This is the ninth iteration of the Panda algorithm. The previous update, 3.8, occurred on June 25. The algorithm got its name from Navneet Panda, a Google engineer.
In its tweet, Google also included a link to its guide to building high-quality sites.
"The changes to the Panda algorithm can have a positive impact on a company's website ranking if taken into consideration," said Pete Goold, managing director of Punch Communications, a PR, social media and SEO agency. "However, the negatives of not adhering to the guidelines can be costly, ultimately leading to a lack of online visibility which can affect a business's bottom line."
The enemy, Google is quick to note, is not the practice of search engine optimization itself.
"Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive — and we're not the only ones," Matt Cutts, a Google distinguished engineer, wrote on the site's webmasters blog. "Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the 'good guys' making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end, we’ve launched Panda Changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results."
