Panda Update Confirmed – New Slower, More Loving Panda

Over the past few days we saw that there was a lot of movement within the search engine results across a wide number of the terms that we monitor and after seeing a couple of clients record some of their best rankings to date, we knew that there was something happening within the Google data centres and speculation was that Google's new, softer Panda update was happening.

Although we believed that the update was happening, we couldn't pin point the alterations in rankings to anything firm at that point but now we are able to confirm that Google Panda is infact happening at the moment and judging by the dates of movement that we are able to track, we predict that the longer running update has almost run its full cycle.

Amid speculation and discussion across the industry forums and messages boards, it became clear that there was something happening on a wider scale than we were seeing with our own clients as website owners across the web spoke out about how they were seeing traffic increases, sites recovering from previous Panda algorithm reductions and unfortunately for some, drops in ranking position alongside traffic slumps.

The longer running cycle of the Panda update comes as no surprise following comments from Google's Matt Cutts previously who pointed out that the new format of Google Panda update will be rolled out over a period of 10 days, effectively softening the impact of the update for websites that could potentially have issues on their site as well as the fact that this update was designed to reduce the so called "grey areas" within the update to help sites with minor issues to escape the full force of the update.

According to Barry Schwartz, Google have now confirmed (even though we were told that they would not be confirming Panda updates since their inclusion into a rolling update format) that Panda has infact been pushed out into their search engine results and is in motion at this time.

How did your site handle the new roll out?