I suspected that something has happened first on October 14th, when i saw many spam sites pop up back again to the rankings (some even on my expense)… And now it is official: Google made another 2 algorithm changes after Matt Cutts confirmed it on a Tweet:

The first update occurred around the 10th of October and the second one occurred in the night between the 13th and the 14th of October. They came out in just less than two weeks after the (last) Panda update 2.5, therefore many resources online are calling them Panda 2.5.1 and 2.5.2.

From what i heard and checked so far i can’t point out exactly on what in the algorithm exactly had changed, i can only assume that it relates to giving backlinks more power on the expense of quality- I examined few spam sites that moved up ahead the rankings and the only advantage they had over others, are many backlinks.

I found some forums posting, discussing the latest algorithm updates:

–  Webmaster World
–  Digital Point

Apparently, there are many websites affected, much more than the last Panda update (2.5) and i am still examining what the new updates are set to target. I will keep updating when i will have something new to report.

* Update: I discovered that many websites that been hit from one of the previous Panda updates (mostly spam sites) have been recovered in the last update, what we refer to as Panda 2.5.2. On the other side, many websites that moved up ahead the rankings during the last Panda updates in the last 6 months, have dropped. I think that this is just a temporary situation and if your website been hit even though you keep a high quality content and you aren’t a spammer, hold strong, because it is probably going to reverse soon enough…