After weeks of speculation, Search Engine Land reports that Google's Panda 2.2 update is now live.

After weeks of speculation,Search Engine Landreports that Google’s Panda 2.2 update is now live. Brands should consider that content marketing best practices are perhaps more important now than ever as the update is expected to fight scrapers, once and for all.

As Brafton reported, Matt Cutts’ stated at the recent SMX Advanced conference thatPanda iterations were ahead.He hinted that future Panda updates aim at penalizing sites for scraping content, improving upon the first major algorithmic update Google released this year. (In the past, Cutts has suggested that businesses at risk of ranking lower than sites that scrape their content shouldtweet their blog/article posts to help the search giant index their original pages faster.)

Search Engine Land has been following webmaster threads, and it noticed a spike in reports revolving around a potential algorithmic update. Google confirmed to the source that Panda 2.2 was manually pushed out sometime last week. Panda 2.2 does, indeed, aim to improve the search giant’s scraper detection.

Search marketers should monitor their rankings to understand how their businesses are faring in the new search landscape. They might also check outPanda SEO tips from the expertswho attended SMX Advanced.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.