These google changes have been going on for a couple of years and we’ve not been affected before – although we know lots of businesses that have. So it was a nasty shock when we looked at our figures last Monday morning and found that we had a fraction of the revenue we would normally expect. It was an even nastier shock the next day when we realised that this wasn’t a one off and we had been panda slapped. Panda is the name of the google algorithm change, so sites which are affected are deemed to have been panda slapped. Google dumped is another term, as google has dumped a site from the first page of the search results.
So, we now face a major uphill struggle to get back into google’s good books again. We have to tidy up our sites, make sure they perform well and that are up to date with current Internet good practices and then wait for another google algorithm change and hope our downgrade gets reversed.
It just goes to show that we shouldn’t have all our eggs in one Internet basket.