Google Penguin 2.0 Goes Deep - But What Does That Mean?

As you know, Penguin 2.0 #4 is live and webmasters and SEOs are buzzing about that. The thing is, some misconceptions about Penguin 2.0 are driving me absolutely crazy.

Matt Cutts, in his video about this update, talks about how Penguin 2.0 will be "more comprehensive," how this version "goes deeper" and will result in "more of an impact" than Penguin 1.0.

The SEO community is translating "goes deeper" to mean that Penguin 1.0 only impacted the home page of a web site. That is absolutely false. Deeper has nothing to do with that. Those who were hit by Penguin 1.0 know all to well that their whole site suffered, not just their home page.

What Matt meant by "deeper" is that Google is going deeper into their index, link graph and more sites will be impacted by this than the previous Penguin 1.0 update. By deeper, Matt does not mean how it impacts a specific web site architecture but rather how it impacts the web in general.

For example, Ross Hudgens tweeted "Penguin 1 targets homepage, 2 goes "much deeper." I said back no and ended at that. But he and others did not get it. The Webmaster World thread has webmasters confused about it also, where someone said "I don't understand this idea that Penguin 1.0 just looked at the home page." You are right, it is completely wrong to think that way.

Normally I don't get heated up about misconceptions in the industry - but seriously.

Update: I see now where the confusion comes from, via TWIG, right over here where Matt said Penguin looks at the home page of the site. Matt must mean Penguin only analyzed the links to the home page. But anyone who had a site impacted by Penguin noticed not just their home page ranking suffer. So I think that is the distinction.

Google's Cutts: Buying Links Doesn't Hurt???

BY, A recent video from Google's head of search spam,

Matt Cutts named If a site linking to mine gets caught selling links, what happens to my site? That video basically explains what happens if a site that sells links and Google knows it, what happens to a site that has links from the link selling site?

In short, not much.

Matt Cutts made three points in this video:

(1) The link seller's web site should notice a toolbar PageRank downgrade 30 - 50%.

(2) The link seller's web site loses the ability to send PageRank going forward.

(3) The links pointing to your web site from the link seller's web site are no longer counted and no longer benefit your web site.

But what about link buying penalties? Well, clearly Matt didn't discuss it in his 90 second video. It obviously, despite my title, doesn't mean that Google won't ditch out a penalty to someone who clearly buys links. But "typically" this is how Google handles it, they simply stop those paid links from benefiting you, which can often feel like a penalty.

Here is the video:

Yes, I know, the links on this site do not pass benefit.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Very sad but this is not uncommon.

Just start typing in Matt Cutts into Google and you will see things like:

• matt cutts is a liar
• matt cutts is a seo spam
• matt cutts is evil

That can't be great for him to see from a search engine he helped design. But knowing Matt, he wouldn't change it or even think about changing it.

Filed Under http://www.seroundtable.com/google-selling-links-video-16587.html