Google: Panda and Penguin Updates Imminent

Google is set to introduce updates to both its Panda and Penguin algorithms in the coming months, Gary Illyes, Google’s webmaster trends analyst, announced at SMX Advanced yesterday.

Speaking at the Search Marketing Expo, Illyes admitted that Penguin currently runs slowly, but confirmed that Google is working on making it update in real time. If this happens, the algorithm will get constantly updated data. At present, the data has to be manually refreshed to see any ranking changes for sites impacted by Penguin.

Illyes explained that this would require a lot of reworking of the algorithm, but that the goal was to make Penguin run by itself. He estimated that this change was months away.

Panda Data Refresh

However, more imminent is a change to the Panda algorithm, which is due to roll out in the coming weeks. Illyes said this would be a data refresh, not an algorithmic change. Some sites may see a recovery as a result. However, new sites may be hit by the data refresh.

According to Illyes, Google doesn’t see Panda ever running continuously, unlike Penguin, and that the algorithm will continue to require manual data refreshes.