Google Says The Penguin & Panda Algorithms Still Require Manual Data Pushes

For those of you wondering what is going on with Google’s popular Panda update and Penguin update, you are not alone. In short, it has been quiet and there have been no confirmed updates or data refreshes for either algorithms since 2014.

Yesterday, in a Google hangout, Google told us that the algorithms aren’t updating regularly, that someone at Google kind of has to push them out manually.

Google’s John Mueller said:

I think both of those algorithms [Panda and Penguin] currently are not updating the data regularly. So that is something for both of them, where we kind of have to push the updates as well.

According to my records, the Panda 4.1 was the last Panda update and it was tweaked and rolled out over several weeks with the last one being around October 24, 2014 – or over 5 months ago. With Penguin, we tracked several updates through December 6, 2014 and there have been none since – which brings us to over 4 months for a Penguin refresh.

Of course, those sites impacted negatively by either algorithm wants a refresh to see if they have recovered. Without a data refresh, their sites cannot recover from the algorithm. Of course they may see small increases or fluctuations in their rankings due to other Google algorithms but they won’t see a full recovery until the algorithm is refreshed.

When will that happen? Your guess is as good as mine but I suspect Google is working on it.

Here is the video embedded at the proper start time:

Postscript: We published a more detailed story about the confusion and lack of clarity from Google around these Panda and Penguin updates. The story is named Google Panda & Penguin Lack Real-Time Updates, Despite Google’s Past Statements.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.