Google updates in December 2012

Expansion of Panda on December 21

Concentrating more on English queries, Google rolled a new Panda update just before the Christmas. Panda #23 covers 1.3 % of the language issues and explores a slightly higher impact than Pandas #21 and #22. Therefore, they officially term it as “refresh”.

Extension in the functionality of Knowledge graph on December 4

The update by Google extended and added functionality for the non-English queries, which include "more than just translation". This has added enhanced KG capabilities of the languages which includes Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian.  

Panda updates in November 2012

The Panda #22 update affirmed as 22 panda update by Google on 21^st November, reflected the appearance of data-only, after some mixed signals. This came to be explored as a larger and unnamed update around November 19th.

The Panda #21 rolled roughly 5-1/2 weeks after Panda #20 on 5^th November, was though smaller but officially impacting. This update covered 1.1% of the English queries.

Added updates in October 2012

The announcement for the update of the original page layout algorithm was made on 9^th October, according to which the pages having too many ads above the fold will be targeted. This Page Layout #2 is the update of the algorithm change back in January. It is still a puzzle that whether the update was algorithm change or a Panda-style data refresh. 

Google released a minor Penguin data update on 5^th October, after suggesting that the next Penguin update would be major. The 3rd Penguin release, Penguin #3 reflects the impact of 0.3% of queries in which Penguin update numbering was rebooted, similar to Panda.

Google published 65 updates for August and September on 4^th October which reflected their monthly (bi-monthly?) list of search highlights. Their August/September 65-Pack include 7-result SERPs, Knowledge Graph expansion, updates to how "page quality" is calculated, and changes to how local results are determined.

 

Expanded releases of September 2012

Google announced an update for the exact-match domains (EMDs) on 27^th September. This update reduced the presence of EMDs in the MozCast data set by over 10% and led to large-scale devaluation. Officially the revision impacted 0.6% of queries (by volume).

A fairly major Panda update, Panda #20 (algo + data) rolled out on 27^th September which overlapped the EMD update and affected 2.4% of queries officially. The industry sources opted to start naming Panda updates in order, as they realized that the the 3.X series was getting odd. 

On 27^th September Google rolled out another Panda refresh, Panda 3.9.2 (#19) which emerged to have been data-only. The Ranking flux of this update was not on par with a large-scale algorithm update even though it was moderate.

The revision made in August 2012

Google published Panda 3.9.1 (#18) another data update on 20^th August, which explored the fairly small impact.  The new update was dubbed 3.9.1, as the Panda 3.0 series ran out of numbers at 3.9.

Google rolled 7-Result SERPs on 14^th August, which made a significant change to the Top 10. This update limited the results for many queries to 7. Our track for the couple of days on the change reflected the impact on about 18% of the keywords we were dealing with.

Google on 10^th August announced that  they would start penalizing sites under DMCA Penalty for repeat copyright violations. The timing for the start of the procedure was stated as "starting next week" (8/13?).

Google rolled the June and July Search Quality Highlights on 10^th August that rolled in one mega-post. The major update of June/July 86-Pack include Panda data and algorithm refreshes, an improved rank-ordering function (?), a ranking boost for "trusted sources", and changes to site clustering.