Anyone trying to follow the Google Panda will realise what a confused story it is … so I am very grateful to the Wonderful SearchEngineLand for producing this InfoGraphic and allowing it to be copied across the web.

This is a concise summary of what Panda set out to achieve and, most importantly, when it did it.

I can report that the changes we made to the SeatChoice and UKTW domains appear to have done what we set out to do, in that traffic is back on an upward trend and, at current rates, will recover to previous levels at some point in the next few months. So, yes, it is possible to “recover” from a Panda slap.

The story is not as simple/bright as that may appear, of course. Although traffic has recovered, sales have not.

Can I blame this on Panda and the Google? No. In all truth I don’t think I can. It is possible that I am now being sent different traffic, traffic less inclined to purchase and more inclined to browse – evidence for this is that I don’t really do well in searches that include the keyword “tickets” but I do do well in general what’s on and tour searches.

Of course, with all the changes I have made it is also true that the site I have now is not the site I had at our peak, so there may be things I don’t do as well for the user as I used to.

My time should now be concentrated on tweaking my content to bring more ticket-hunters my way and making sure that I put as few obstacles in the purchase path as possible ….

This brought us from break-even to broke, but at least I feel under control again – but I will never take traffic (quantity or quality) for granted again …