Google Panda Is Now Part Of Google’s Core Ranking Signals

Barry Schwartz on January 12, 2016

Google Panda, one of Google’s most significant spam-fighting algorithms, launched in February 2011, is officially part of Google’s core ranking algorithm. It is unclear exactly when this happened; we at Search Engine Land are trying to find out.

Jennifer Slegg posted a Panda guide that was vetted by Google’s PR team, and part of that included a statement that said Panda is now part of Google’s core ranking algorithm. Here is that statement:

Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.

Gary Illyes from Google confirmed the authenticity of this quote.

For one thing, this means Google will likely never confirm another Panda update for us in the future. The last confirmed Panda update was Panda 4.2, which was expected to roll out over “several months.”

Well, now that algorithm is baked into their main algorithm.

We still have a lot of questions around what this means. Is the core ranking algorithm updating in real time? It doesn’t seem so, as we just reported this morning on a new core ranking algorithm update that ran over the weekend. That update seems to have had some Panda signals in it, based on my analysis of the reports in the SEO community.

We are also trying to find out approximately when Google incorporated Panda into their core algorithm and what that means. I estimate that it happened in late 2015, but I am trying to get something on the record from Google.

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Google Explains What It Means To Be Part Of The “Core” Algorithm

Barry Schwartz on January 21, 2016

Last week’s news that Panda is part of Google’s core ranking algorithm has gotten SEOs buzzing about what exactly being part of the core algorithm means. Now, Google has shared some more information about that, saying that the algorithm is consistent enough to not require many changes in the future and can run with less hand-holding.

In a Q&A with Google’s Andrey Lipattsev, he spends a good amount of time explaining the confusion around what it means to be part of the “core” algorithm, and also why it is hard to sometimes define a Google update.

The video starts at around 8 minutes in, where Andrey Lipattsev, a search quality senior strategist at Google, said in regard to what core means:

It is less about the functionality, which means it probably doesn’t change that much over time, and it is more about how we perceive it, in the context of the algorithm. Do we still think this is an experimental thing, it is running for a while and we aren’t sure how long it will last? Or is it like PageRank, it is part of it, it will always be there, at least in the foreseeable future and then probably call it in certain context part of the core algorithm.

He also cites how Gary Illyes from Google tried to explain it on Google+ with this analogy:

I think this is really the worst takeaway of the past few days, but imagine an engine of a car. It used to be that there was no starter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starter_[engine]), the driver had to go in front of the car and use some tool to start the engine. Today we have starters in any petrol engine, it’s integrated. It became more convenient, but essentially nothing changed.

For a user or even a webmaster it should not matter at all which components live where, it’s really irrelevant, and that’s why I think people should focus on these “interesting” things less.

Andrey Lipattsev explains that Gary meant here that Panda is now part of the core ranking algorithm, and it means they do not need to know how it runs any more. It’s been tested, it works, and it can now run by itself without much worry.

Ammon Johns, in the hangout, then said, “Once they forgot how it works, it is core?” To which Andrey Lipattsev replied, “That is exactly right.”

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