We rarely cover any Google Panda topics anymore, since really it has gone continuous - which makes me wonder.
So at the 18:05 mark into the video, I asked if Panda is still running by itself. John Mueller said it is. And then at 24:20 mark, Simone asked John Mueller if the Panda algorithm has "fundamentally" changed and John said no, it has not. Google engineers still do make tweaks to it, but it is fundamentally the same algorithm.
The reason these questions were asked is because there is very little chatter around Panda since the last major update. So we are kind of wondering if Google sunset it or stopped updating the data around it.
Here is the Q&A around if it is still running:
Barry: Obviously, we know Panda is running by itself, slowly gets pushed out. It happens all the time now.
It just seems like I haven’t seen people say, oh my site that was hit by Panda has been released from, doing well now. Of course it takes major efforts to be released from Panda. I’ve seen some sporadic reports but is Panda still running or it’s something that’s not really looked at, at Google anymore.
John Mueller: It should still be running.
I mean, I haven’t seen like the log files kind of slide through but this is something that’s essentially running on its own. So it’s not the case that you see any specific updates from one day to the next. But the people who are affected by something like this by quality algorithm, they should see those changes over time and it would be reflected in the search results as well.
Here is the Q& around if it has changed:
Simon asked “and is Panda, the same Panda we kind of all know and love?” We know it kind of went real time and the delivery method has changed but is “Panda itself looking for the same signals, the same quality stuff, that it kind of look for before essentially or has it kind of some how fundamentally changed?”
John Mueller responded, “it hasn’t fundamentally changed.” John added, “but I i know the engineers work on these algorithms so it's not something where where I say nothing has ever changed their. I know they they try to like tweak things and make sure that we're actually bubbling up the right kind of high quality content in the search results.
So I wouldn't say nothing has changed but at the same time it's not that it's fundamentally different and now it looks at I don't know instead of quality of the content it looks at the color of your fonts or something like that.
Forum discussion at Google+.
