Google gets a new Penguin Google has been the world’s favorite search engine since its inception. Millions of users go through billions of researches provided by Google on a daily basis. Google is known for providing information on the go. However spamming has been a great concern for Google, which it has been trying to control for over 2 years now. In April 2012, Penguin update was introduced by the company to catch websites trying to spam Google’s search results. Penguin algorithm enables the search engine to identify webspam, and penalize the websites involved in the manipulation, by minimizing their visibility in search results. It had been more than a year that Google updated its Penguin, until 17th of October 2014, when they confirmed that the algorithm is now updated and has gone live. Penguin was initially rolled out to assist the Panda algorithm. Panda was designed to give incentives to sites with above the line customer experience, while penalizing sites with low customer satisfaction. Both penalty and rewards are in form of the presence of the website in search results. The Penguin algorithm covers the biggest factor pertaining to ranking and external links. Penguin reduces the visibility of sites which use the manipulative links to increase their rankings. This is done to encourage websites using genuine and relevant links which are rewarded likewise. The first ever update “1.0”, back in 2012, had an overall 3.1% impact on all search queries. This might not sound to be an impressive figure, but the results were phenomenal on the search optimization world. Google followed it’s up gradation plans by launching versions “1.1” and “1.2” in the year 2012, they were able to impact a cumulative 0.4% of internet searches. Penguin “2.0” and “2.1” were introduced in 2013 and they were able to influence 2.3% and 1% of search queries, respectively. Now finally, after 10 months of speculations the first update of this year, Penguin “3.0” has been launched which is said to have made an impact on 1% of world’s searches. This version is designed to immensely affect small numbers of websites, “a smooth cleansing one might reckon and the complete impact would be noticed over few weeks”, according to Pierrer Far, a webmaster trend analyst at Google .This means that only the worst of the trouble makers would be scrutinized and penalized. However the complete details of who and how
would hit by this change is still under examination. It is also very unlikely that Google would reveal such crucial information at such early stage as it increases the chances of manipulators exploiting the weakness. If you have noticed a difference in organic search traffic and a major change in your rankings, just like what happened in 2012 when the system was initially launched and in 2013 when further update was made. In particular, if you have bought links or are obtaining them from established link networks to boost your Google rankings, you are deemed to face the penalty. You need be proactive and take a corrective step to further avoid the penalty. Furthermore you must check the organic traffic on daily basis and observe if they change over the course of next few weeks. If you notice a drastic decrease, you have high chances that you were hit by the update. Generally if you were hit by “1.0” and “2.0” updates, you probably don’t have anything to worry about as you won’t be hit. If you observe a positive change and are now doing comparatively well, this would either suggest that you have come out of the penalty restriction that were holding you back previously, or, your competitors are now being targeted as serious offenders. There are a few “Bad Links” that might put you on the radar, and make you vulnerable to the changes. For instance, links that you have directly paid for other that advertisement and if you have posted links in irrelevant forums and non industry directories. You might also find yourself in trouble if you have links on link farms and article directories. It is expected that Google would launch more data refreshers in the coming months. Consider yourself lucky if you are not already hit, and evaluate your existing strategy, so that you are able to protect yourself from future Penguin penalties.
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