We were surprised not to hear about the 25th Google Panda update on Friday, after Matt Cutts discussed it at SXSW earlier in the week. It turns out that the update likely landed after all, as Search Engine Land is reporting that Google has integrated Panda fully with their indexing process and will no longer confirm future updates.

This is another step in Google's efforts to stop web designers from creating web content for Google, and instead encourage them to design for their audience. By not announcing new updates and rolling them out over several days, as they seem to have done with this one, the updates will be less noticeable and the effects will be harder to nail down. Uninformed designers will need to focus on their analytics and testing their sites to find out what works best for their customers, rather than trying to build websites to the latest iteration of Google's search algorithms. After the initial nervousness wears off, this will turn out to be better for designers who won't need to worry about keeping up with the latest Google 'trick' and can focus on solid design, and better for customers who will, in the end, receive the best search results based on content and not on search-algorithm runarounds.

Read more about the latest update from Search Engine Land.