Google Panda 3.9.1 rolled out on Monday with minimal SEO impact experienced.

Google confirmed Wednesday afternoon that the latest version of its Panda search quality algorithm rolled out on Monday. Panda 3.9.1 had minimal impact on search results, with about 1 percent of searches affected, the company said through its Twitter account.

Panda 3.9.1 was the first Google Panda update from the company this month, after Panda 3.9 struck in late July. While Google’s announcements pegged the number of queries altered by both updates as “about 1 percent,” 3.9 came with an “enough to notice” tag from the company. In general, neither is a particularly large shift for SEO campaigns.

Last week at SES San Francisco, Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that Panda updates are less likely to be particularly large moving forward. While this may be good news for SEO and content marketing campaigns, marketers can expect impending Google Penguin updates to be more noteworthy. Google has not updated Penguin since 1.1 rolled out on May 25 after the initial launch about a month before.

As usual, Google included a link to a blog post from last May detailing the best ways for sites to rank well regardless of the Panda algorithm updates. Developing high-quality website content to offer a strong user experience remains the most important element of sustaining a strong presence in Google search as new algorithms roll out.

 

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.