Google has periodic updates or changes in its algorithm. Google
Panda and Google Penguin are the major of them. Some of the important updates
are:
Panda/Farmer
— February 23, 2011
The first Panda update that was the second biggest update
till now, affected around 6% of the search results worldwide. It seemed to crack down on thin content, content
farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality
issues.
Panda 2.0 #2 — April 11,
2011
Bloggers thought that
Panda was a one time thing, they could not have been more wrong, we know this
now.
Panda 2.1 #3 — May 9,
2011
Another inconspicuous
Panda update by Google.
Panda 2.2 #4 — June 21,
2011
Another inconspicuous
Panda update by Google.
Panda 2.3 #5 — July 23,
2011
This was a very small
Panda update by Google.
Panda 2.4 #6 — August
12, 2011
A huge Panda
update that affected 8% of search results.This was more than 4 times
bigger than the other Panda updates.
Panda 2.5 #7 — September
28, 2011
Another inconspicuous
Panda update by Google.
Panda 3.1 #9 — November
18, 2011
Another inconspicuous
Panda update by Google.
Panda 3.2 #10 — January
18, 2012
Another inconspicuous
Panda update by Google. The only thing special about this was that it was the
10th update.
Panda 3.3 #11 — February
27, 2012
Another inconspicuous
Panda update by Google.
Google announced this
Panda Update through Twitter. I thought they would do it through other means.
Panda 3.5 #13 — April
19, 2012
In the excitation Google
sent out another Panda update that affected less than 2% of search results,
including other languages.
Penguin — April 24, 2012
The first official
penguin updates that penalized sites that had over-optimized pages. This update
boggled the minds of bloggers and webmasters as they had experienced such a
thing before.
Panda 3.6 #14 — April
27, 2012
Google seemed to have
been excited as they sent two Panda updates in a week for use bloggers to worry
about.
Penguin 1.1 #2 — May 25,
2012
The first
targeted Penguin Update.
Panda 3.7 #15 — June 8,
2012
A lowly affecting Panda
update that caused less than 1% change in search results.
Panda 3.8 #16 — June 25,
2012
Another Panda Refresh by
Google.
Link Warnings — July 19,
2012
Google again used
Webmaster Tools to send out warnings to those who have bought backlinks etc.
Panda 3.9 #17 — July 24,
2012
Another inconspicuous
Panda Update by Google.
DMCA Penalty — August 10,
2012
Google sent out messages
from Web-master tools to let blogs with DMCA notices know that repeated
violations would lead to sites being removed from the search index altogether.
Panda 3.9.1 #18 — August
20, 2012
Another Panda Refresh by
Google.
Panda 3.9.2 #19 —
September 18, 2012
Another Panda Refresh by
Google.
Panda #20 — September
27, 2012
The only Panda Update
out of the 65 search algorithm updates that took place.
Exact-Match Domain
Update — September 27, 2012
This Google update made
a difference to how Google ranked websites based on domain name matching
keywords searched for to eliminate sub-domain and sub-directory spamming.
Penguin #3 — October 5,
2012
A very minor and
almost insignificant Penguin update by Google.
“Phantom” — May 9,
2013
Named phantom because it
was never announced by Google, nor by anyone affiliated with Google. By SEO’s
around the world agree that there was some update activity around
this period which caused traffic drops in some sites and traffic increase in
others.
Domain Crowding — May
21, 2013
Google believes that
Domain Crowding is a form of spamming and hence wanted to address it quickly.
For this the algo
experts at Google came up with the idea of curbing domain crowding with the
help of an update to the Google search algorithm. This is what resulted from
that.
Penguin 2.0 (#4) — May
22, 2013
An Official
Penguin Update as stated by Google was released and it affected about
2% of all the English search results.This is something that we bloggers and
webmasters would like to call - A big update.
Many sites saw huge
drops in traffic around this period.
“Payday Loan” Update —
June 11, 2013
Google created the
PayDay Loan update to remove spammy sites from the most spammy niches such as
Payday Loans, Education sites, Coupon sites etc.
Panda Dance — June 11, 2013
While
not an actual Panda update, Matt Cutts made an important clarification at SMX
Advanced, suggesting that Panda was still updating monthly, but each
update rolled out over about 10 days. This was not the "everflux"
many people had expected after Panda #25.
