Google had first released Panda 4.0 back in May of this year, and yesterday Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update has began rolling out. Through a post on Google+ Google said that a slow rollout has began this week and will continue through to next week. Depending on location the new Panda update should affect about 3% – 5% of search queries.
The new Panda release aims to be more precise than the 4.0 version was and should allow for high-quality small and medium sized websites to rank better.
Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.
The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge, if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, made alterations to your site, you’ll know by the end of next week if those were good enough, if you see an increase in traffic.