Late last night Matt Cutts was on stage at SMX talking about Penguin and Panda updates. When asked about Panda updates and when will be the next one, Matt Cutts confirms a Panda update will be coming this Friday or Monday at the latest.
Cutts also said that they are in a heated battle with spam, trying to take down spammers and people trying to abuse the system. In an effort to decrease web spam Google said there would be one VERY large Penguin update before the end of the year. This isn’t that helpful but is interesting that there are additional large updates out there that we all can be waiting for.
Let’s be honest though, if you’re doing everything right and not spamming the world… you should be good!
Cutts also confirms that they’ll be taking down 1-2 very large link networks in the coming weeks. they’ve been tracking them and studying them over the past couple months and they are about to take action.
Link Networks Beware
Additionally Cutts joked around about the increase of spammers and some of the tricky ways they are going after large organizations, exposing vulnerabilities and security flaws in sites. Make sure your site is secure.
Matt Cutts recommended using the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool to make sure that you’re seeing your site as Google is seeing it. There are many sites with spam on there sites that can’t see the links that they are showing (referenced a University on their main page in live example of spam) where you couldn’t see unless you went into the code. Google bot shows that a Top 50 University has “cheap viagra pills” on their main page. All Google is doing currently is emailing them through Google Webmaster Tools about this situation.
Make sure you’re checking GWT for emails from Google, it could be a lifesaver and be expecting a Google Panda update this Friday the 15 of March.
