A month ago today, we reported that Gary Illyes from said a Panda refresh is coming within 2-4 weeks or so. Well, it has been over 4 weeks now and still no refresh, but that is not uncommon, launch dates with Google often get delayed, yes - even with the Panda updates.
Yesterday, in a German Google Hangout, John (Johannes) Mueller from Google said in German that the refresh is coming soon. Oliver Engelbrecht from seo-portal.de transcribed it, "I think the next update, I don't know if it's coming this week or next week, but in any case it should be released soon."
But I was nervous even with the transcription by a German speaking individual, that something got lost.
So I asked John Mueller in the English hangout this morning on Google+ about what he said at the 24:15 mark.
He basically said, yes, it is still coming "fairly soon," but he wouldn't expect it to go live on the July 4th weekend. Today, July 3rd, is an official holiday, so Googlers are off in Mountain View. But he did say expect it to happen "in a few weeks." If I had to guess, maybe next Thursday night.
Here is the video at the start time:
Here is the transcript as I typed it:
We have this question from Barry *sigh*On Thursday, in the German hangout, I am told you said the Panda refresh is coming this week or next. Or did you still mean it can come even later than next week?...
So a few weeks ago we said that this refresh will be happening in a few weeks and so it is kind of coming up. I doubt it is going to happen this week because it is a holiday and it is Friday and people are busy doing other things.
But I imagine in the next couple of weeks this is something that might be happening. So that kind of sets expectations. We try not to provide an exact date for when these things roll out because things can always change. But I expect this to happen fairly soon.
Next week, John is on vacation and I am pretty sure Gary Illyes is traveling - so I am a bit nervous the communication line around the Panda refresh will be delayed. But I will do my best to keep you updated.
Forum discussion at Google+ and Google Webmaster Help.
