What You Need to Know About the New Google Panda 4.2 Update
Over the past few years, there has been much hype and speculation surrounding each of the major updates that has been performed by Google in a bid to improve the quality of online content. Although many webmasters have not noticed overly significant changes in the amounts of traffic going to their sites, others have. However, the most recent Google Panda update does not seem to have had any major impact – yet.
@rustybrick Yes, last weekend we began rolling out a Panda refresh that will take a few months to complete. It affects 2-3% of the queries.
— Gary Illyes (@methode) July 24, 2015
Not Many Queries Affected
Gary Illyes from Google has provided confirmation with regards to the fact that the company started rolling out its latest Panda update (version 4.2) a few days ago, which is currently only affecting around 2 – 3% of queries. Many website owners and developers have not yet been affected by this update; however, this does not mean that they will not see any effects from it in the near future, as Illyes went on to state that it could still take a couple of months for the latest update to be rolled out completely and for it to take effect across the board.
Little Evidence of an Update
At this stage, there has been very little evidence that the most recent Google Panda update has even taken place. A search results monitoring tool on Moz called Mozcast, has not yet shown any signs of unusual online activity over the past few days since the update was implemented. In fact, for the most part, web developers, site owners, SEO experts and other online entrepreneurs and marketers haven’t reported seeing any form of Panda-like activity in theirs or their client’s search ranking results. It has been speculated that this could be because of the amount of time the rollout is taking to be implemented or the fact that the update will indeed only affect up to 3% of search queries.
Not too Much Difference
When comparing the most recent Google Panda update to others that have been rolled out over the past few years, the previous one was reported to only have had any form of impact on around 3 – 5% of all web search queries, and the update prior to that one was thought to have had an effect on just over 7% of all search queries that were being performed. Seeing as though only a small percentage of search queries seem to be affected by each subsequent Panda update, it is thought that sites that are susceptible to Panda recoveries or penalties may not be affected now or at any point on the future.
Although the most recent Panda update may only be affecting a very small percentage of websites at the moment, this does not mean that sites that have not been affected can start providing lower quality content or spam to visitors. Instead, each Google update should be regarded as a gentle reminder for webmasters and online entrepreneurs to ensure that they provide the highest quality content possible to their site visitors at all times.
