Were you affected by the EMD algo update?

[Test-ok]

And I can't find any patterns at all. Many of the sites that claim to have been affected look like quality sites to me. And many of the sites that still rank well look absolutely horrible as far as quality goes.

Marie..did you happen to notice with the sites you gathered if the ones that were hit had a different name.

example:
Like bluewidgets.com and say the name of that company is Hartford Business Supplies, they sell blue widgets as opposed to redwidgets.com and the name of the company is also Red Widgets LTD and they sell red widgets
Thinking Blue widgets got hit and Red didn't.

[NathanielB]

Marie..did you happen to notice with the sites you gathered if the ones that were hit had a different name.

example:
Like bluewidgets.com and say the name of that company is Hartford Business Supplies, they sell blue widgets as opposed to redwidgets.com and the name of the company is also Red Widgets LTD and they sell red widgets
Thinking Blue widgets got hit and Red didn't.

We had an old mini site for cheap sledges which use to rank in the top 5 under out clients main domain and that's no longer in the top 100 so I believe that has been hit by this update but I'm not 100% sure because of the time of year as we have no hits for that search so I cant see when the site lost its ranking as it has only have the odd couple of visits for the past few months, which is the expected traffic due to no snow lol

I'm happy to share the url is anyone is interested, but please keep in mind this sites not been use for about a year and will not offer many stats due to only being active around xmas when we some times get snow lol

Apart from that, I can see that some of the spammy EM domains have finally been removed from the SERPs, which is something I and others have been saying should happen in the near future for some time, so I hope all those people that asked about what domain to buy didn't go down the keyword route and thought about branding their domains like suggested!?

If not, well welcome to the real world! Now you can see what real SEO's have to do to rank websites without that keyword domain boost!

[Belfast]

I see what you're saying...but wouldn't Panda have taken care of that?

I know Matt Cutts is saying this is nothing to do with Panda, but this is only an example:

Thinking something along the lines of "Panda affects 'thin content' - which is often, but not always a sign of a spam site. So applying Panda only to EMD's/EMD results could be an extra way to filter the good from the SPAM - again not a perfect way to work it but 'better'"

So therefore doing the same but applying it to:
'High KWD, titles and no privacy policy'
'a certain % of EM AT, high KWD & Titles'
etc. etc.

So, basically taking a few characteristics of spammy sites which are not necessarily bad... and applying the algorithm to EMD's only.

(?)

[emacavity]

Hi - my site shadowshopper.com.au has been hit for the keywords :mystery shopping, mystery shopper, secret shopping, secret shopper but not shadow shopper. I was ranking on the first page for all of them, now nowhere to be seen on the first 10.
If you could help that would be great.Thanks

I'd like to have a good look at domains that were affected by the EMD (exact match domain) algo update on September 28th. The tweet from Matt Cutts said that this change affects EMD's that are *low quality*...but there is no mention of how exactly they mark a domain as low quality.

If you think you've been affected by this update, I would greatly appreciate if you could share your domain with me. You can do it either in this forum thread or you can email information to me at marie (at) hiswebmarketing.com or tweet me - @marie_haynes.

Also, if you have an EMD that wasn't negatively affected, I'd love to hear of that too.

Once I've got enough I'll see if I can determine if there are any obvious factors that would flag an EMD as low quality.

Please include the following:
-Your url
-How you feel you were affected - i.e. went from position #1 for main keyword to page 4, or saw a 50% drop in traffic, etc.
-age of your website (just so that the honeymoon effect is not a factor)

Also, please let me know whether I can use your domain name in my report (will include link to site) or if you'd like to remain totally anonymous.

Thanks guys! And please spread the word. The more domains we have in this study the better.

[prasunsen]

I can't share URLs but I have a couple of sites hit exactly this Fri/Sat, and they are not EMD (and no, they are not low-quality). Here's an example using "green software app" search:

mywebdevcompany.com/green-sooftware-app.html

(once again this is an example, not real URL)

Such page went from position 2 to position 7 for the search (quite competitive kw)

I'm sure they are targeting also keywrods in the URL, not just in the domain name because I have other similar examples hit exactly on the same date. As you see from the example the KW is in no way part of the domain name.

Now a bunch of ugly cheap sites, some of them using my very own free script that used to rank #1 and then #2, are ranking on top of ours.

[jimmyn]

With the Panda update rolling out so recently, it might be difficult to tell for sure what is causing what. A lot of the EMDs which were hit are also likely to be hit by Panda, as an EMD is often seen as the easy route to rankings so people don't try as hard with the onsite stuff.

There was a boost in some EMD rankings after this Panda update. This latest tweak has definitely fixed that!

[jimmyn]

Hi - my site shadowshopper.com.au has been hit for the keywords :mystery shopping, mystery shopper, secret shopping, secret shopper but not shadow shopper. I was ranking on the first page for all of them, now nowhere to be seen on the first 10.
If you could help that would be great.Thanks

I doubt this is to do with the EMD update then, if you're still ranking for it.... It's likely to be Panda or another penalty.

[sujathasrajesh]

We are handling organic SEO for cosmeticsurgerychennai.net. The below keywords were ranking high on Friday/ 28th SEPT 2012 but dropped on Saturday.. Why would this be banned due to EMD?
Hymenoplasty in Chennai - At google.co.in 15
at google .com it is 21
Hymenoplasty Surgery Chennai - 8 - google.co.in
Hymenoplasty Clinic in Chennai -7 - google.co.in
--

This site has caused us a lot of issues and we would like a professional opinion as to why the site is dropping in all keywords. Can you help in offering us a quick feedback if I gave you all of the facts?

Many thanks in advance and truly appreciate anyone giving us a quality feedback.

SujathaRajesh

[joshz]

I've noticed one thing over this update. I believe the term 'low quality' describe by Cutts is more of a context of keywords/domain.

There are still playing EM KID that are page 1, but they've branded their site to be a company under that name, such as blue widgets. Being a fake brand and actual keyword - I think a lot of sites were unaffected by this. Including mine and my competition.

In reality, I suspect this is nothing to worry about or lose sleep over unless you own a site called "thisismykeyword" and all you have on that site is repeating text and references to said keyword.

Now, Google needs to go after full on KID's as those still are dominating post panda/penguin...

The only real example in this thread I saw was Darren's:

playscrabble.net dropped from #3 down 18 pages to #183.

Everything else doesn't seem to fit in with this update - unless I'm missing something here?

[NathanielB]

Everything else doesn't seem to fit in with this update - unless I'm missing something here?

I think if anyone has missed anything its google lol

Some sites I see no longer ranking for some keywords I follow have been removed rightfully, but some have not, so I guess google still has work to do on this update and so I would expect a couple of refreshes for this at some point.

Like Maria said

And I can't find any patterns at all. Many of the sites that claim to have been affected look like quality sites to me. And many of the sites that still rank well look absolutely horrible as far as quality goes.

So I wouldn't expect the results to stay the same for EMD just yet!

[Lb1878]

Something is still fishy here or I'm not really understanding this update. Much of the traffic coming to the site I was working with was referral traffic. The percentage was slightly higher then search traffic to the site. The Saturday after this change hit, all traffic dropped off. I would have expected only to see a decrease in search traffic despite this site not being an EMD. The traffic went from ~20 visits per day Friday to 2 visits per day Saturday.

Digging through the referral data, there was no single source that provided a wealth of traffic. It was sprinkled between a dozen+ sites. If this referral traffic dropped off so drastically, I would think it would have to do with these referral sites taking a hit somewhere. I have not dug deep enough to check the rankings of these sites but am I on the right course here in trying to figure out what went wrong with the traffic?

I'm thinking aloud and hoping things bounce back. Test-ok mentioned earlier in the thread that maybe linking sites were EMD's and lost their juice and after a quick analysis, it seems like this may have a little clout after looking into this more.

[JBacchi]

Test-ok mentioned earlier in the thread that maybe linking sites were EMD's and lost their juice and after a quick analysis, it seems like this may have a little clout after looking into this more.

If the linking/referral sites were affiliate sites that could explain the drop if they got hit.

[Test-ok]

I'm kinda leaning towards a little Penguin and Panda ran on emd sites...kinda what Belfast mentioned

So, basically taking a few characteristics of spammy sites which are not necessarily bad... and applying the algorithm to EMD's only.

And where are they getting these characteristics?? You know my answer that that one. lol

[drelly]

If you wanted to negate the EMD effect, wouldn't you just remove any bonuses for keywords in domain?

[Test-ok]

If you wanted to negate the EMD effect, wouldn't you just remove any bonuses for keywords in domain?

I'm assuming your talking Googles view point.
With that being said...that won't work..what would they do with pepsi.com or budwiser.com or disney-world.com which are exact matches, and there's millions of em. That's why I think it's more in line with a touch of panda and penguin served on EMD's, I first thought like Belfast, that it was just low quality EMD's but after non EMDs also got hit..there had to be some penguin in there as well.

Perhaps we should rename this EMD to what ever a penguin and panda would produce.