Have you a noticed a sudden change in your website’s search rankings? Well, it could be the result of a recent Penguin update.
In case this is your first time hearing about Penguin, let me explain. Penguin is the name given to a series of updates for Google’s search ranking algorithm. Penguin 1.0 appeared back in 2012, with a focus on lowering the search rankings for websites that violated Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. If a website purchased links, participated in link schemes, used automated software to create thousands of low-quality links, or otherwise violated these Guidelines, Google would lower its rankings as part of this update.
Since 2012, Google has released more than half a dozen new Penguin updates. While there have been subtle nuances regarding the impact of these updates, they’ve all remained true to the fundamental purpose of Penguin: to improve the quality of Google’s search results by lowering the rankings of websites that violate its Webmaster Guidelines.
It’s been two years since Google has released another Penguin update, but that dry spell appears to have come to an end. In a recent blog post, Google announced a new Penguin update, noting that it’s just one of more than 200 signals used by the Mountain View company to determine where to rank websites.
“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 words 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,” said Google when announcing the new Penguin update.
This most recent Penguin update is unique, however. Unlike all of the previous Penguin updates, this one involves its integration into Google’s core search ranking algorithm. What does this mean exactly? Before, Penguin was a “filter,” meaning websites would only receive a penalty when the update was released. On that same principle, they would only recover their rankings when a filter was made as well. But now Penguin is part of Google’s primary ranking algorithm, meaning adjustments are made in real-time, often immediately or shortly after the affected websites has been crawled.
Another notable change is that Penguin is now more granular. Basically, this means Google will adjust a website’s ranking by devaluing it based on spam signals instead of affecting the whole website.
You can learn more about this Penguin update by visiting Google’s official blog at https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core.html.
