The Latest Panda Refresh from Google has Finally Arrived

It may have gone unnoticed by many that Google released its latest Google Panda refresh also known as Google Panda 4.2. The rollout has taken place at an incredibly slow pace after waiting for almost 10 months. In fact, Google says the update can take months to fully roll out. That means that although the Panda refresh is out still site-wide, some of the Web pages might not be able to see a change immediately.

For those who look forward to delving deeper into all the refinements of Panda, it is important to note that this is technically a refresh and not an update. This means it is applying again the identical signals from the erstwhile Panda for the current update as well.

The last official Panda refresh came out almost 10 months back. Panda 4.1 rolled out on September 25^th last year which was the 28th update in the Panda algorithm. However, the current refresh can well be called as the 29th or 30th update, as we small fluctuations were seen in October 2014.

As per Google, the latest refresh in the Panda algorithm has affected about 2%–3% of English language queries. And while it is being translated as a new chance for some users, others see it as kind of new penalty.

The rollout essentially conveys that anyone who was penalized by Panda in the previous update which happened in 2014 now has an opportunity to come forth if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, you might not be able to decipher the impact immediately in its entirety. However, you would be able to see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time.

For some reason, this is not how so many of the previous Panda updates came out, where typically you’d see a significant increase or decline in your Google traffic almost instantly. In fact, the fluctuation Mozcast does show as it happened before the refresh started to roll out. Yet, the temperatures are positively sunny since the roll out started.