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Hubpages, Squidoo, and Panda 2.2

I was just checking to see how Hubpages and Squidoo are doing, following the latest tweak Panda algorithm, 2.2, which I reported on back in June. Unfortunately, Hubpages’ traffic data has disappeared from Quantcast. [Update: It’s back. Phew.]

Panda 2.2 rolled out back on June 21st. By now we’ve had enough traffic data that we should begin to see a bit of a before-and-after change from that. To my surprise, Hubpages has stopped letting Quantcast report its numbers. I would’ve expected a slight uptick from Panda 2.2, which may be the first chance Hubpages would’ve had to get back in Google’s good graces after spam stomping. ( Panda is a special calculation done separately from ranking individual pages; it’s ranking a whole domain, and that number is then applied as a boost or penalty to pages posted on the domain, like an extra ranking factor. Since the Panda calculation is only performed again when someone at Google manually punches a button, a domain has to wait to be reassessed).

So anyway. Hubpages has followed Mahalo’s lead in hiding its data. A pity.

[UPDATE Aug 13: Hupbages is back on Quantcast! And I see a slight uptick after Panda 2.2. Pardon me for mentioning Mahalo and Hubpages in the same sentence; Hubpages tries to highlight quality content and stamp out spam, even if it sometimes has to mop up the mess created by unscrupulous people taking advantage of its free publishing platform. ]

So how’s Squidoo holding up? I wish I could get a detailed breakdown of past years versus this year, since there’s always a summertime drop. But here’s the 3 year overview:

And here’s the past 3 months.

Not much to tell us, but from what I can see, no drastic change from Panda 2.2.

Just as another interesting comparison, here’s Suite101.com vs. Squidoo for the past six months:

Owie. Again, so far so good for the Squid, but not so happy for Suite 101, an old web 1.0 site that’s got lots of good amidst the bad, from what I remember. (It probably depends on the neighborhood.)

Stay tuned for the next Panda Punch.

 

I realize some of the upheaval at Squidoo right now is, once again, Squidoo’s attempt to be prepared for the next round. I think the newest layer of spam filters need some fine-tuning, and I’m anxious about the process for dealing with false positives, but I understand the need for even more aggressive spam/scraper filters.

Hubpages vs. Squidoo Traffic: Holding Steady

With all the hullaballoo lately I haven’t had much time to follow my pet project, the impact of Google Panda on Hubpages and Squidoo (there’s another lens that needs rewriting before page breaks vanish, sigh).

I just wanted to post a quick follow-up. I was actually checking to see if Squidoo traffic is down across the board, because I and a number of members have seen a very slight drop. But traffic drops every summer. But here’s Hubpages traffic vs. Squidoo traffic, measured directly via Quantcast:

The Feb 24 and Apr 11 Panda Updates are visible on Hubpages’ line. They’ve implemented a lot of changes, but it may take a while for Google to recrawl and reassess. The problem is (I believe) that part of Panda is a special algorithm that evaluates the quality of a domain/site, and from that derives a handicap which it applies to pages on the site. When someone asked how long before traffic came back after one totally re-tooled a site, Matt Cutts said the Panda algorithms have to be re-run. If I’m interpreting that correctly, it means that the site penalties are being updated less frequently the daily crawl to find/index content.

So Hubpages members need to stick tight a little longer and wait for Google to reassess what Hubpages has done to correct its problems. I’m hoping for their sakes (and mine; I’m trying to get a few irons in the fire over there) that they will have good news soon. Meanwhile, Squidoo members need to stick tight and see whether Squidoo has second-guessed itself in a wise or foolish way by implementing vast numbers of changes after successfully passing through Panda I and II unscathed. Most of them aren’t content-related, but some are navigation-related; in particular we’ve lost a vast number of internal links with lensroll getting phased out. And I’m uneasy about the extra line of adsense above the fold. We’ll see.

A quick survey of Panda news reveals nothing much, but M. Martinez has detected hints that Panda might unroll in Latin America next. To recap, Panda was implemented on U.S. Google results on Feb 24, all English-based Google results on Apr 11, and a minor Google update whose impacts I haven’t been able to see in the sites I’ve studied. I shall be interested to see what happens when Panda is implemented for French, Russian, and especially German Google.