This is pretty commonplace now, but there are rumors going around that Google may have launched a Panda update last week.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable links to WebmasterWorld, where these rumors are often born. Sometimes they turn out to be accurate, and sometimes they don’t. We won’t know until we get confirmation from Google.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment, and will update the article if and when we receive one. Here’s the part where I give you the spiel about how Google launches changes to its algorithms every day. It makes over 500 changes a year. Many of these have the potential to affect the rankings of your website. Even if a change does not directly impact your site, it may impact other sites in the listings, causing your ranking to go up or down.

Google did recently confirm a Panda update, but only after announcing a separate, unrelated update. Google often issues “weather reports” (otherwise known as tweets from Matt Cutts about algorithm changes), announcing various updates. However, there is really no consistency to this, and webmasters are still often left guessing what might have happened.

There’s a chance that Google will inform us whether this was Panda or not, but there’s also a good chance they won’t. There’s not much consistency to that either.

Update: We haven’t heard official word, but Schwartz is now saying that Google “implied” that there was no update.

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