Panda 2.4 and Analytics Session Update Rolled Out Simultaneously

[djbaxter]

Panda 2.4 and Analytics Session Update Rolled Out Simultaneously
by MikeCP, SEOMoz
August 21st, 2011

On August 12, Google announced that their high-quality sites algorithm, otherwise known as "Panda", had been rolled out for all languages save for Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. The change is said to impact 6-9% of users' queries, down from the 12% seen in the initial Panda update back in February. Though the official announcement post doesn't make mention of this update's effect on English queries, Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land reported that a [URL="http://searchengineland.com/googles-panda-update-launches-internationally-in-most-languages-89214"]few minor changes were made, but there shouldn't be a substantial impact.

Only 9 hours earlier, the Google Analytics blog ]announced a change to the way visits are to be calculated, effective immediately. We'll get into just how this changed in a bit, but according to the announcement post, "most users will see less than a 1% change".

So, with all of of my clients being US based, I wasn't expecting to see much of a change from Panda, and I can deal with a 1% change in Google Analytics. However, apparantly two insubstantial impacts make a big one, because upon checking Analytics on Monday night, I was surprised to see this...

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