December is normally a slow month for Google updates and SEO discussions and this December was fairly slow. Google promised not to do any major Panda updates and for the most part, it seems they did not. Although, a few days ago, Google got in trouble buying links so they penalized themselves again.

That being said, currently there is some discussion about a possible Panda update that struck down on January 4th or 5th – but I am not seeing enough chatter on the topic, yet, to make an assumption on if it is real or not. But many folks feel that soon enough SEOs will stop talking about Panda and start talking about Google’s next beast to hit the algorithm. Good assumption there, don’t you think?

In any event, to read last month’s Google webmaster report, click here.

Here are the more important Google webmaster related stories we covered this past month:

Google Caught Buying Paid Links Again
Poll: Is Google’s Response To Chrome’s Paid Links Enough?
Official: Holiday Break For Google Panda Updates
Google Panda Update During Holidays? Panda 3.2
Google Panda Recovery Overnight
December Google Search Results Update?
Google Re-Lists CO.CC Domains After 6 Month Ban
Googlebot Mobile For Smart Phones With Skip Redirect
Google Improves Multilingual Support With Markup
Google: We’re Good At Handling Boilerplate Text
Google: Small Sites Don’t Need XML Sitemaps
Google Hosting SEO Advice
Google’s Cutts: No Such Thing As Trust Rank
Google Replies To Webmasters Via Contact Us Form

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.