Yesterday in a Google hangout on Google+ with Google's John Mueller I had to ask John about the whole real-time/instant Panda thing Gary Illyes may or may not have said at SMX West.
I asked John the question at 23:46 and John Mueller was quick to answer at 24:29 that he is "not sure what he [Gary Illyes] was referring to on real-time."
But John went on to say that as far as he knows, Google has not refreshed or rerun the Panda data since about October time. He wasn't sure on the official last date but he trusts it has been "a while", sometime in October he thinks.
John said:
We do kind of have Panda tied into our search results more directly, so there is this kind of real time reflection there.But as far as I know, we haven’t updated the data that's reflected there for a while. So that is probably the date you're looking at there and the real time is more the technical aspect of how we integrate that into it.
Then someone followed up to ask specifically about October 24th being the date and John said:
I don't know that for sure the exact date, I know it was in October.
I then asked John one more time, "Just to confirm, they have not updated this data since some time in October?" John responded "as far as I know."
I do agree, as do many SEOs, that Panda itself has not run since late October. So I am not sure about the instant and real-time Panda changes but maybe when Google fetches new data and processes it, those will be pushed into the algorithm sooner?
Here is the video at the start of the question I asked with my hand drawn Panda:
Forum discussion at Google+.
