Google last week confirmed that Google Panda, one of the most significant updates to fight spam is now integrated into Google’s core ranking algorithm. Google Panda was launched in February 2011.
Recently Jennifer Slegg posted a Panda guide which was vetted by Google’s PR team; in this guide it was declared that Panda is now part of Google’s core algorithm.“Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.”This was later confirmed by Google’s Gary Illyes.
This means it’s unlikely Google will confirm any Panda updates in the future with the last confirmed Panda update being 4.2, now the algorithm is part of Googles main algorithm. Since this article was released last week Google has confirmed more details, saying the algorithm is consistent enough to not require many future changes. A Q & A session was run with Googles Audrey Lipattsev who is a search quality specialist at Google, he commented to what is meant by core: “It is less about the functionality, which means it probably doesn’t change that much over time and it is more about how we perceive it, in the context of the algorithm. Do we still think this is an experimental thing, it is running for a while and we aren’t sure how long it will last? Or is it like PageRank, it is part of it, it will always be there, at least in the foreseeable future and then probably call it in certain context part of the core algorithm”.
He also mentions Google’s Gary Illyes’s explanation:
“I think this is really the worst takeaway of the past few days, but imagine an engine of a car. It used to be that there was no starter; the driver had to go in front of the car and use some tool to start the engine. Today we have starters in any petrol engine, it’s integrated. It became more convenient, but essentially nothing changed.”
He continued to add: “For a user or even a webmaster it should not matter at all which components live where, it’s really irrelevant, and that’s why I think people should focus on these ‘interesting’ things less”.
Audrey confirmed that Gary was explaining Panda is now part of Google’s core ranking algorithm, and they don’t need to know how it runs because it has been fully tested and it works. Ammon Johns who was in the hangout asked the question, “once they forget how it works is it core?” Andrey replied “That’s exactly right”.
