Google Panda & Penguin Lack Real-Time Updates, Despite Google’s Past Statements

Google had given statements that its Panda and Penguin anti-spam fighting filters were running constantly. Now it says there's still delays between data pushes.

Google has suggested that having to wait months between for Panda and Penguin updates would be a thing of the past, since these were supposed to be happening on an ongoing basis now. But the company flip-flopped about this last week. Both still work on a periodic basis, with months elapsing between updates.

How Panda & Penguin Work

Before getting to the flip-flop, let’s do a reminder of how Panda and Penguin have traditionally worked.

Panda is a filter Google uses to identify low-quality or “thin” content that manages to rank well despite Google’s regular algorithms. To combat this, Google effectively runs the entire web through the Panda filter on periodic basis. Sites that Panda catches will no longer perform as well as before.

The filter hasn’t been run on a regular basis. It hasn’t operated in real-time, nor on a daily or weekly basis. Rather, it’s been a process that’s happened anywhere from a monthly to a quarterly basis. In other words, every month or two or three or four, Google reruns the web sites its knows about through Panda again, to see if any sites have improved, if new ones should be caught and to deal with false positives.

The filter itself also often changes, when one of these updates happens. Google sometimes makes minor tweaks to it, designed (it hopes) to improve the ability to catch what Google considers poor content. Sometimes these changes are more dramatic. When the more dramatic changes are introduced, it’s common that many more sites get impacted.

As for the Penguin, that’s a filter aimed at severe web spam, especially unnatural links. Like Panda, it runs on a periodic basis. Everything described above about Panda is the same for Penguin, other than the type of spam it targets.

The Panda & Penguin Waiting Game

Publishers hit by Panda and Penguin can change their sites all they want to improve, but it’s a wasted effort until the next Panda or Penguin updates happens. Any improvements, if they are the right ones, won’t register with Google’s search results until they are cycled again through Panda or Penguin and new information is “pushed” into Google’s overall ranking algorithm.

For example, let’s say there’s a Panda Update that happens in the month of February, which hits a publisher’s site. The next day, the publisher scrambles to drop content they think is to blame and make other changes. Even if they’ve made all the right moves, they’ll remain penalized by Panda. They won’t have a chance to escape until Panda is run again. Say that happens in April. This means the site has a two month wait until the changes it made will benefit it.

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