Panda Update: Finding & removing low quality content using Analytics
Google has been explaining today that sites hit by the Panda update are likely to be hit on all pages on the site, even if some pages are good quality. They are also telling site owners that the way to get out of the update is to remove any low quality content.
To have a copywriter check through thousands or millions of pages is a time consuming task and even then it’s hard to know whether the changes you make are to the right pages.
The way we are recommending people check their pages is to use the bounce rate and time on site metrics from Google Analytics landing page report.
In Google Analytics go to Traffic Souces > Google Organic > and view by landing page. Then add “&limit=100000″ to the URL so you can download all the data.
Finally click the CSV download and you will get a spreadsheet showing all the metrics for your pages including bounce rate, time on site and traffic for each page.
Next you need to set your CMS to autmatically add the noindex tag or temporarily delete (and redirect to category level) the worst performing pages on your site, 10% at a time, until the traffic picks up or you realise that you have too much low quality content and have to think of another plan. Don’t delete pages that are still getting lots of search traffic, just get rid of pages with high bounce rate, low time on site and very little search traffic, or a big drop in search traffic recently.
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Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 31 comments below, or add your own!
Hey Patrick – feeling a bit like a rube – but I can’t get GA to take the “&limit=100000″ in the URL. It just ignores it.
I am using an advanced segment for US + Goog Organic and then running the Top Landing Pages report. Any ideas?
Ok I am a rube – was clicking on CSV for Excel instead of just CSV to export. Doh!
As penance, I’ll add another tip. Run this report comparing the week before Panda to the week after for U.S. traffic. While this won’t be a comprehensive look at all URLs affected – such as those that didn’t get traffic the week before – it could give you a snapshot of enough URLs that tanked to get an idea of what’s going on.
What do you think about adding the noindex tag for Googlebot only instead of all the robots? What you outlined was essentially what I was thinking of doing for an e-commerce site that lost rankings by adding the noindex directive for Googlebot to the product pages and then slowly remove them as content is re-written and improved upon.
Regarding noindex I don’t see a problem with just doing that for Google and no others.
hi, Patrick,
I actually think this is pretty dangerous & that if people don’t know exactly what they’re doing this is as likely to do harm as it is to help (ie. could literally make people lose money).
I hate to post something so negative, as I love what you do, but thought you might want to add a note about the risks & caveats here?
dan
Hi Dan, I did say that people should only delete the articles that get very low search traffic. If they get traffic from elsewhere then perhaps just noindex it for Google. That should be safe?
The only issue I see with this is if you get a ton of traffic from social. Social shares that get people to your site result in higher bounce rates off blog posts/pages. Maybe in combination with the other two.
Perhaps I missing the point on how this helps determine which posts to noindex.
Chel – the data being pulled from the Analytics Google Organic section will only show data from Google Organic so it won’t take into account high bounce rate social traffic.
Thanks Patrick.
Is this likely to affect new sites that are only just starting to gain trickles of organic traffic?
I have an active forum but the users aren’t exactly focused on producing high quality writing like the rest of the website. Does Google want these pages out of its index?
I think this a good post on the next steps for those that were hit by the update. This would probably a great strategy for large sites that consist of thousands or millions of pages as you state. For smaller sites with less pages and less traffic the decision to redirect or canonical can be based on page by page analysis.
Good info, I have Google Anayltics installed on my site, trying to track where people are visiting from http://www.datewithahammer.com, selling the movie soundtrack to raise funds for an indie film, it’s all over the planet including iTunes UK “Date With a Hammer”
Patrick. Any idea when it will go live in the UK (assuming it already hasnt!?)
Chris I have no idea.
Thanks Patrick an interesting shortcut to the problem.
Hum… maybe it’s a too simply way to handle this.
I’m not so sure about Panda is striking down sites with pages characterized by low traffic and high bounce rate: maybe bounce rate, traffic and time aren’t the correct metrics in this case.
Are you sure the best way is to handle it with noindex & redirect?
Great post Chris,
My concern is the fact high bounce rates are not always a bad thing. Take a directory site for example that provides the content the user needs on the landing page. That users get’s what they need and leaves. These sites are now being penalised (I am already noticing this on my own).
A way around this could be to force depth by revealing contact numbers and details at an extra level down but this negates user experience.
It’s a tricky one!
Cheers
Duncan
I have an active forum but the users aren’t exactly focused on producing high quality writing like the rest of the website. Does Google want these pages out of its index?
Read more about Panda Update: Finding & removing low quality content using Analytics by Blogstorm SEO Blog.
Patrick,
What steps do you recommend for removing a large number of pages, like an entire sub-section of a website? Here’s why I’m asking:
Two years ago, I started to build a directory of real estate agents on my website. The project became too large for me, so I abandoned it. Now I’ve got nearly 300 web pages with very little content. They are empty “shells” that I had originally planned to fill in with content.
I have no future plans for these pages, so I want to delete them. I’m certain it’s part of the reason my rankings dropped with Panda (the rest of my site is rich with original content).
What’s the best way to remove these pages, under these circumstances? Should I just delete them and let them eventually “fade” from Google’s index? Or is it better to redirect them my home page?
Thanks a lot for your help. And great article!
-Brandon
Brandon I don’t think Google would regard 300 pages as a lot. Just redirect to your homepage.
thanks for the tips
btw this panda update hit large websites as well
daniweb . com owner was crying a few days ago in google forum becuase the traffic on that site went from 90 million to 50 million
I think it’s important that people take this with a grain of salt. Remember that this is a sitewide penalty of sorts, so the content that was hurt the most could be content that was in the most competitive SERPS, not the content that was actually causing the problems. I would look instead to relevant factors like “Is this providing value” “Are there too many ads” etc etc. Deleting content that isn’t getting many search results could be deleting actually USEFUL content that is contributing to the quality of the site, while content that IS getting search results could be low quality.
Using BR as an indicator of poor quality, isn’t always a good idea.
On one of my websites, the landing pages give the user EXACTY what they’re looking for. They get what they need and leave, until next time. They’re such good quality, that the bounce rate is high.
There are a lot of big sites out there with neglected ‘low quality’ content. This used to be benign; but Panda may make this a negative for the whole site.
Question: Is there any indication that Google (or Bing, LOL) is using Google Analytics data to rank pages?
On what size sites would you recommend doing this analysis for? Only on sites over 500 pages? 2000 pages? Or would it even apply to a smaller site with 15 pages?
Any page that has taken a hit.
Isn’t it too risky? Maybe i have an article unique but users tend to just read through that article and without reading another article they leave from my web site. It creates bounce rate, but maybe my article time on site is 02:00 min..
Also maybe users don’t surf any other pages because of number of links on that page, i think this is too risky.
thanks for the tips
btw this panda update hit large websites as well
For me this is one of the great news.Because there are a lot of copied websites in this internet world without quality or with a low one.So..good for Panda!
Thanks, am now deleting adsense off poor quality sites and deleting pages that have had no traffic in a year.
Panda’s probably been one of the biggest updates for Google. They’ve also recently said that too many ads above the fold can hurt you.
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