Google Panda Updates in SEO

What is Google Panda?

Google Panda is Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The Google Panda designed to lower the rank of low-quality sites or thin sites, and helps higher-quality sites to get on top of the search results.

Many websites with large amount of advertising, or those with low quality or duplicate content, saw a huge effect in the rankings. Ever since Panda was launched, there have been many updates.

Ranking factors

Google Panda is designed to filter low quality sites and/or pages from ranking well in the search engine results page (SERP).

Google Panda affects the ranking of an entire site or a specific section rather than just the individual pages on a site.

Google says it only takes a few pages of poor quality or duplicated content to hold down traffic, and recommends such pages be removed, blocked from being indexed by the search engine.

Updates

For the first two years, Google Panda updates were rolled out about once a month but Google stated in March 2013, that future updates would be integrated into the algorithm and, therefore, less noticeable and continuous.

Google released a "slow rollout" of Panda 4.1 for the week of September 21, 2014.

Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update has been released which means a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well.

For the record, here’s the list of confirmed Panda Updates as follows:

1. Panda Update 1, Panda 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, Panda 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8, Panda 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
26. Panda Update 26, Panda 4.0, May 20, 2014 (7.5% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
27. Panda Update 27, Panda 4.1, Sept. 25, 2014 (3-5% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

The above is the Panda updates list since it started. Get in touch for other updates in SEO.