The folks at WebmasterWorld have started to spike in their chatter around a possible Google update starting this morning or yesterday.

Most of those noticing the changes are based in Germany, searching on Google.de.

So this may be a regional change or it may be the start of a larger update rolling out by Google. Or honestly, it may be nothing. But it seems like something. It seems like webmasters in that region have noticed several signs of an upcoming update including:

Ranking changes
Traffic referral changes from Google
Crawl rate spikes by GoogleBot
Cache dates in Google are sporadic

One senior member in Germany said:

Another German SEO added:

Mozcast showed some changes on Tuesday but hasn’t updated yet for yesterday, SERP Metrics shows a spike for yesterday, and so does Algoroo for today.

Can this be the start of the Panda update – possibly, but way too early to tell at this point.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.