Panda 20: Google Algorithm Update October 2012

Google has confirmed with us that on Thursday, September 27th, they released a Panda algorithm update � this would be the 20th Panda update and thus we are naming it Panda 20. This is a fairly major Panda update that impacts 2.4% of English search queries and is still rolling out.


Late Friday afternoon, Google announced a exact match domain update that removed the chances of a low-quality exact match domain from ranking well in Google. But over the weekend, many non-exact match domain site owners noticed their rankings dropped as well. What was it?


Google confirmed that they pushed out a new Panda algorithm update that isn�t just a data refresh but an algorithm update. Google told us this �affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice.�


There is more to come with this update, where Google promises to roll out more to this Panda algorithm update over the next 3-4 days. Here is the comment Google�s Matt Cutts sent us after asking about this update:


Google began rolling out a new update of Panda on Thursday, 9/27. This is actually a Panda algorithm update, not just a data update. A lot of the most-visible differences went live Thursday 9/27, but the full rollout is baking into our index and that process will continue for another 3-4 days or so. This update affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice, with a smaller impact in other languages (0.5% in French and Spanish, for example).