It’s been nearly one year since Google has launched a Penguin update. So many saw this highly anticipated change coming. Officially announced Friday by Google on Search Engine Land, Penguin 3.0 is in full swing and has gotten us all talking. Penguin updates always aim to eliminate spam on the Web, so we should see some major changes soon.
The Goal of Penguin 3.0 and Those Affected
Unfortunately, we still don’t know how many queries this update affected.
As for the goal of the update, it is of course to remove spam on the Web. However, the Google Penguin 3.0 update may also allow for refreshes to happen more frequently. For those who are counting, this is the sixth release of Penguin. Search Engine Land coined the name Penguin 3.0 (signifying an impactful update) simply because it has been so long since we’ve seen an update – and the name has stuck.
According to Search Engine Land, this has been one of the most anticipated algorithm updates in Google’s history. If you’re hit by Penguin, you have to wait until the next update to see if you have made the correct changes. So as you can imagine, the one year mark couldn’t come soon enough for many webmasters.
What This Means to You Moving Forward
This new Google Penguin 3.0 update is your opportunity to see if you have been keeping a clean link profile. If you see any changes in your PR or in your rankings, good or bad, chances are that you have some analysis to do.
Take the time to understand what happened and then work to improve. After all, it hasn’t always been one year in between updates. Check out this article discussing how to recover from Penguin. Although the article is specific to the last Penguin update, it seems to be just as relevant to this update thus far.
It’s also worth noting that if you do see a drop in rankings, it doesn’t necessarily mean you were directly hit with Penguin. Because the Google Penguin 3.0 update will make changes to links that count and links that don’t, you could simply be seeing the effects of a few links no longer counting the same way they once did.
If you’ve been hit by Penguin or seen an improvement in any way, share your story in the comments.
Republished by permission. Original here.
Penguin Photo via Shutterstock
Ed Yates
Hi, thanks for covering the news – it’s an unusual update to say the least. I think the best is yet to come in the next few months as yet I see no real stir in analytics data. I offered my own opinions on Penguin 3.0 here (click my name) and would appreciate your take on the situation.
You mention above that Penguin 3.0 is most likely going to refresh more regularly and that it’s everyone’s opportunity to keep a clean link profile. Do you think that Penguin 3.0 is solely enough to clean the web or do you think that Penguin 3.0 in conjunction with the great SSL switch over will help blanket the current algorithm so that Google can improve its machine learning technology with behaviour that is increasingly becoming white hat? I imagine this would have been a difficult feat for Google to do with historic data considering the amount of manipulative tactics and spam noise that would have been present.
In my eyes it’s almost as if SSL create a clean slate to analyse clean data with the ability to understand true sharing / linking patterns and practices – and Penguin 3.0 is the enforcer of said practise. Interested in your debate – what’s your take?
Cheers
Ed
@CleverAnchors
RJ
Hi,
Thanks for the update. Here I might be wrong but Google is giving an option to the competitors to SPAM each others site. One can just create an email ID & submit any good performing website in different spam sites. How do Google get to know who is doing what.
Time will come when people look for SEOs to demote the competitors website than promoting their own.
Mike
Thanks for sharing the up date to Google’s Penguin update. It’s great to stay informed with the latest algorithms and there affects. Keep up the fab articles!
Aira Bongco
I hope you can be more detailed on the ‘spam’ thing. We all know that the updates are created for spam elimination. But what does it remove exactly? These updates are getting more vague by the moment.
After Penguin 3.0 update, the organic traffic drop dramatically , more than 70%. I dont know why.
Our business has been utterly destroyed by Google, to the point where staff will inevitably lose their jobs through no fault of our own. As an employee I am disgusted that a company like Google can get away this in this day and age. Wedsaway is a genuine, honest business that aims to help brides make an educated decision when it comes to booking overseas wedding providers, while at the same time providing somewhere for wedding vendors to be found. There is no spam, no criminals, no fake content, just a real online business with real people working to make a living.
This update from Google is certain to only assist the corporations paying the big bucks to Adword campaigns. As all of the previous Updates have done.
Hate Google and hope they get their comeuppance soon !
I have just started to notice an improvement in rankings in Google for one of my clients, who had been hit by Penguin last year with a manual and algorithmic penalty. I have spent the last year performing a thorough audit and clean up campaign of toxic links, disavowing those links that I have been unable to remove. My client’s website was at the top of Google before the initial Penguin update but dropped considerably after. The only page 1 presence for my client was google local. Now after a week since the last Penguin update, my client’s site is on page 2 and climbing.
Thanks for the info about the latest Google Penguin 3.0 update. It’s becoming even more important to have a clean link profile these days. Keep us informed if you come across any more news.
Mehra
Thank you for sharing a fantastic article about latest Google Penguin update. The last update was rolled out on Oct 4 2013, so it has been more than a year. Now we just have keep watching its effect.
Our traffic started to increase last 25th of October. We don’t usually get high numbers on a weekend, but we did on the 25th and 26th. This week. it has been surprisingly spiking, almost doubling our usual daily traffic. I personally think that it all paid off, all the efforts we’ve put through the site. It’s tough to compete with big sites out there, but then as Google promised, those who did good in their sites (like sticking to white hat stuffs) would be benefit from the update especially the small site owners. Nevertheless, it’s still the first week. We’ll see what happens next week.