Google Panda 4.2 Is Here; Slowly Rolling Out After Waiting Almost 10 Months

Google tells Search Engine Land that it pushed out a Google Panda refresh this weekend.

Many of you may not have noticed because this rollout is happening incredibly slowly. In fact, Google says the update can take months to fully roll out. That means that although the Panda algorithm is still site-wide, some of your Web pages might not see a change immediately.

The last time we had an official Panda refresh was almost 10 months ago: Panda 4.1 happened on September 25, 2014. That was the 28th update, but I would coin this the 29th or 30th update, since we saw small fluctuations in October 2014.

As far as I know, very few webmasters noticed a Google update this weekend. That is how it should be, since this Panda refresh is rolling out very slowly.

Google said this affected about 2%–3% of English language queries.

New Chance For Some, New Penalty For Others

The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, you unfortunately won’t notice the full impact immediately but you should see changes in your organic rankings gradually over time.

This is not how many of the past Panda updates rolled out, where typically you’d see a significant increase or decline in your Google traffic more quickly.

For the record, here’s the list of confirmed Panda Updates, with some of the major changes called out with their AKA (also known as) names:

1. Panda Update 1, AKA Panda 1.0, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, AKA Panda 2.0, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6–9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8 AKA Panda 3.0, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)
26. Panda Update 26, July 18, 2013 (confirmed, announced)
27. Panda Update 27 AKA Panda 4.0, May 20, 2014 (7.5% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
28. Panda Update 28 AKA Panda 4.1, Sept. 25, 2014 (3–5% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
29. Panda Update 30 AKA Panda 4.2, July 18, 2015 (2–3% of queries were affected; confirmed, announced)

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.