Google Slowly Rolls Out Panda 4.2 Update

Google pushed out a Google Panda update this past weekend, but many dealerships may not have noticed as the rollout is happening very slowly. Even though the Panda algorithm is still site wide, some of your Web pages might not immediately see a change.

The new Panda 4.2 update affects only approximately 2 to 3 percent of English language queries, and is therefore less spectacular than the mobile search update in April. Although “Mobilegeddon” was greatly over-hyped, it did encourage a lot of webmasters to get their mobile interfaces up to higher standards of mobile accessibility. This latest refresh is happening just 10 months after the last update that was rolled out in September of last year, and this is considered to be the 30th such update of Panda.

According to Google, it may take months before marketers start to notice any significant impact on website rankings due to the latest Panda update, although the company didn’t give any indication as to why the rollout is so slow. There has been a great deal of speculation surrounding Google’s apparent decision to reduce the speed by which websites are affected by the Panda update, with one train of thought being that the slow rollout could be a signal the company is one step closer to making Panda updates a daily occurrence. Google has expressed the desire to do this in the past, however, considering the speed at which the company would have to process and act on data to make this happen, it seems clear daily updates remain quite far from becoming reality at this point.

Due to the fact that the latest update’s impact is limited to 2 to 3 percent of English language queries, it’s difficult even for webmasters to notice it as it’s rolling out so slowly. Therefore, the update can be seen as good news or bad news, depending on the situation.

The good news is if your site was penalized by Google in September 2014 following the previous Panda update, then Google is offering you yet another chance to recover. However, of course, this will only happen if you have made the necessary changes to your website. The bad news is that although previous Google Panda updates were felt immediately after they were rolled out, in this instance webmasters will only be able to notice the improvement in rankings after a longer period once the update rolls out completely over time.

If you’ve made changes to your website since the previous Panda update in September 2014, it will be worthwhile to watch your statistics over the coming period to see if there is either a significant increase or decline in your Google traffic due to the latest refresh.