Sometimes, understanding Google’s search engine can feel a bit like trying to understand nuclear physics.

In late January, Google announced that Panda was now part of it’s “core algorithm.” After reading a great deal about this, I think what the means is that Panda is no longer an idea they are testing and refining and modifying on a regular basis.

Great, but you might be wondering what Panda is.

Panda was an algorithm that Google created to help them decide the quality of websites and the content on websites. It uses a large number of evaluative criteria to determine if a site has good quality content or bad quality content. The rating a site gets from Google Panda then determines how likely Google is to recommend the content from that site from search queries.

In short, Panda is Google’s way of making sure sites aren’t full of fake content designed to attract attention but to deliver no quality or satisfactory content to those that give the site attention (Spam). Panda is Google’s way of ensuring that people doing searches are delivered the information that they seek (and only the information that they seek).

For the first few years of Panda’s existence, they were tinkering pretty often with trying to get the algorithm “right.” The end result of this tinkering would result in the release of Panda updates a few times a year. I believe that what this announcement means is that Google thinks Panda is just about right and will pretty much stay the same from now into the foreseeable future.

What Google is saying is that they are pretty happy with Panda.