After many discussions around the web of a noticeable update and after days of Google denying any changes, Google has finally announced the roll out of their latest Panda refresh as of yesterday, January 23rd. This would be the 24th Panda update since the first one was announced nearly two years ago.
Unrelated to the strong signs of an update many sites seemed to experience around January 17th , this Panda refresh was officially announced on Twitter yesterday, though there’s hardly been as much buzz on the forums surrounding this update as there was about the changes earlier this month that Google still claims to have been nothing.
Much like the last Panda, which was pushed out right in the middle of the holiday season and affected 1.3% of English queries, this data Refresh is said to affect a similar number of searches—about 1.2% of English queries.
To learn more about these Panda updates or for guidance on building high-quality sites, Google’s Webmasters have some good advice that might help.