As I keep trying to get the answer to what’s the difference now that Google added Panda into the core algorithm, I keep getting more and more confused.

Look at how Gary Illyes explained it when Kenichi Suzuki asked in this Google+ thread:

Question: What is “Core Ranking Algorithm” at all? How different is it from algos that aren’t a part of it?

Answer from Gary:

So, he said, “essentially nothing changed” it just seems to make it “more convenient” for Google to turn on the engine and maintain?

Which may be why Google’s John Mueller said it should happen more frequently but yet it is still not real time cause a person still needs to press the start button in the car.

But what threw me for a loop is that John said that now that Panda is integrated, webmasters should notice it less. I mean, in the past, Panda was noticed a lot. So that would be a change and it would be different. But with Panda 4.2, the last official Panda update, many webmasters did not notice it – so it isn’t far off from that.

So has nothing changed? It is a bit confusing as you can see.

Forum discussion at Google+.