If you haven’t been receiving any newsletter from us lately, not to worry at all because we have not given up on this blog yet. Although we rarely publish any new posts lately, it doesn’t mean that nothing has been going on. I guess we do owe you an explanation on what we have been doing and what we will continue doing in future.
First of all is the Google Panda. It is an automated algorithm that Google has put in place to detect low quality websites and stop ranking these websites as high as they used to be. When a website gets hit by Panda, normally at least 70% of traffic will be taken away. Unfortunately raymond.cc is one of the website that got hit by the Google Panda algorithm when it first rolled out in April 2011.
Back then I was busy taking care of my new born and didn’t really have the time nor energy to even look into it. As far as I know, Martin from Ghacks confirmed they were hit twice and recovered pretty quickly, while others such as AskVG, FreewareGenius, MyDigitalLife and many more that doesn’t seem to recover from Google Panda.
After spending a lot time on research and money on site audits & consultations from multiple professional sources, it is still unclear what is the main cause that raymond.cc got hit by Panda algorithm. We did nearly everything that was suggested to us but still no sign of recovery. Finally we generated a list of all the published articles and started reading back what I’ve posted. They obviously did not have any quality in them as it was either very short, copied or posting for the sake of publishing something new on the website without even testing.
For the past few months, me and HAL9000 has been working really hard in rewriting to improve the old articles and even permanently deleting those that aren’t useful/working today. If you think you can help in improving our articles by researching and rewriting, please contact me and we’ll discuss further. You can read the posts that we’ve recently updated from the top right sidebar where it says “Recently Updated” or you can simply go back to the first page to read all the updated posts.
We felt that there is no point in trying to post something new everyday until Google Panda has been lifted because no matter how good the quality of the new post is, it will never rank well. One good example was yesterday I discovered a post that was uniquely written and published 4 years ago but ranked lower than someone who copied the post entirely and only published it 4 months ago.
Other than just rewriting to improve the old articles, we have also rolled out two major updates this month which is the new design and X-Ray 2.0. This new design is responsive, meaning it will automatically scale to display nicely in desktop, tablets and mobile. Other than that, this theme was originally very heavy in graphics but we’ve managed to make it really fast! It starts to render in less than a second and completes loading in just 2 seconds.
Other than that, we’ve also implemented all the optimization rules to achieve an A score for both YSlow and Page Speed.
We received reports on the annoying social voting bar that used to float at the left side and we’ve improved this by floating on top of the posts. We didn’t want to waste your bandwidth by automatically loading the buttons so we lazy loaded it. Lazy loading means it will only start loading when you hover your mouse cursor over it.
We really hope that you will like this new design and speed compared to the previous one which did looked a bit outdated.
After a long delay, we’ve finally released X-Ray 2.0 that works with the current VirusTotal API 2.0 plus some other extra features such as proxy support, integration of automated captcha recognition services, right click Send To option and etc. You can download X-Ray 2.0 from this page.
sad to see site not having daily posts anymore, hope to see some in future.
Hi Ray, I’ve been subscribed to your newsletter and reading your blog for years now… I had no idea about the Google Panda issue but I hope you keep the blog alive
Hi Ray! Like the new look of the site. Don’t give up. I’m just one of your followers who needs you! Thanks!
I have been subscribed for almost 2 years to your blog, don’t give because of google stupid panda, we will still read you and support you.
Good job, keep up the good work.
I began to wonder why you didn’t posted any posts or updates that lately. Glad to hear that you gyugs are okay. I have been following you for over 2 years approxiamtely.
hey beeen following you for last 5 years now ur links for helping me out thou keep dis undescrible work you been putten up.
Just found your website — am very impressed! Plan to share it with all my students — I teach computers at a community college. Good luck thwarting Panda — maybe the good guys will win yet.
Good luck and best wishes — Leah
nice work raymond.
hope this site will get its shine back.
Been following you for 2 years, absolutely one of the best sites on the web Raymond and Hal 9000, look forward to every post you make. Keep on postin’.
As for Google, well I really think Orwell (1984) would be grinning from ear to ear to see a multinational corporate slogan such as “don’t be evil” hahahaha.
By the way, I’d be happy to pay to subscribe if it helped.
Vacancy of your articles was a definite hole in my mail. Suburb work. Time passes so fast, so time has to be taken for family.
Panda sucks. How can panda rate this site low? Maybe panda is not really intelligent to understand those best articles. Panda needs more brain. For me this site is one of the best that i’d always visit everyday.
Welcome back, … speaking for my self , I never care if you send new emails or not I keep visiting the site all the time cuz there is always a new thing o learn even from the comments.
Am glad of the news and keep on the good work. Thank you.
hi , raymond
once u do , u do with 100% dedication . . really love this blog.
i’ve working on my site too but cannot make it as fast as raymond.cc ( after reading post,i noticed it was really fast) , so if you could guide me how you did it and please have a look at my blog too (waiting for u review).
frankly i think big brother has a hand in it.. and also the corporate giants who want to dumb down the public in general. god forbid if you learn a trick or two… i got a idea raymonds, just write several articles about how great facecrook. oops i mean facebook ,twitter, and google are… praise them in several articles and watch your rateing climb the ladder of success.. then also tell people that its bad to learn how to bypass your own computers password, and its bad to learn anything intelligent.. then watch your rateing soar… just give it a shot,, lets see what happens… seriously!!!
Well, of course I like this site; and Raymond. So please don’t misinterpret what I’m about to write as anythingj other than intended-as-constructive criticism, but…
…it’s impossible not to wonder if at least part of the reason why Google has ranked this site lower than it almost certainly deserves is, of course, what you write about in the article on this page; but, also, the content of some of the past articles. I’ve seen some websites out there which write about THIS website as if it were only for hackers and warez thieves and that sorta’ thing. Of course, a more careful reading of this site’s content reveals that that’s inaccurate. However, there HAVE been articles around here, in the past, which clearly show how to end-run security and password and login and authentication, etc. Maybe (and I don’t know, so I’m just spit-ballin’, here, but maybe) the low ranking on Google is somehow, even if only remotely, related to that.
I dunno if I’m anywhere near right, but I’m just throwin’ that out there for consideration.
Just tryin’ to help.
____________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Thanks Gregg.
I did have some really old post that touches on warez like mentioning keygens, cracks and etc. Most if not all has been removed.
Best wishes, Raymond.
I really like your comparative reviews, like which web browsers are heavy users of RAM and CPU, or file/folder comparers. TechSupportAlert.com is similar, but you go into much greater depth. Not surprisingly, it takes a lot of time and energy to do such an in-depth review; I hope the return on your investment makes it worthwhile.
Keep up the good work,Ray…………..
There is something very wrong and very, very dangerous when one for-profit business, that too often has shown itself not to be “not evil”, has such a powerful, dictatorial influence on the supposedly “free” Internet and those like Raymond.cc, Ghacks, DotTech and AskVG who contribute so meaningfully to it.
In the comments above and from yourself, Raymond, there is not the outrage I think we should all be directing at Google for their heavy-handedly setting themselves up as the Final Arbiter of what is or is not of value on the Net. They are not an elected representative of Internet users and *should* not be deferred to as such. Of course, I realize that they ARE powerful and do affect the very livelihoods of Raymond, Brinkman, Gupta, et al., each of whom must determine what is in his individual best interests. However, I also believe that we owe it to ourselves and to each other not to “go gentle into that [tyrannical] night”.
Perhaps while Raymond re-writes, edits and revises in deference to the self-appointed Master of the Internet, we, his appreciative readers can do something to help. I wonder what effect we might have if we simply sent Google an email protesting the chilling impact their so-called Panda is having on a resource WE DETERMINE TO BE VALUABLE AND OF HIGH QUALITY. Aren’t *WE* the ones who are supposed to decide whether Raymond or Google is serving to our satisfaction? Should we remain silent while the “tail wags the dog”? I’ll get off my soapbox with an observation that, over-and-over, history teaches us that, ‘Bad triumphs when good people do nothing’.
Raymond, you and Hal9000 were missed. Glad you’re still here. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Same thing happened to our site too, we deleted 80% of our articles but the problem still exist. Maybe there is no answer to Google Panda
Check your articles from the beginning. I see some really thin post in there with as short as only 1 paragraph.
I don’t think thin article is the issue. For instant, a very famous photographer blog with one or two words. Is it a lousy blog because it comes with a few words only?
I believe it is user interaction. For instant, if a person search for ‘Keyword A’ and stumbled upon your article, and then he/she went back to google and search for more or uses a slightly different keyword. This is a signal, a signal that says keyword A is not relevant to the article or it is off low quality that is why people are going back to Google and search again.
I believe Google also classify websites based on category. Obviously an image/photo websites have more images than text and don’t make sense for Google to penalize such website for low word count.
However, your site is an “informational” website. How can it be informational when you have few lines or a paragraph for a post? Another thing is, you cannot compare your site with the more popular ones such as Howtogeek or makeuseof because they are powerful sites with really good backlinks and they’re probably an authority site.
User interaction is definitely another important signal. If you have very good metrics but doesn’t have good backlinks, then it’s still a win. Unfortunately having a good metrics is not something that is easy to achieve.
Yup, i agree on the category part and authority sites. Just like you, am updating and delete my older articles. Mainly deleting, yet to see any improvement. Let’s hope there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Dear Raymond:
I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate all the hours and hard work that you put in to caring for you family, plus the pain staking work that goes in to your blog, that is absolutely one of the very best on the World Wide Internet. You have put far to much effort to let Google’s and all their junk cause you to give up all of your good work. :)
Well put, Dr. Hechabarria…
Raymond, your newsletter and site have been a staple of my computer time for a couple of years now.
Your reviews and product links are excellent – that panda is out of control.
Plse don’t stop your fine work – and on a personal note, my best wishes for your family.
db
I love getting all the great tech info and free software from you guys. Keep up the great work! Please try not to get to discouraged by the way google thinks they know what’s best, they just keep infringing on peoples right, when Its the readers who suffer and they are the ones who really matter to start with and from what I’ve seen they seem well pleased! Thank you again for all your hard work!!
Please keep up the great work, love reading your blogs!
This seems to be happening to all my favorite sites. Google has turned into a monster. It’s horrible and ridiculous that you should be going to all this work to please an electronic automaton when your readers – the folks who should matter – are happy.
The painful truth that all webmasters should agree is that their earlier posts written a few years ago aren’t that compelling if compared to how it is currently being analyzed, written and presented. I am one of those to admit that my earlier articles needs to be improved.
Raymond, you are a breath of fresh air for the internet techies and “wanna bees” like me. All of your posts are read by me with appreciation, my friend. Now let me get back to my Samsung Smartphone. I’m 69 years old and the damned thing is smarter than me. I’m still learning.!!
i have got a whole lot of great info from your web site over the years,hope you continue the great work
Please don’t give up; your hard work in the past was much appreciated by me and many, many others.
I have found your suggestions and hints very helpful, please continue your excellent work !!
Congrats on the addition to your family, All the Best, Stan
Thanks Stan.
Giving up did cross my mind before but will not give up without a fight ;)
My site also hit by Google panda. Rewrite old articles really hard post since there are more than 1000 post waiting for you.
I just put an articles as noindex for the old articles if no more or few traffic with help of Google Analytics..
Panda affects most websites. Some get it early while others gets it later. If you have 1000 articles, there is still hope in going through all the posts. But if you have 10,000 or more, then you definitely need a team to do it.
Rewriting is not hard since you already have a topic to write about, unless the service or software is no longer available/working. It is only time consuming finding for better alternatives and making it a better article.
A word of advice, I personally believe that noindexing thin pages won’t help in recovering from Panda with the fact that Googlebot still crawls the pages and probably uses them for calculation at backend. Noindex meta tags simple tells the search engine not to list the page in their results. Some of the most prominent SEO guys also doesn’t believe in noindex method.
I really like your blog Raymond! I like the new design too! Wishing you all success. :-)