After a 2 year wait Google has finally updated its Penguin algorithm, with the search community dubbing the update ‘Penguin 4.0’. Claiming that Penguin will now be part of its core search algorithm this fourth major release has seen SEOs sit up and take notice, required to create more informative, concise and engaging content that ever before.
The main change lies with the frequency of the algorithm, working on a periodic basis since its introduction in 2012. Built solely to capture websites that are spamming Google’s search results the Penguin algorithm now becomes real-time. This change will therefore benefit those that have been penalised in the past, not having to wait until the next update to see position changes to their ranking. However, this does mean that ill practice will be detected quicker than ever, assisting Google’s plans to simply progress relative content.
In a post from Google that supported the release the Google giants wrote the following:
‘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.’
PAGE SPECIFIC
Traditionally Google would punish websites with spammy links pointing to them, seeing those sites feel the wrath across various pages for many search terms. With the update Google are honing in on specifics saying that the algorithm is more granular.
‘Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site. It means it affects finer granularity than sites. It does not mean it only affects pages’ Google continues.
While still in the ‘rolling out’ phase Penguin 4.0 is set to be fully actioned within the next few weeks.
If you are a search buff and have an opinion on this announcement then be sure to leave your comments below.
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