Last week, Google rolled out its first Panda update in quite a while, but many sites have felt its effects for better or worse. SearchMetrics put out an interesting list of top winners and losers (more on that here), and DaniWeb, which has gone up and down in search visibility throughout the evolution of Panda was hit again and then quickly recovered.
We asked Google to confirm any tweaks to the latest update. We didn’t receive response to that, though the company did previously confirm with us that the update was indeed Panda.
The last time a site that quickly recovered after getting pounded by the Panda was highly publicized (Cult of Mac earlier this year), Google talked about tweaks to the update. In a Wired interview earlier this year, Google’s Amit Singhal said, “Any time a good site gets a lower ranking or falsely gets caught by our algorithm — and that does happen once in a while even though all of our testing shows this change was very accurate — we make a note of it and go back the next day to work harder to bring it closer to 100 percent…That’s exactly what we are going to do, and our engineers are working as we speak building a new layer on top of this algorithm to make it even more accurate than it is.”
Now, Google’s Matt Cutts has flat out tweeted that we should expect some tweaks to the Panda update over the next few weeks, even if they aren’t as major as the main update:
@mattcutts
Matt CuttsWeather report: expect some Panda-related flux in the next few weeks, but will have less impact than previous updates (~2%).
6 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
So, if you feel you were wrongfully hit by Panda (and you truly believe that), perhaps an adjustment will work in your favor. Others that escaped the update may be on their toes for a bit.
Image credit: Rick Bucich.