There has been a storm brewing surrounding Penguin 3.0. If algorithm doesn’t rerun soon, the search engine optimization community might release a tornado of excessive Google slander around the topic. Many are speculating the cloudburst will occur today (sorry just wanted to see how many weather references I could fit in the intro). OK, so let’s dive into this blizzard of a topic!
Penguin 3 SEO
What is the Penguin Update?
According to Wordtracker, “Google introduced the Penguin update in April 2012, as a machine-learning algorithm to uncover spammy backlink profiles that not only devalues the impact of spammy backlinks’ on rankings (as a previous Panda update did) but also penalizes websites employing low quality backlinks by de-ranking them.” Outside of this, we also know the Penguin update looked at onsite web spam such as keyword stuffing.
When was the Last Update?
The last Penguin up was in October of 2013! Because of this, those who were penalized in the update have never had a chance to recover. According to Google, the Penguin update needs to rerun in order for those who were negatively influenced to regain traction.
Why do we think the Next Penguin Update is Coming Now?
According to Search Engine Roundtable, “This morning, in a Google+ Hangout, John Mueller kind of hinted that it is coming really soon. He talked about it at 21 minutes and 40 seconds into the video.”
Outside of this, we know the SEO community has been going crazy asking for this update. We also know that Google has been working on the next release for a long time. As a side note, rankings have been fluctuating far more than usual this week. In a sense, this is like a light rain before the heavy downpour.
What this Means for You?
- The Google Penguin 3.0 update could have the following impacts on sites.
- If you cleaned up what got you penalized, rankings will improve.
- If you are now in violation of Penguin, you could be penalized.
- We can expect that there will be new kinds of web spam added to this update.
- We can expect this update will look to lessen the impact of negative SEO.
Overall, this will be very interesting to watch. We will report when have confirmed the actual launch.
Sources
- How to Avoid Getting Slaughtered by Penguin 3.0, Neil Patel. May 14, 2014
- Is Google Launching Penguin 3 Today?, Barry Schwartz. August 15, 2014
