Google: We Are Trying To Update The Data For Panda & Penguin Faster

It has been several months since we had either a Penguin or Panda algorithmic refresh from Google and the natives, aka webmasters, are getting restless. As we covered, the algorithms may be real time, but those hit by one of these algorithmic penalties cannot recover until the underlining data is refreshed, and that data has not been refreshed in a relatively long time.

Google told us prior to the Penguin 3.0 release that they are working updating the algorithm so it updates more frequently. Now, Google is telling us again, eight months later, they are still working on making these two algorithms refresh faster.

John Mueller, Google’s webmaster trends analyst, said in a Google+ hangout, about at the 25 minute mark, “that is something we are definitely working on to kind of update that data again to make it a little bit faster,” in regards to having the data refresh more often for the Panda and Penguin algorithms.

Here is the transcript followed by the video snippet:

We are working on updates there. I don’t have any time frames at the moment but I know the team is working on that. I know it is frustrating, if you’ve worked a lot on your web site already to clean up these issues.

The same applies to Penguin as well. Where maybe you cleaned up a lot of web spam issues. And you are just waiting for things to kind of open up again.

And that is something we are definitely working on to kind of update that data again to make it a little bit faster.

The last official Panda update was Panda 4.1 on September 25, 2014 and the last official Penguin update was Penguin 3.0 on October 18, 2014. Each algorithm did have minor updates within a month or so after those launch dates, but since, there have been no real movements around those algorithms. Webmasters and publishers currently hurt by these algorithms are eager for a data refresh to see if their clean up efforts will resolve their ranking problems in Google.

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.