Google Updates You May Not Have Heard of

When Google updates like the Panda and Penguin rolled out a few years ago, the Internet shuddered. Websites reported massive losses in traffic following their debut, while their owners struggled to rebound from the shock; however, knowing these major updates alone isn't enough. Over the years, there have been updates that had the same effect but didn't get as much airtime.

Phantom

Introduced in May 2013, the Phantom update did the definition of a phantom justice; it struck when webmasters least expected it. Affected webmasters thought it was the latest update of Penguin at the time, Penguin 2.0, but after an investigation by SEO expert Glenn Gabe, this update was deemed more like a mutation.

Its coincidence with the real Penguin 2.0, released two weeks later, also earned it a new nickname: Phantenguin. Apparently, getting hit by one update isn't bad enough.

Unnamed

Perhaps the scariest updates are the ones that don't have a name. Webmasters began noticing major activity as early as November 2012, in which Google neither confirmed nor denied them as precedents to a major update. To date, there have only been five unnamed updates. These are:

• November 19, 2012 – prior to Panda #22, affecting 0.8% of English queries
• July 26, 2013 – likely link network or UI change, hits 15 to 20% of a website's traffic
• November 14, 2013 – following DNS errors, gains by top ten domains
• December 17, 2013 – unusual spike during the holidays
• March 24, 2014 - purportedly a "softer" Panda update