Google is working its way to the “next generation” Google Panda algorithm updates. Matt Cutts, Google's Head of Search Spam, announced at the Search Marketing Expo that this version of Panda refresh is supposed to be softer than the previous updates.
Google Panda was released with an aim to promote high quality content sites. Several sites were terribly affected by the search algorithm. The last update which rolled out in 2013 emerged as a a remedy for webmasters who were hit by the algorithm and helped them to claim recovery. The latest update, however, is targeted on small businesses.
According to Cutts, with the new update Google is planning to help small businesses perform better in the search results. Cutts confirmed that one expert in his team has been specifically assigned the task of assisting small websites improve ranking in the Google search results. Google has not yet specified when the new update will be rolled out to the users but according to what Cutts said at the Expo, we can assume that the Google team is still working on the overhaul and it might take some time before the update is actually rolled out.
Google Panda was released in 2011 and since then several updates have been introduced to the algorithm. It was dubbed as a “content quality filter” and webmasters had to remove low quality content, focus on authority and unique content and keep advertising ratio healthy in order to avoid any judgment by Google Panda.
Google announced last year that Panda algorithms will be pushed out every month over a period of 10 days. However, there was a bit of delay in pushing out the monthly updates as Google wanted to release signals that are more “soft” and “finely targeted”.
