Google Panda Update 3.7 Rolled Out on June 8th!

A Panda refresh 3.7 was on the role last weekend and the news has been confirmed by Google. The refresh began on June 8th and affected less than 1% of search queries in the US and about 1% global queries. 

It was just a data refresh of the Google Panda algorithm and there were no algorithm changes. SEO forums were abuzz with discussions about the update with webmasters commenting about their rankings. Some were complaining about the lost rankings, but most said the refresh had no effect on the position of their websites.

Panda update 3.6 happened on April 27 and 3.7 have come a bit more than a month after it. 3.6 were a limited update as well which did not affect many sites.

Matt Cutts on Penguin Update, Negative SEO, Rejecting Links!

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, took the stage on SMX Advanced 2012 in a session titled ‘You and A with Matt Cutts.’ The session kicked off with a spoof video that answered that one essential question about ‘how to rank no. 1 on Google’. Here is the spoof video:

Matt then spoke on some important SEO issues including the Penguin, the Panda and Linking practices.

1. Penguin or Panda are not manual penalties- Penguin is designed to attack “the stuff in the middle;” between good content and spam. Panda was designed for nuking spam. Matt said, “It does demote web results, but it’s an algorithmic change, not a penalty. It’s yet another signal among over 200 signals we look at.”  
2. Reconsideration Requests will work only when you submit them after receiving a warning. Matt said, “People who think it should rank higher after Penguin can let us know and we can look at it, and in a couple of instances, it actually helped us make a couple of tweaks to the algorithm.”
3. Negative SEO and disowning links- Google is probably considering this option of disowning links and Cutts acknowledged the fact that negative SEO is a major concern among people. Google accepts the possibility of negative SEO, but categorizes it as difficult. May be within a few months it will enable disavowing links.
4. Google on buying links- Google catches on to paid links quite early. As Cutts said, “People don’t realize, when you buy links, you might think you’re very careful, that you have no footprints, but you may be getting into business with someone who’s not as careful. People need to realize as we build new tools, it becomes a higher-risk endeavor.”
5. SEOs have a tough road ahead- As per Cutts, SEO may get more difficult. The past 7 years have been considerably challenging for SEOs and as per Matt, the search professionals must prepare themselves for tougher times ahead.
6. Google does not hate SEO- Matt Cutts further clarified that Google does not hate SEO, only the black hat ones, engaged in buying and selling links. He said, “There are people who continue to sell links, although they don’t do any good, and that’s part of how Search Engine Optimization O has a bad reputation.”

He also said- Google is not waging a war against SEOs, but against spam.