Google’s algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or “clues” that make it possible to surface what you might be looking for. These signals include things like the specific keywords that appear on websites, the freshness of content, your region and PageRank. One specific signal of the algorithms is called Penguin, which was first launched in 2012 and today has an update.
After a period of development and testing, we are now rolling out an update to the Penguin algorithm in all languages. Here are the key changes you’ll see, which were also among webmasters’ top requests to us:
- Penguin is now real-time. Historically, the list of sites affected by Penguin was periodically refreshed at the same time. Once a webmaster considerably improved their site and its presence on the internet, many of Google’s algorithms would take that into consideration very fast, but others, like Penguin, needed to be refreshed. With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page. It also means we’re not going to comment on future refreshes.
- Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.
The web has significantly changed over the years, but as we said in our original post, webmasters should be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling websites. It’s also important to remember that updates like Penguin are just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine rank.
This is what Newswire.net comments about the Google Penguin 4.0 updates
The release of Penguin 4.0 by Google on October 13 has greatly impacted some Google rankings, leaving business owners apprehensive about their newest ranking and how it could affect business. The announcement of the release was made by Google Webmaster Trend Analyst Gary Illyes last Thursday on Twitter.
The rollout of Penguin 4.0 has been creating havoc with Google rankings and is puzzling to many businesses because the results just don’t seem to make sense. Certain businesses are seeing huge jumps in rankings while others are seeing dramatic drops. Meanwhile, some rankings have barely moved.
SEO News Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
