Google: It's Correct That Panda Is Manually Being Pushed Slowly At Intervals - Really?

I don't always say this but I think Google misspoke here. Gary Illyes responded to a question from Glenn Gabe asking if "Panda 4.2 is rolling out slowly, but it's manually being pushed (at intervals)."

Gary Illyes from Google said "yes, that's correct."

I think this is wrong based on what I know. So either Google changed how they are pushing out Panda, Gary misunderstood the question or I understand the Panda 4.2 roll out incorrectly.

First, here are the tweets:

@methode @JohnMu I think I remember someone explaining that Panda 4.2 is rolling out slowly, but it's manually being pushed (at intervals).

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 6, 2015

@methode @JohnMu Is that correct? That's versus being pushed once on 7/18 and then rolling out automatically over time. Thx for your help.

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 6, 2015

@glenngabe yes, that's correct @JohnMu

— Gary Illyes (@methode) October 6, 2015

Everything I know about the Google Panda 4.2 rollout says it was pushed manually and the rest is all automated.

Google told us it can take several months to fully roll out and even on a site by site basis, not all of your pages may pick up on the roll out for months. This does not mean the algorithm is page-by-page basis, it is a site-wide algorithm.

I think the score is assigned to a web site, let's say this web site scored a 9 on Panda. Then the score is migrating through every single page on this site, as it is being pushed slowly to all the pages on a page-by-page basis.

If Google would manually push them to pages, that would seem incredibly manual and very time-consuming.

But maybe I misunderstood Google or maybe Google didn't understand the question? I am not sure. I will try to get clarification here.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: Okay, so I thought it was a miscommunication. It seems like this works how I described above. Here is the response from Gary after I asked him this morning:

@rustybrick It's like: push button manually, rolls out automatically for months. "yes" was for that. #bemoreverbosegary @glenngabe @JohnMu

— Gary Illyes (@methode) October 7, 2015

@glenngabe no, once we start the rollout manually, we don't touch it. @rustybrick @JohnMu

— Gary Illyes (@methode) October 7, 2015