After rumors have floated around all summer long, Google Panda 4.1 has finally been released. This new update is composed of a filter designed to penalize websites containing poor or thin content. It is intended to prevent these websites from ranking, as Google continues to aim towards providing more information in its searches.
On September 25, 2014, Google representative Pierre Far made the announcement on his Google Plus page stating “Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week.” Far then said “Depending on the locale, around 3-5% of queries are affected.”
According to Google, this release is more precise and will help small to medium sized sites with high-quality content rank better. As we can imagine, this will open many opportunities for smaller sites that have great content, but continue to struggle on being displayed to viewers, as larger sites with thin content have dominated the market.
While many websites may have avoided the Panda in recent times, they may notice a sudden drop in traffic today, or within the next few days.
Why Panda 4.1?
If you are familiar with Google Panda updates, Panda seems to be the black sheep, so to speak. In the past, there has never been a .1 added to any of the updates, until now. So why call it 4.1? Google has not deemed it as a large enough update to call it 5.0, so they simply settled with the number. While this is the 27th Panda update by Google, since Panda 1.0 on February 24, 2011, we can be sure more updates will continue to roll out.
More so, the years 2013 and 2014 have been extremely slow for Panda updates, as 2011 and 2012 seemed to have an update nearly every month. Of course, it is possible that Google has not announced an update.
The following includes a list of Google Panda Updates:
Panda Update 1
AKA Panda 1.0 - February 24, 2011 – 11.8% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 2
AKA Panda 2.0 – April 11, 2011 – 2% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 3
May 10, 2011 – No change provided - Unannounced
Panda Update 4
June 16, 2011 – No change provided - Unannounced
Panda Update 5
July 23, 2011 – no change provided – Unannounced
Panda Update 6
August 12, 2011 – 6-9% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 7
September 28, 2011 – no change provided - Unannounced
Panda Update 8
AKA Panda 3.0 – October 19, 2011 – 2% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 9
November 18, 2011 – Less than 1% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 10
January 18, 2012 – no change provided – Unannounced
Panda Update 11
February 27, 2012 – no change provided – Announced
Panda Update 12
March 23, 2012 – 1.6% queries – Announced
Panda Update 13
April 19, 2012 – no change provided – Announced
Panda Update 14
April 27, 2012 – no change provided – Confirmed
Panda Update 15
June 9, 2012 – 1% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 16
June 25, 2012 – 1% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 17
July 24, 2012 – 1% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 18
August 20, 2012 – 1% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 19
September 18, 2012 – Less than .7% of queries – Announced
Panda Update 20
September 27, 2012 – 2.4% English queries – Announced
Panda Update 21
November 5, 2012 – 1.1% English queries – .4% worldwide – Announced
Panda Update 22
November 21, 2012 - .8% English queries – Unannounced
Panda Update 23
December 21, 2012 – 1.3% English queries – Announced
Panda Update 24
January 22, 2013 – 1.2% of English queries – Announced
Panda Update 25
March 15, 2013 – no change provided – Announced
Panda Update 26
AKA Panda 4.0 – May 20, 2014 – 7.5% of English queries – Announced
Panda Update 27
AKA Panda 4.1 – September 25, 2014 – 3 to 5% queries affected - Announced
While we haven’t experience an update for a large portion of the year, this update has come four months after the previous update, signifying that we may be back on a quarterly Panda update cycle. While many updates may go unannounced, it is always best to have an online advertising plan, and keep relevant and educational content across our websites.