New Version Of Penguin Live Today
The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the news on Twitter, saying the latest release would impact about 1 percent of all searches:
The link
that Cutts points at, by the way, explains what Penguin was when it was
first launched. It doesn’t cover anything new or changed with the
latest release.
Previous Updates
Here are all the confirmed releases of Penguin to date:
- Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting around 3.1% of queries)
- Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
- Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting around 0.3% of queries)
- Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
- Penguin 5 (AKA Penguin 2.1) on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
Why Penguin 2.1 AND Penguin 5?
If us talking about Penguin 5 in reference to something Google is
calling Penguin 2.1 hurts your head, believe us, it hurts ours, too. But
you can pin that blame back on Google. Here’s why.
When Google started releasing its “Panda”
algorithm designed to fight low-quality content, it called the first
one simply “Panda.” So when the second came out, people referred to that
as “Panda 2.” When the third came out, people called that Panda 3 —
causing Google to say
that the third release, because it was relatively minor, really only
should be called Panda 2.1 — the “point” being used to indicate how much
a minor change it was.
Google eventually — and belatedly
— indicated that a Panda 3 release happened, causing the numbering to
move into Panda 3.0, Panda 3.1 and so on until there had been so many
“minor” updates that we having to resort to going further out in decimal
places to things like Panda 3.92.
That caused us here at Search Engine Land to decide it would be
easier all around if we just numbered any confirmed update sequentially,
in order of when they came. No matter how “big” or “small” an update
might be, we’d just give it the next number on the list: Penguin 1,
Penguin 2, Penguin 3 and so on.
Thanks For The Headache, Google
That worked out fine until Penguin 4, because Google typically didn’t
give these updates numbers itself. It just said there was an update,
and left it to us or others to attach a number to it.
But when Penguin 4 arrived, Google really wanted to stress that it
was using what it deemed to be a major, next-generation change in how
Penguin works. So, Google called it Penguin 2, despite all the
references to a Penguin 2 already being out there, despite the fact it
hadn’t really numbered many of these various updates before.
Today’s update, as can be seen above, has been dubbed Penguin 2.1 —
so supposedly, it’s a relatively minor change to the previous Penguin
filter that was being used. However, if it’s impacting around 1 percent
of queries as Google says, that means it is more significant than what
Google might have considered to be similar “minor” updates of Penguin
1.1 and Penguin 1.2.
What Is Penguin Again? And How Do I Deal With It?
For those new to the whole “Penguin” concept, Penguin is a part of
Google’s overall search algorithm that periodically looks for sites that
are deemed to be spamming Google’s search results but somehow still
ranking well. In particular, it goes after sites that may have purchased
paid links.
If you were hit by Penguin, you’ll likely know if you see a marked
drop in traffic that begins today or tomorrow. To recover, you’ll need
to do things like disavow bad links or manually have those removed.
Filing a reconsideration request doesn’t help, because Penguin is an
automated process. Until it sees that what it considers to be bad has
been removed, you don’t recover.
If you were previously hit by Penguin and have taken actions
hopefully meant to fix that, today and tomorrow are the days to watch.
If you see an improvement in traffic, that’s a sign that you’ve escaped
Penguin.
Here are previous articles with more on Penguin recovery and how it and other filters work as part of the ranking system
- The Google Dance Is Back
- Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO
- How Google’s Disavow Links Tool Can Remove Penalties
- Why Asking StumbleUpon To Remove Your Links Is Dumb
- Google’s New Stance On Negative SEO: “Works Hard To Prevent” It
- Still Seeing Post-Penguin Web Spam In Google Results? Let Google Know
- Big Brand SEO & Penguin 2.0
- Demystifying Link Disavowals, Penalties & More
What About Hummingbird?
If you’re wondering about how Penguin fits into that new Google Hummingbird algorithm you may have heard about, think of Penguin as a part of Hummingbird, not as a replacement for it.
Hummingbird is like Google’s entire ranking engine, whereas Penguin
is like a small part of that engine, a filter that is removed and
periodically replaced with what Google considers to be a better filter
to help keep out bad stuff.
To understand more about that relationship and Hummingbird in general, see our post below:
Another step to reward high-quality sites
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 2:45 PM
Webmaster level: All
Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive—and we're not the only ones.
Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and
make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. Search engine
optimization includes things as simple as keyword research to ensure
that the right words are on the page, not just industry jargon that
normal people will never type.
“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a
site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for
both users and search engines. Good search engine optimization can also
mean good marketing: thinking about creative ways to make a site more
compelling, which can help with search engines as well as social media.
The net result of making a great site is often greater awareness of that
site on the web, which can translate into more people linking to or
visiting a site.
The opposite of “white hat” SEO is something called “black hat webspam”
(we say “webspam” to distinguish it from email spam). In the pursuit of
higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t
benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes
that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be ranked. We see all
sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings.
The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites
that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information
needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not
just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve
launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”
In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change
targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we
believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.
We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm
represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and
promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals
because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results
and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to
focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.
Here’s an example of a webspam tactic like keyword stuffing taken from a site that will be affected by this change:
Of course, most sites affected by this change aren’t so blatant. Here’s
an example of a site with unusual linking patterns that is also affected
by this change. Notice that if you try to read the text aloud you’ll
discover that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual
content, and in fact the page text has been “spun” beyond recognition:
Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as
spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is
that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they
are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.
The change will go live for all languages at the same time. For context,
the initial Panda change affected about 12% of queries to a significant
degree; this algorithm affects about 3.1% of queries in English to a
degree that a regular user might notice. The change affects roughly 3%
of queries in languages such as German, Chinese, and Arabic, but the
impact is higher in more heavily-spammed languages. For example, 5% of
Polish queries change to a degree that a regular user might notice.
We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no
search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating
amazing, compelling web sites. As always, we’ll keep our ears open for
feedback on ways to iterate and improve our ranking algorithms toward
that goal.
