The Google Panda Timeline: 22 Dates To Remember

One of the common misconceptions about Google Panda was that it was just 1 or 2 major updates.

That has hardly been the case. Instead Panda has been a well thought out, well executed, and highly patient process of multiple roll-outs over the past 2 years. Here are the 22 Google Panda updates that took place from January 2011 to December 2012 in chronological order.

• 1. February 23, 2011: The Original Panda Update – Google’s attempt to stop scrapers and according to Matt Cutts, this update affected roughly 2% of all queries.
   
• 2. April 11, 2011: Panda 2.0 – This update by Google rolled out Panda to all English search queries worldwide.
   
• 3. May 9, 2011: Panda 2.1 – Minor changes.
   
• 4. June 21, 2011: Panda 2.2 – Really just a continuation from past Panda updates.
   
• 5. July 23, 2011: Panda 2.3 – Details were never really disclosed about this update.
   
• 6. August 12, 2011: Panda 2.4 – Google rolls out Panda to international non-english speaking queries with the exception of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
   
• 7. September 28, 2011: Panda 2.5 – Details were also never disclosed here. But many large sites received huge hits from this update.
   
• 8. November 18, 2011: Panda 3.1 – After many updates of what Google dubbed “Panda Flux Updates,” this update was released.
   
• 9. January 18, 2012: Panda 3.2 – More changes with no real algorithm updates.
   
• 10. February 27, 2012: Panda 3.3 – Another type of “flux” update.
   
• 11. March 23, 2012: Panda 3.4 – This update impacted an estimated 1.4% of search results.
   
• 12. April 19, 2012: Panda 3.5 – Yet another routine minimal impact update by Google.
   
• 13. April 26, 2012: Panda 3.6 – Another small update. 

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• 14. June 8, 2012: Panda 3.7 – An update that appeared to be bigger than 3.6 and 3.5.
   
• 15. June 25, 2012: Panda 3.8 – A data only update with no algorithm change whatsoever.
   
• 16. July 24, 2012: Panda 3.9 – Google claims less than 1% of search queries were affected.
   
• 17. August 20, 2012: Panda 3.9.1 – Another hardly noticeable update.
   
• 18. September 18, 2012: Panda 3.9.1 – A data only update with no algorithm change.
   
• 19. September 27, 2012: Panda #20 – This was a fairly major update that affected about 2.4% of search queries. Many webmasters noted major changes with many websites.
   
• 20. November 5, 2012: Panda #21 – This update officially impacted 1.1% of search results.
   
• 21. November 21, 2012: Panda #22 – A small minor update that seems to have come immediately after another major Google update on the 19th of the same month.
   
• 22. December 21, 2012: Panda #23 – Another fairly large “refresh” type update that impacted about 1.3% of all search queries.

Quite a bit of updates right? Expect just as much activity from Google in 2013. For more info on these updates in a timeline format plus other updates over the past several years check out SEOmoz Google Algorithm Change page (http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change)

    Nicole

About the Guest Author:

Nicole is a blog writer for www.agencyplatform.com. They have created a White label SEO + Inbound marketing agency software that includes SEO intelligence data, social media monitoring, and more.