[Build Backlinks Online] Panda 4.0, Payday Loan 2.0 & eBay's Very Bad Day

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Panda 4.0, Payday Loan 2.0 &
eBay's Very Bad Day'

Posted by Dr-Pete
After a period of relative quiet, MozCast detected a major "temperature" spike
in Google's algorithm at some point on Monday, May 19th. This occurred after
some historic lows, including the 3rd coldest day on record (May 11th).

Tuesday afternoon, Google confirmed two updates, Panda 4.0 and Payday Loan 2.0.
Matt Cutts tweeted the Panda 4.0 announcement:

Less than an hour earlier, Search Engine Land confirmed the
Payday Loan 2.0 update. This ended a weekend of wild speculation (including
many predictions of a Penguin update), but didn't leave us with many details
about the timeframe or the impact.Which update was which?
For the moment, we're going to have to speculate a bit. If the latest iteration
of the Payday Loan update is like the first, it hit hard but fairly narrowly.
Google laser-targeted some very spammy verticals with Payday Loan 1.0 (back on
June 11, 2013), but the overall impact was moderate. That update was also very
query-specific. My gut reaction is that it was unlikely that the May 19th update
was Payday Loan 2.0 - that update was probably smaller and rolled out over the
weekend (possibly May 16th). There was heavy flux around a few potentially
spammy queries on May 16th, including "mortgage rate trends" and "cheap
apartments", but competitive queries tend to change frequently, so the evidence
is unclear.
Google's numbering scheme suggests that Panda 4.0 is a major update, which
probably means that it is both an algorithmic update and a data refresh. This
typically means substantial rankings flux, and I think that's much more likely
connected to what we're seeing on May 19th. While Matt's tweet implies a
roll-out on May 20th, most Panda updates over the past year have been multi-day
roll-outs. We should know more in the next few days.What happened to eBay?
Digging into the May 19thdata (and before Google confirmed anything), I noticed
that a few keywords seemed to show losses for eBay, and the main eBay sub-domain
fell completelyout of the "
Big 10" (our metric of the ten domains with the most "real estate" in the top
10). Sites shift, and nothing on the level of a keyword means much, so I took a
look at the historical eBay data. This is eBay's share of top 10 rankings for
the past week across the MozCast 10K (approximately 94,000 URLs, since not all
page-1 SERPs have ten results):

Over the course of about three days, eBay fell from #6 in our Big 10 to #25.
Change is the norm for Google's SERPs, but this particular change is clearly out
of place, historically speaking. eBay has been #6 in our Big 10 since March 1st,
and prior to that primarily competed with Twitter.com for either the #6 or #7
place. The drop to #25 is very large. Overall, eBay has gone from right at 1% of
the URLs in our data set down to 0.28%, dropping more than two-thirds of the
ranking real-estate they previously held.
It is entirely possible that this is temporary, and it's not my intention to
"out" eBay I have no idea if they've done anything that merits major ranking
changes. This could be a technical issue or a mistake on Google's part. It's
also worth noting that these results only track the main eBay sub-domain
(www.ebay.com), not other ranking sub-domains, including popular.ebay.com.What
exactly did eBay lose?
Looking just at the day-over-day change from May 19-20, I dug into the keywords
that eBay lost out on, hoping to find some clues about the broader Google
updates. The vast majority of losses were where eBay had one top 10 ranking and
thenfell out of the top 10. In three cases, eBay lost two top 10 rankings for a
single keyword phrase. Those phrases were:"fiber optic christmas tree" "tongue
rings" "vermont castings"
Here's what the top 10 looked like for that first phrase (sub-domain only) on
May
19th:www.kmart.com www.walmart.com www.americansale.com www.sears.com www.amazon.com www.christmascentral.com www.ebay.com www.ebay.com www.bronners.com www.ask.com
eBay held the #7 and #8 spots. Here's the top 10 for the next morning, May
20th:www.kmart.com www.walmart.com www.sears.com www.amazon.com www.americansale.com www.christmascentral.com www.bronners.com www.hayneedle.com www.dhgate.com www.alibaba.com
It's interesting to note that both eBay losses here were category pages, not
specific products. Here's one example (from
this eBay URL):

For the other two keywords where eBay lost two positions in the top 10, the
lost URLs were also category or sub-category pages (not individual auction
listings). The remaininglosses were either situations where eBay went from two
listings to one or one to zero.
Here are the top 25 keywords where eBay lost one top 10 ranking position,
ordered by their MozCast temperature:"beats by dr dre" (231) "honeywell
thermostat" (190) "hooked on phonics" (188) "fajate" (188) "batman costume"
(181) "lenovo tablet" (181) "pyramid collection" (170) "hampton bay"
(170) "jordan 11 concord" (168) "pontoon boats for sale" (168) "mockingjay pin"
(166) "kobe vii" (166) "food trucks for sale" (166) "galaxy s2" (166) "jordan
spizike" (163) "foamposite" (163) "george foreman grill" (161) "wholesale
jerseys" (161) "tend skin" (161) "fender stratocaster" (161) "rims for sale"
(161) "shed plans" (158) "hello kitty vans" (158) "cheap used cars" (158) "lilly
pulitzer bedding" (156)
It's very hard to interpret individual keyword changes, but, not surprisingly,
many of these phrasesseem to be products and product categories, and some are
fairly competitive. Most of these drops seem to be from lower positions in the
top 10 I was unable to find a case where eBay lost a #1 ranking day-over-day.
In one case, it appears that both "www.ebay.com" and "popular.ebay.com" lost
out. Here are the top 10 sub-domains for May 19th for the query "hooked on
phonics":www.hookedonphonics.com itunes.apple.com www.amazon.com en.wikipedia.org www.youtube.com popular.ebay.com popular.ebay.com www.ebay.com www.time4learning.com www.walmart.com
...and here's the same SERP the morning of May
20th:www.hookedonphonics.com learntoread.hookedonphonics.com itunes.apple.com en.wikipedia.org www.youtube.com popular.ebay.com www.amazon.com www.amazon.com thekrazycouponlady.com hip2save.com
One page on "popular.ebay.com" kept its spot (this category page), but two
narrower category pages lost out. In this particular example, Amazon picked up a
top 10 spot, although their highest position dropped. Both Amazon URLs were for
specific products, although it's important not togeneralize too much from one
example.
What does it mean for you?
I'm sorry to say that it's probably too soon to tell. We're hearing reports of
big losses and gains, which is the norm for any major update for every winner,
there's a loser. If Google is to be believed, we're looking at two sizable
updates in the span of a long weekend. It's possible we'll see even more changes
before the US holiday weekend (Memorial Day), so I'd strongly suggest keeping
your eyes open.Update (May 21st - 9:30AM)Good follow-up post from Rishi Lakhani
abouteBay's internal linking structure. Digging deeper, it looks like all of the
URLs of the form "ebay.com/bhp" have disappeared from the rankings, at least
within or data set. We've collected another day's worth of data since the post
was written, and the situation hasn't changed. This could be a manual action on
Google's part, but it's hard to tell.Google is now saying that Panda 4.0
impacted7.5% of English-language queries. Despite Matt's "...starting today"
statement on May 20th, I (and others) strongly believe the Panda 4.0 roll-out
may have begun over the weekend, and is connected to the May 19th temperature
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