Google has officially confirmed on Twitter that they pushed out a refresh of the Panda update. This one would be labelled version 3.8.
It was only a refresh, meaning, Google did not make any algorithm signal updates. All they did was rerun the Panda algorithm to run through the index and release or capture sites that deserve, according to them, to be hit by the Panda algorithm.
Now, despite the fluctuations we noticed over the weekend Google said this Panda refresh did not start until yesterday and it did not start over the weekend.
Here is Google's tweet, which I emailed Google about and they said it started yesterday and was only a data refresh:
Heads up: we're pushing a new Panda data refresh that noticeably affects only ~1% of queries worldwide. More context: goo.gl/HNvCt
— A Googler (@google) June 25, 2012
That being said, we are up to version 3.8 and we need Google to push out a significant update so we can move up to 4.0. We are running out of 3.x numbers. :)
I am also not sure why Google ran a Panda refresh so closely to the last one, which was about 2 weeks ago. Normally Google runs these updates after 4-6 or more weeks.
Past Panda Updates:
- Panda 3.8 on June 25th
- Panda 3.7 on June 9th
- Panda 3.6 on April 27th
- Panda 3.5 on April 19th
- Panda 3.4 on March 23rd
- Panda 3.3 on about February 26th
- Panda 3.2 on about January 15th
- Panda 3.1 on November 18th
- Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th
- Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th
- Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th
- Panda 2.5 on September 28th
- Panda 2.4 in August
- Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd.
- Panda 2.2 on June 18th or so.
- Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
- Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
- Panda 1.0 on February 24th
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google+ and Google Webmaster Help.
