ve been analysing quite few sites by looking at their Google Organic non-brand traffic from the US via the Custom Report below (click here to use) and there are some very worrying signs.

The image below is via SEObooks Panda preparation post – we have seen much bigger drops using the method above for certain sites.

What we have been doing is taking all the search traffic from the before and after the update (which was on 24th Feb) and looking to see which keywords and pages have dropped the most. To do this you need to download the data for the 4 weeks before and then compare to the 4 weeks after using the magic of vlookup in Excel. This gives you a view on your biggest problem pages. Images via SEO agencies.

One interesting thing we found is that the update is definitely not sitewide – there are a number of sites we looked at where the update had only hit pages of a certain type. For example ecommerce sites where the category pages were fine but product pages were hit hard.

Since this algorithm is US only we can easily compare the results before and after – simply search for the keyword on google.com and then add the &gl=us paramter to the end – click here and then here to see an example for “how to paint a wine glass”. Note that to get a fair test you need to use queries where Google is unlikely to favour UK sites.

Problems for ecommerce sites

So the first line of this post mentioned ecommerce sites. This update is going to cause major issues for anybody that has a large site with product descriptions that are duplicated across lots of other sites. If you have a few of these it’s not an issue to rewrite them but a lot of big ecommerce sites have 10,000+ products and to rewrite those is going to be a major headache.

When the update hit the US bloggers and the press were mainly quite pleased about the update as nobody likes the idea of content farms ranking. When the update hits the UK, where there are very few content farms, a lot of legitimate ecommerce sites are going to suddenly find themselves labelled as a content farm with 50% of Google Organic traffic disappearing overnight.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 2:39pm ON Monday, 28 March 2011

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+

Comments

  • Pingback: Google’s Panda/Farmer Update – What Local Businesses Should Know | GannettLocal Blog

  • http://www.rfksolutions.co.uk Robert Kirk

    Hi Patrick

    Another interesting post. I will be glad to get this panda update finally rolled out, so all us webmasters can actually see who and what is going to be affected.

    I have an online store, with around 100+ products, all of which are near enough duplicate content, more so spec, there isnt much you can say about the products I sell “condoms” lol.

    I really cannot see how they can hammer ecommerce websites too heavily, surely this would affect thousands upon thousands of ecommerce websites inlcuding all the big ones like ebuyer, dabs etc for specs etc that have been duplicated?

  • http://www.blogstorm.co.uk Patrick Altoft

    Hi Robert. Google could hit all ecommerce sites forcing them to buy adwords. From the look of the US results the sites that are winning are small niche content sites which are either not able to monetise well enough to use adwords or are full of adsense, which Google takes a cut from of course.

  • http://www.zmags.com/blog Christina Pappas

    Interesting way of looking at this Patrick! We have been having quite the debate over this latest move from Google. We thought that the impact this would have on sites would make Google revert and recover on their decision, but to use this as a ploy to get adwords revenue? Hmmm, does Google think we are getting too good at SEO?

    We work with a lot of eCommerce sites and I recently addressed the Farmer (Panda) in my blog. Here is a link to the article: http://www.zmags.com/blog/google-farmer-panda

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  • http://www.rfksolutions.co.uk Robert Kirk

    Hi Patrick,

    Well I am hoping when it does eventually hit the UK this is not the case. I personally at moment can see more bad coming from the Panda update than good. It just seems like many people outwith the “low quality” content farms are also getting hit.

    The main reason I see with some ecommerce websites, there is some products that their is very little you can actually say about a product, and many of the spec etc will be duplicate content so how are they going to manage this? For instance a website selling tvs, the spec for this tv is going to be the same on majority of websites, surely this wont be looked upon as duplicate content?

  • buyerbeware

    Hello expert, does your analysis suggest how websites that republish product feeds might be affected by the new listings? I list products on Amazon and they reappear in lots of sites I’ve never heard of. I contacted one of them and asked for it not to include my product images, product info etc as I only wanted my products on Amazon and my own ecommerce site and did not want my info appearing on sites I did not know. There was no option to be excluded. Once you are using Amazon’s platform to sell you can’t then opt not to be in feeds of whatever they are called duplicating your info all over the place. Do not fully understand how all this ties together and where Google fits in.

  • http://www.wallpaperfx.com/ Mihai – Hd Wallpapers

    I think this would affect a lot of ecommerce websites, but in same time there are plenty of areas where the product description is the same and can not be changed because they are features from the manufacturer.What to do these e-commerce sites?

  • Pingback: 5 ways to avoid the Google Panda / Farmer update for duplicate content eCommercre sites

  • http://www.further.co.uk Further Chris

    Hi Patrick, great round up. The team and I have been thinking about this a lot in the last few days. I have written a follow-up post, referencing this one, on how to help avoid this from happening. Please add come commentary if you can think of any other tactics – http://www.further.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-avoid-the-Google-Panda-Farmer-update-for-duplicate-content-eCommercre-sites-321

  • http://www.dynamicweb-cms.com Nicolai Høeg Pedersen

    Hi Great finding and good post.

    When you mention DC is it within the site or when using product descriptions from your suppliers data warehouse – the same data that is used by others as well?

  • http://www.zmags.com/blog Christina Pappas

    Hi Nicolai,

    This is going to be a problem across the board. Suggestion from Google is to create more supporting content like user-generated reviews or product videos. This enables the site to use a like product description from the manufacturer but still differentiate the on-page content.

    Christina

  • http://www.upcomingentrepreneurs.com/ Terje Sannarnes

    I think that entrepreneurs who do their search engine marketing policy honestly have nothing to worry about Panda update. I mean entrepreneurs, who provide 100% original content at their websites. First of all, it will punish content farms, which republish articles from other sites.

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  • http://www.searchengineoptimisationworks.com Paul

    Biggest thing I find on Ecommerce sites are the lack of content.

    When you drill down to the product description, sometimes its only a line or a heading or the product name. no category, no description

  • http://www.animalinstinct.co.uk Alan

    I am sure one of my e-commerce sites has been hit by Farmer Panda :(

    This is a classic example of the Google’s “agenda” not really considering what users want. So many Ph.Ds, but lacking a bit of common sense.

    IMHO Bing seems to be doing a better job!

  • http://www.lockyerarchitects.com.au brandon

    Do you know when the Panda update will roll out outside of the US? Any indication when it’ll happen in Australia?

  • Pingback: Analysing the UK Panda / Farmer update

  • http://www.kim-jørgensen.dk Kim Jørgensen

    It should hit Denmark and the rest of the world very soon. I´ll crose my fingers, that it dosn´t hit my sites to hard :)

  • Pingback: Panda Farmer Update, Social Media + SEO & Infographics - Blog | OnTargetOnlineMarketing.com

  • lorren

    I wish there is a solution for this problem because it is not a big problem on the business that needs especial attention on how we can stop this.

  • http://www.blinkseo.co.uk Blink SEO Norwich

    We’re working on some UK ecommerce sites hit by Panda/Farmer at the moment. We’ve had some good results by rewriting syndicated content and cleaning up the server config, but no one single ‘eureka’ moment – just lots of small wins.

  • http://www.cheapestservers.net Jim @ Cheapest Servers

    Panda update looks like a real problem for ecommerce websites. I’ll keep an eye opened for updates and what we can do about it.

  • http://www.bmandcoweb.co.uk BM&Co Web

    It’s been a year since the Panda update has affected many companies. It isn’t a bad thing as it’s keeping content fresh and keeping us SEO Consultants on our feet.

    BM&Co Web

  • http://fu-you.net/ qijianchuan

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