The recently announced Google Panda algorithm update raised eyebrows for several reasons. Of course, any Google algorithm news is worthy of attention, but this specific update was unique in several ways that had SEOs and webmasters wondering what the deal was. Finally, Google has given some insight into why Panda 4.2 is so different from past algorithm updates.
There’s still not much information about why there was such a long lull between algorithm updates – over 10 months – but, Google’s John Mueller did recently provide some answers as to why the algorithm update is rolling out significantly slower than normal.
In a Google Hangout session between Mueller and webmasters, John explained the rollout is taking several months instead of the usual few days or weeks due to “technical reasons.” He also explicitly said the long rollout isn’t specifically intend to “confuse people” as some have suggested.
Both the SEM Post and Search Engine Roundtable transcribed Mueller’s comments on Panda:
This [Panda rollout] is actually pretty much a similar update to before. For technical reasons we are rolling it out a bit slower. It is not that we are trying to confuse people with this. It is really just for technical reasons.
So, it is not that we are crawling slowly. We are crawling and indexing normal, and we are using that content as well to recognize higher quality and lower quality sites. But we are rolling out this information in a little bit more slower way. Mostly for technical reasons.
It is not like we are making this process slower by design, it is really an internal issue on our side.
Webmasters have expressed frustration with the long rollout because it is taking much longer than normal to see results from the algorithm, and Mueller’s comments only provide a small window into how the algorithm is functioning.
Here is the video, from the start of the conversation:
