May 27, 2014
Google recently had quite the busy weekend when they launched TWO algorithms. Yes, two. And, instead of keeping these updates to themselves and leaving the SEO world to speculate, they straight up told everyone that their newest search algorithm updates were live. For proof, just check out these tweets from Matt Cutts, the head of the webspam team at Google aka the face of Google search. When your rankings have dropped, there's a good chance that this guy may possibly have had something to do with it.
Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014
This past weekend we started rolling out a ranking update for very spammy queries: http://t.co/NpUZRqpnBI
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 21, 2014
So now we're up to Panda 4.0. The original iteration of Panda was released back in 2011. Panda's mainly affects websites that it deems are "low-quality." This is not to be confused with their Penguin update which focuses on websites which employ what Google considers to be "black-hat" SEO techniques. Google has continued to refine both algorithm updates over the years. More info about the various Panda updates can be found on Search Engine Roundtable.
But one update wasn't enough, Google also updated their Payday Loan Algorithm, also known as the Google Spam Algorithm. This algorithm has been put in place to improve search results for spammy queries, including payday loans, Viagra, pornography and more. Keywords related to these industries are constantly spammed throughout the web, either through blog comments or website hacks. As long as your website is not focused on the industry or accidentally ranking for any of these spammy keywords, your website will be fine. Read more via Search Engine Land.