Google Confirms: Core Search Ranking Update Took Place But Not Penguin Related
The forums and social media are a mess with weekend chatter. The automated tools that track the fluctuations are also a mess. But Google’s Gary Illyes and John Mueller were responding to such chatter over the weekend saying, or implying, it was not Penguin.
Gary Illyes said on Twitter, “”no” to the original question (to the best of my knowledge anyway). ” The original question was “Google testing or #penguinupdate?” So no.
Multiple tracking tools reported historically-large rankings movement, which Google later confirmed as a “core algo update”. Google officially said that this was not a Penguin update, but details remain sketchy.
Google is no stranger to search volatility. Its search algorithm changes almost constantly, ranging from minor data refreshes and manual fine-tunings, to entire new algorithm branches that function independently from Google’s core algorithm. When news breaks about a potential “core” algorithm change, it’s usually more significant than a modification to one of its branches—after all, this is the foundation for the biggest search engine on the planet.
Earlier this month, when people started noticing some major volatility in search rankings, the SEO community got excited—was this the Penguin update we were waiting for all last year? Something to do with Panda? Some new branch altogether? As it turns out, none of these possibilities were true—instead, Google implemented a significant change to its core algorithm.
The Penguin and Panda Lead-Up
Part of the significance of this update is the confusion around it. Panda and Penguin, two separate branches of Google’s search algorithm that spurred major volatility in 2011 and 2012, have been mainstays of refreshes and updates for the past several years. Making pushes in somewhat regular patterns (and sometimes, constantly rolling updates), whenever there’s a significant change in ranking patterns, most people turn to one of these algorithms as a major suspect.
Furthermore, it’s been recently revealed by Google’s Gary Illyes that the Panda algorithm, long held as a separate entity, has been integrated into Google’s core algorithm. While this confirmed that Google is prepared for Panda to remain as a long-term update, it raised more questions than it actually answered. For starters, when did this integration take place? When did Panda stop self-updating on a monthly basis (if it stopped at all)? And most importantly, did this have any bearing on the recent fluctuation in search rankings we observed earlier in the month?
The answer is a resounding NO. Even though Panda was integrated into Google’s core ranking algorithm around the same time that this separate core algorithm update rolled out, Panda is unrelated to this ranking volatility. According to John Mueller, webmasters should notice Panda to a lesser degree than they have previously, but Gary Illyes maintains that the new Panda integration should make no discernable difference whatsoever.