The Panda Timeline

Here is a brief timeline of the entire Google Panda update saga:

• Panda 1.0 (February 22, 2011): Google Officially declares the launch of Panda algorithmic update.
• Panda 2.0 (April 11th, 2011):  Google Panda goes global for all English language users, affecting 12% of all queries.
• Panda 2.1 (May 10th, 2011): More iterations of the ongoing Panda update are reported.
• Panda 2.2 (June 16, 2011): Panda  continues the devastation
• Panda 2.3 (July 26, 2011): Google acknowledged that a small update was pushed to the Panda filter. Big shakeups reported, traffic to a majority of sites disappeared in thin air.
• Panda 2.4 (August 12, 2011): Panda rolled out for major International languages excluding Japanese, Korean and Chinese. This was the biggest impact after Panda 1.0 and Panda 2.0, impacting 6-9% of all queries.
• Panda 2.5 (September 30, 2011): Another iteration, this time confirmed after Webpronews broke a story on Daniweb.
• Panda 2.5.1 (October 9-13th,2011): Finally some hope, Searchmetrics reports Panda 2.5.1 resulted in major recoveries. Google Engineer Matt Cutts confirms.
• Panda 3.0 (October 20, 2011): A minor update.
• Panda 3.1 (November 21,2011): Another small update affecting less than 1% of all queries.
• Panda 3.2 (January 18,2012): Another minor iteration.
• Panda 3.3: The recent Panda iteration changes how link popularity influences search results.

Only a few websites were able to recover from Google’s Panda slap. Digital Inspiration, Daniweb, CultOf Mac, Pocketlink are some examples though none of these sites were able to completely recover their lost organic traffic.