Georgi GeorgievThe new Google beast is officially out in the wild! It’s a minor Panda update, but bigger than a data refresh, thus it’s named 4.1. Though minor in terms of changes to the Panda algorithm it still has a significant impact, affecting 3-5% of queries, depending on locale, according to Google’s announcement.
Google’s representative Pierre Far stated: “Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.” The exact date when rollout began is not known: “Earlier this week, we started a slow rollout of an improved Panda algorithm, and we expect to have everything done sometime next week. “. So, our guess is it started somewhere between 22-23 of September, 2014.
Our Google Algorithm Update Checker is already updated to include the Panda 4.1 update, but since it won’t be fully deployed until some time next week, we advise to check for impact no earlier than October, 10-th. Keep in mind that the longer rollout time makes it a bit harder to detect penalized sites/pages. Initial speculations are that it hit lead-gen content and affiliate sites harder than others, so you might want to go over your sites if you are in such a niche.
About the author
Managing owner of Web Focus and creator of Analytics-toolkit.com, Georgi has over eighteen years of experience in online marketing, web analytics, statistics, and design of business experiments for hundreds of websites.
He is the author of the book "Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing" and white papers on statistical analysis of A/B tests, as well as a lecturer on dozens of conferences, seminars, and courses, including as a Google Regional Trainer.
