Webmasters Twitch Nervously as Google Releases First 2013 Panda Refresh

Google has continued with its exercise of refreshing its Panda update and has announced a fresh update on January 22, 2013. This is the first Panda update of 2013 following regular monthly updates since the past 2 months.

Google officials posted a Tweet stating that they were releasing a new Panda data refresh that would only affect 1.2 percent of English queries. However, as with all previous updates, webmasters would be nervously watching rankings in the coming days to understand the positive or negative impact of this latest update.

Google had launched its first Panda update way back in February 2011 with a promise to crack down hard on spam websites and other low quality sites. On the other hand, the update was created to reward high quality websites that contained original content and well-researched useful information. The company has fine-tuned its algorithm by way of continuous updates ever since that time.

Google has released yet another Panda data refresh, which is the first one out in the current year. However, even though the company claims that only a miniscule percentage of queries will be affected, all webmasters, especially cynical ones will certainly be observing their rankings with an eagle eye.