Ok, i had to admit that it really shocked me the first time when i checked 10 of my favorite informational sites, most of them got big hit and there is even none reports online about it. I can tell the reason, some of them even “Listed Company” like eBay and such kind of negative news may bring big drop in stock market.

Background:

• All those screenshots are the search traffic checked by Alexa.com (Free), which can reflect the traffic trend during latest 24 months.
• Google had a big update recently — Panda 4.0 last month around May 20, 2014

Let’s check some screenshots:

1. MacLife.com — Drop 46.9%

2. TechRadar.com — Drop 40.70%

3. LifeHacker.com — Drop 28.9%

4. Engaget.com — Drop 13.9%

5. Gizmodo.com — Drop 9%

I didn’t have a deep research now but i just listed some of them. All of them are my favorite informational sites about technology. I’m a website editor and also a SEOer for several years. Recently my boss want to position our articles as “Informational content about software”. In my opinion, based on the analysis of 2014 Google Panda 4.0 Case Study, it would be better and efficient to build content Based Topical Authority Site.

Then why Google want to punish those informational sites? You know they have thousands of hundreds of visits per day. And even the traffic rank checked by Alexa.com is still uprising.

Before we uncovered the reasons, we can check the main conclusions Razvan Gavrilas got from 2014 Google Panda 4.0 Case Study.

Conclusion I. “Content Based Topical Authority Sites” are given more SERP Visibility compared to sites that only cover the topic briefly. (Even if the site covering the topic briefly has a lot of generic authority). More articles written on the same topic increase the chances for the site to be treated as a “Topical Authority Content Site” on that specific topic.

Conclusion 2: Most Winner Sites Have Great Site Structure + High Quality Content

Conclusion 3: Sites with High User Interaction measured by shares and comments got a boost.

Conclusion 4: Two Donts:Thin Content and Automatically Generated Content

(I reorganize the original opinions and express it with my own words.)

After we know what Google Panda 4.0 likes or unlikes, it’s time to proofreading the status for the above sites, let’s take MacLife.com as example.

There are 10 pages length for each article in MacLife.com. (Is it too long?)

Problem one, too many ads without much user interaction (Go against conclusion 1)

Problem Two, simple structure with not-bad content (Go against conclusion 1, 2 and 3)

I can’t say there is none any high-quality articles, there are many high reputation writers to contribute in this site with the latest information about technology. However, you can’t ignore that MacLife also sell some advertorial posts if the quote qualified. The only way to gather different articles are only based on tags, which means you can’t find related articles in article page, unless it’s a tag page/category page. That’s far away from content based on topical authority sites. “Content Based Topical Authority Sites” are given more SERP Visibility compared to sites that only cover the topic briefly. (Even if the site covering the topic briefly has a lot of generic authority).

Screenshot1,

Screenshot 2,

Problem three, automatically generated content (Go against conclusion 4)

You probably can’t find this problem in Maclife, but you can find it in other sites like Buzzfeed. UGC can bring higher authority for site if the content is qualified and controllable. However, it’s easy to out of control if there are millions of users like buzzfeed. Everyone can submit articles/tips based on different topics and can be published immediately without review, which definitely can cut some legs and hands of your site under certain condition like Google Panda 4.0 Update.

Actually i didn’t have a detail/deep research, my boss even doubt that if there is something wrong with Alexa.com. Based on your opinion, do you think it’s a wise decision to position our content as tech informational site? Here is my company site, which is a software company.