So, Panda 3.5 came by around 19th April and we got a small uplift, that was nice. But we had a big drop on 27th Aprilwhich looks like it was relater to the Penguin update (anti-spam – see this article).

Currently, less than half my traffic is provided from Google with nearly as much coming from Yahoo/Bing combined.And traffic overall is down on last month (even on the beginning of this month)

I do find it a little confusing in that every time (well not every) Google does some major update I get knocked back but in between these updates Google has me climbing up the results … curious and not particularly helpful.

Of course, I have to always remember that I work in a volatile area with plays, musicals and concerts coming and going all the time, a drop in traffic can be caused by a play I am ranking particularly well for suddenly ending its run, all that traffic then disappears … usually I can find that in Google Analytics ….

Ahh well, back to the long slog of recovery .. I’m suspecting “duplicate content” rather than “keyword stuffing” in this instance .. but, of course, I don’t know for sure …

Update May 4th: Ahh … things are perhaps a little clearer now … Panda 3.6 snuck out at the weekend, on 27th April, so it looks like that was what got me. Well, in one sense I’m pleased as I still have only one thing to look at (Panda) rather than two (Panda and Penguin) but in another sense I am simply confused … why two Panda updates in 8 days (normally 6 weeks or so)? Why did the 3.5 give me an uplift and 3.6 a slap??

Panda 3.5: I see that in Panda 3.5 several ticket sites (other than us) were amongst the losers