Consumed => “Investigating Panda & Duplicate Content Issues” by Daniel Bianchini on SEOptimise.

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2012/08/investigating-panda-duplicate-content-issues.html

=> My value add (i.e., left a comment)…

Great post. Thanks for the thoroughness.

One question: How do you address the issue of context? That is, the focus of the majority of the analysis seems to be on the single relationship between the site / content and Google. However, Google’s perspective – much like the users who use it to search – is the opposite (i.e., the universe of indexed sites is broad and massive.)

[Note: I'm also a bit confused by what seems to be an over-reliance on using visits as the only measurable metric of importance. What about depth of visit post-Panda? Or returning visitors? Has Panda really been a total loss? But these are other questions for another day.]

My point is, as a match maker, it appears that Google’s opinion is that the content is not the best match for the searches being submitted. With all due respect to your client, that could certainly be true, yes? The “Not provided” doesn’t help to clarify that either, eh?

Agreed, your client’s original pages should do better than the sites that scrape it. However, to say that an article that takes a piece (as a reference) is better than the whole original, well that might not be the case. Perhaps the site doing the referencing is a better, more up to date resource. And if that’s what the search is for, well then that’s what Google is going to suggest. Times change, correct?

On the other hand, we would all agree that Google isn’t done with Panda or whatever it decides to call the next update. Your results certainly feel odd. But one site does not a trend make. It would be interesting and helpful to know if this is a rule or an exception. It would also help to know Panda changed the nature of the visits, not just the high-level visit counts.