miercuri, 23 aprilie 2014
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Twitter | More Ways to EngagePenguin Penalties: Do Webmasters Respond the Way They Should?
Penguin Penalties: Do Webmasters Respond the Way They Should? |
| Penguin Penalties: Do Webmasters Respond the Way They Should? Posted: 22 Apr 2014 05:14 PM PDT Posted by russvirante Penalization has become a regular part of the search engine optimization experience. Hell, it has changed the entire business model of Virante to building tools and services around penalty recovery and not just optimization. While penalties used to be a crude badge of honor worn by those leaning towards the black-hat side of the SEO arts, it is now a regular occurrence that seems to impact those with the best intentions. At Virante, we have learned a lot about penalties over the last few years—discerning between manual and algorithmic, Panda and Penguin, recovery methodologies and risk mitigation—but not much study has been done on the general response of websites to penalizations. We have focused more on what webmasters ought to do without studying what webmasters actually do in response to various penalties. How webmasters respond mattersAs much as we often feel a communion among other SEOs in our resistance to Google, the reality is that we are engaged in a competitive industry where we fight for customers in a very direct manner. This duality of competition—with Google and with each other—plays out in a very unique way when Google penalizes a competitor. We learn a great deal in the following months about the competition, such as the sophistication of their team (how quickly they respond, how many links they remove, how quickly they recover), their financial strength (do they increase ad spend, how much and on what terms), and whether they eventually recover. It is also important from a wider perspective of understanding Google's justifications for particular types of penalties that seem sweeping and inconsistent. Conspiracy theories abound regarding Penguin updates; I can't count how many times I have heard someone say that penalties are placed to encourage webmasters to switch to AdWords. So, I decided to investigate the behavior of webmasters post-Penguin from a macro perspective to determine what kinds of responses we are likely to see, and perhaps even answer some questions about Google's motivations in the process. The methodology
Do webmasters remove bad links?After a Penguin 2.0 update, it is imperative to identify and remove bad links or, at minimum, disavow them. While we can't measure disavow data, we can measure link acquisition data quite easily. So, do webmasters in general follow the expectations of link removal following a penalty? Aggressive link removal: It appears that aggressive link removal is a common response to Penguin, as expected. However, we have to be careful with the statistics to make sure we correctly examine the degree and frequency with which link removal is employed. The control group on average increased their root linking domains by 41 following Penguin 2.0, but that could best be explained by a few larger sites increasing their links. When looking at an average of link proportions, only about 22% of the control sites actually saw an increase in links in the three months post-Penguin. The sites that were penalized saw a drop of 578 root linking domains. However, once again, this statistic is impacted by the link graph size of the individual penalized sites. 15% of those penalized still saw an increase in links in the three months following Penguin. So, approximately 22% of domains not impacted by Penguin 2.0 had more root linking domains three months after the penalty, while only 15% of those penalized had more root linking domains post-Penguin. Notice how small the discrepancy is here. Webmasters responded differently only by 7% depending on whether or not they were penalized. While certainly those penalized removed more links, the practice of link building in general was very similarly affected. In the three months following Penguin, 78% of the control websites either dropped links or at least stopped link building and lost them through attribution. This is remarkable. There appears to be a deadening effect related to Penguin that impacts all sites—not just those that are penalized. While many of us expected Penguin to have a profound impact on link growth as webmasters respond to fears of future penalties, it is still amazing to see it borne out in the numbers. What I find more interesting is the variation in webmaster responses to Penguin 2.0. Some penalized webmasters actually doubled down on link building, likely attributing their rankings loss to having too few links, rather than being penalized. We can tease this type of behavior out of the numbers by looking at the variances in percentage link change over time. The variance among link fluctuations for sites that were not penalized was .08, but the variance among sites that were penalized was .38. This means that the behavior of websites after being penalized was far more erratic than those that were not. Some penalized sites made the poor decisions to greatly increase their links, although more sites made the decision to greatly decrease their links. If all webmasters responded uniformly to penalties, one would not expect to see such an increase in variance. As SEOs, we clearly have our work cut out for ourselves in teaching webmasters that the appropriate response to a penalty is very much NOT adding more and more links to your profile, because this behavior is actually more common than link removal post-penalty. It is worth pointing out that it is possible that the webmasters disavowed links rather than removing them. We do not have access to that data, so we cannot be certain regarding that procedure. It is possible that some webmasters chose to disavow while others removed, and that the net impact on link value was identical, thus making the variance calculation false. Do webmasters increase their ad spend?I'll admit, I had my fingers crossed on this one. Honestly, who doesn't want to show that Google is just penalizing webmasters because it helps their bottom line? Wouldn't it be great to catch the search quality team not being honest with us about their fiduciary independence? Well, unfortunately it just doesn't bear out. The evidence is fairly clear that there is no reason to believe that webmasters increase ad-spend following a Penguin 2.0 penalty. Let's look at the numbers. First, across our data set, no one who was an advertiser prior to Penguin 2.0 stopped advertising in AdWords in the three months after. Of the sites that were not advertisers prior to Penguin 2.0, 10% of those not penalized ended up becoming advertisers in AdWords, while only 4% of those penalized became advertisers. Sites that weren't penalized were far more likely to join the AdWords program than those that were. It wasn't only true that those unaffected by Penguin 2.0 were more likely to sign up for AdWords; they increased their average Ad-spend, too. There was a 78% greater increase in ad-spend by those unaffected by Penguin 2.0 than those who were. Moreover, bidding shifts for those not impacted by Penguin remained similar in two month intervals across multiple randomly selected three-month differences, meaning that there appeared to be no related impact whatsoever. We can safely conclude from this that there does not appear to be a direct, causal relationship between Penguin penalties and increased AdWords spending. Now, one could of course make the argument that better search results might increase ad revenue in the future as Google attracts more users to a better search engine, but accusations of a fiduciary motivation for releasing updates like Penguin 2.0 cannot be substantiated with this data. Do they recover?By the 5th month, approximately 24% of sites that were penalized were at or above their pre-Penguin 2.0 traffic. This is an exciting outcome because it does show recovery from Penguin is possible. Perhaps most important, sites that were penalized and removed links on average recovered 28% more traffic in the five months after Penguin than those that did not remove links. We have good evidence to suggest at least a correlation between post-penalty link removal and traffic recovery. Of course, we do have to take this with a grain of salt for a number of reasons:
These types of alternate explanations should always be entertained when using correlative statistics. What we do have good evidence of is that traffic recovery is possible for sites hit by Penguin, although it is by no means guaranteed or universal. Penguin 2.0 needn't be a death sentence. TakeawaysSo, in a few weeks, we are likely to see another Penguin update, assuming Google follows its late-spring release date. When Penguin hits, be ready—even if you aren't going to be penalized. Here are some things you should be doing...
Hopefully, this time around we will all be more prepared for the appropriate response to Google's next big update—whether we are hit or not. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
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marți, 22 aprilie 2014
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
- China Manufacturing Output and New Orders Contract Once Again
- Amazing Surge in Middle-Aged Folks Moving in With Parents
- ECB Threatens Negative Interest Rates; Bank of NY Mellon Threatens Charging for Euro Deposits
| China Manufacturing Output and New Orders Contract Once Again Posted: 22 Apr 2014 09:59 PM PDT Chinese manufacturing remains in contraction for 2014. Output and new orders were down for the 4th consecutive month, but at a slightly reduced pace according to the HSBC Flash China Manufacturing PMI.  Commenting on the Flash China Manufacturing PMI survey, Hongbin Qu, Chief Economist, China & Co - Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC said: "The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing PMI stabilised at 48.3 in April, up from 48.0 in March. Domestic demand showed mild improvement and deflationary pressures eased, but downside risks to growth are still evident as both new export orders and employment contracted. The State Council released new measures to support growth and employment after the release of Q1 GDP. Whilst initial impact will likely be limited, they signalled readiness to do more if necessary. We think more measures may be unveiled in the coming months and the PBoC will keep sufficient liquidity." There is a massive expectation that China will step on the gas at any time now to improve conditions. I rather doubt it, unless there is a far bigger, disorderly breakdown. China needs to rebalance, and will. Slower and slower GDP growth will generally be the norm, most likely for years to come, perhaps interrupted by an occassional unsustainable spurt here or there. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
| Amazing Surge in Middle-Aged Folks Moving in With Parents Posted: 22 Apr 2014 03:49 PM PDT Moving back home with parents is not just for millennials. A large number of those aged 50 to 64 are moving back home, for economic reasons, not for providing care to aged parents. The LA Times reports Moving in with Parents Becomes More Common for the Middle-Aged At a time when the still sluggish economy has sent a flood of jobless young adults back home, older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.The Fed thinks higher inflation is the answer. So does the ECB. One has to be lost in academic fantasyland to hold that view. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
| ECB Threatens Negative Interest Rates; Bank of NY Mellon Threatens Charging for Euro Deposits Posted: 22 Apr 2014 10:37 AM PDT ECB president Mario Draghi has been making lots of noise recently about cutting interest rates because the euro is too strong and banks aren't lending enough. Realistically, there's not much room to cut with rates already at a rock-bottom .25 percent. Some suggest negative interest rates are just the ticket to spur lending. Should that happen, the Bank of New York Mellon Eyes Charging Clients for Euro Deposits. Bank of New York Mellon said it was considering charging clients for depositing euros if the European Central Bank decides to cut key interest rates below zero.Reflections on Forcing Banks to Lend For starters, banks lend when they believe they have creditworthy customers and lending is worth the risk. An attempt to make banks lend to non-creditworthy customers is not only foolish but reckless. How many times do we have to march down that path to prove it? Banks Should be Banks Moreover, and as I have commented before, banks should be banks. I see nothing at all wrong with banks charging a slight fee for deposits. Banks ought not be lending demand deposit accounts in the first place. The practice is fraudulent. Thus, it is natural for banks to charge for safekeeping of such deposits. If the ECB forces banks into a corner where they have to start charging for deposits, arguably the system will be better off for it. However, I cannot endorse the blatant manipulation of interest rates that has led to the low rates we see now. Interest rate manipulation does harm holders of interest-bearing accounts such as CDs who receive paltry returns for their investments. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com |
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