Eric Kuan from Google on stage with Gary Illyes and Nathan Johns from Google at PubCon said that Google is still making changes to both the Panda and Penguin algorithms. Just a month ago we reported that Google occasionally tweaks the Penguin algorithm but for the most part it is on autopilot.
Eric has been with Google for over 6 years, so he is not a new kid.
We have to imagine Google does make tweaks to most of their algorithms when necessary and for Eric to say Google does do this as well to Penguin and Panda should come as no surprise.
The only big issue is, if one of those tweaks impacts your site and Google doesn't confirm when they have tweaked these algorithms, it is hard for SEOs and webmasters to debug this information. But clearly Google has no interest in confirming or denying future algorithmic updates or tweaks, they do not care if webmasters are chasing their tails trying to help a new client fix their ranking issues. They just care about making sure the search results are quality enough for their searchers. But for webmasters, no - they won't confirm any of these search quality updates anymore - well, they said they would, but they have proven that they won't.
Here are tweets from the session:
Eric Kuan was asked if there are any big updates coming. He said not specifically but they are still making changes to Penguin and Panda. #pubcon
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 8, 2017
Google has been making changes to Panda and Penguin. Eric #pubcon
— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) November 8, 2017
Forum discussion at Twitter.