Google launched the Penguin Update in April 2012 to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings. When a new Penguin Update is released, sites that have taken action to remove bad links (such as through the Google disavow links tool or to remove spam may regain rankings. New sites not previously caught might get trapped by Penguin. “False positives,” sites that were caught by mistake, may escape. Our latest news about Penguin is below.

Big Brand SEO & Penguin 2.0

Jun 3, 2013 at 8:32am ET by Chris Liversidge

Taking a broader look at Multinational SEO, though, throws up particular issues for the big brand sites out there, and I though that in light of the upcoming Penguin 2.0 update confirmed by Matt Cutts recently it would be useful to look at particular areas of concern for big site SEO and how to ensure you come out smiling when Google’s planned updates take effect.

Penguin 2.0 Losers: Porn Sites, Game Sites, & Big Brands Like Dish.com & The Salvation Army

May 23, 2013 at 4:14pm ET by Matt McGee

Google's fourth Penguin update -- what the company is calling Penguin 2.0 -- hit last night, and less than 24 hours later we're already getting a first chance to look at what sites might be considered "losers" in terms of search visibility. In a nutshell, the list includes: porn sites, game sites and big brands like Dish.com, the Salvation Army, CheapOair and Educational Testing Service (yes, ETS, the company that makes a lot of those standardized tests you probably took as a child). The SEO software company, SearchMetrics, has just shared its initial look at what sites have been affecte [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

Still Seeing Post-Penguin Web Spam In Google Results? Let Google Know

May 23, 2013 at 11:30am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google's next generation Penguin update is now live, and webmasters and SEOs are carefully assessing how this update has impacted their websites. Google is assessing things as well -- how this has impacted the search results, search quality and searcher satisfaction. Google's head of search spam tweeted, asking that if you still see spammy websites coming up in the Google search results, to let Google know. Matt posted an online Google doc form over here where you can specify the URL of the spam site, the search query you saw it for and any additional comments. Here's a special spam rep [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

Penguin 4, With Penguin 2.0 Generation Spam-Fighting, Is Now Live

May 22, 2013 at 6:09pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The fourth release of Google's spam-fighting "Penguin Update" is now live. But, Penguin 4 has a twist. It contains Penguin 2.0 technology under the hood, which Google says is a new generation of tech that should better stop spam. Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Web spam team, announced the new Penguin 2.0 update during This Week in Google (Episode #199). He referenced the earlier video of himself talking about the next generation Penguin update, and said this is being rolled out "within the next few hours." Webmasters and SEOs: expect major changes to the search results. Matt specifical [...]

Google’s Matt Cutts: Next Generation Of The Penguin Update “Few Weeks” Away

May 10, 2013 at 5:08pm ET by Danny Sullivan

In March, Google's chief web spam fighter Matt Cutts promised that the Penguin Update designed to fight spam would get a big refresh later this year. Today, Cutts gave an update -- keep waiting. It's still a few weeks off. Along the way, there's some confusion about whether the next Penguin Update will be Penguin 2 or Penguin 4. It'll be Penguin 4, in how we reckon things. Let's dive in. This Week Wasn't Penguin Publishers have already been wondering if a change in rankings that many have noticed this week was some type of Google update. Google won't say what, if anything happened. Howeve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Top News

How Google’s Disavow Links Tool Can Remove Penalties

Apr 9, 2013 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

Can using Google's link disavow tool help remove penalties? Yes, the company says. But when it comes to manual penalties, disavowing links alone isn't enough. With algorithmic penalties, there may be a time delay involved. Below, more about how both methods work. Over the past few days, I've encountered a couple of cases where people are confused about how the link disavow tool works to remove penalties. So, I figured a clarification post was in order. Here's the situation, all of which I reverified with Google yesterday. Disavowing Links: "Don't Count These Votes!" If you submit a disavo [...]

Google’s Matt Cutts On Upcoming Penguin, Panda & Link Networks Updates

Mar 11, 2013 at 8:03pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced new updates with Google's Penguin and Panda algorithms and new link network targets in 2013. Matt announced this during the SMX West panel, The Search Police. Significant Penguin Update Matt said that there will be a large Penguin update in 2013 that he thinks will be one of the more talked about Google algorithm updates this year. Google's search quality team is working on a major update to the Penguin algorithm, which Cutts called very significant. The last Penguin update we have on record was Penguin 3 in October 2012. Before that, w [...]

No, Google Hasn’t Released Unannounced Penguin Updates

Feb 20, 2013 at 4:29pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Is Google pushing Penguin Updates without announcing them? A recent Google video might give that suggestion, but the Google tells us this is not the case. Confusion Over Penguin Refreshes The last time Google has confirmed a refresh or update to the Penguin anti-spam filter was back in October 2012, with Penguin Update 3. That was about 4.5 months ago. In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout with Google's John Mueller, one person asked John about these updates. John replied in a manner that may be interpreted as Penguin is updated on a more regular cycle but not always announced. You can li [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

Why Asking StumbleUpon To Remove Your Links Is Dumb

Jan 11, 2013 at 11:53am ET by Danny Sullivan

Turns out, StumbleUpon is getting regular requests each week from people asking for it to remove links to their sites, people who are worried that being linked to from a popular and long-standing social media sharing site is somehow hurting them with Google. The linksanity sadly continues. Every since Google stepped up its attack on bad links last year, in particular with its Penguin Update, there's been panic in some quarters about getting links removed. But it's not about removing all links. It's about removing bad links, and I wouldn't count StumbleUpon as one of the sites you should wor [...]

Google Penguin Update 3 Released, Impacts 0.3% Of English-Language Queries

Oct 5, 2012 at 6:36pm ET by Matt McGee

Google's Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to announce that Google is launching the latest "data refresh" of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will affect searches across multiple languages. Including the original Penguin algorithm launch in late April, this is the third update, so we're calling it Penguin 3 and avoiding the previous 1.1, 1.2, etc. naming scheme, just as we've done with the Panda updates. Penguin Releases So Far Here's the list so far, showing when each Penguin update came out, the percentage of English-languages queries it was said to impact (oth [...]

The EMD Update: Like Panda & Penguin, Expect Further Refreshes To Come

Oct 5, 2012 at 12:27pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Last week, Google announced the EMD Update, a new filter that tries to ensure that low-quality sites don't rise high in Google's search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names. Similar to other filters like Panda, Google says EMD will be updated on a periodic basis. Those hit by it may escape the next EMD update, while others not hit this time could get caught up in the future. How Periodic Updates Work: The Panda Example Google has several filters that it updates periodically, that is from time-to-time. The Panda Update is the best example of this periodic na [...]

The Google Dance Is Back

Sep 24, 2012 at 9:15am ET by Danny Sullivan

Vets in the SEO space remember the "Google Dance," how search results used to jump around on a monthly basis as Google rolled out algorithm changes. The dance eventually died, but now it's back. My latest column over at our Marketing Land site, The Return Of The Google Dance, covers how the dance has made a comeback. The column takes you through the history of the old Google Dance and how we've returned to a monthly "Panda Dance." It also explains how the results at Google may dance for other reasons that Google doesn't announce, like refreshes of the Penguin or Top Heavy updates. [...]

Google: Further Penguin Update “Jolts” To Come; Panda Is Smoother & Monthly

Aug 16, 2012 at 2:32pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Fasten your seat belt, if you've been spamming Google. The anti-spam "Penguin Update" will have more jolts in the coming months, as Google continues to adjust it. In contrast, updates to the Panda algorithm aimed at low-quality pages are now so minor as not to be noticed, when they roll out monthly. Speaking yesterday at the SES San Francisco conference, the head of Google's spam fighting team Matt Cutts talked about how Google is still adjusting the Penguin Update algorithm that's designed to penalize sites that spam Google. Technically, Google's saying that Penguin isn't a penalty but [...]

First Report Of Google Penguin Recovery

May 29, 2012 at 2:27pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Penguin update first touched down on April 24th and many webmasters that were hit by this update were frantically making changes to their web site in anticipation for a Penguin refresh. That refresh happened late Friday evening and we have one report that appears to be a legit Penguin recovery. An SEOmoz story named How WPMU.org Recovered From The Penguin Update has a pretty good case of a likely Penguin recovery. How can we know it is a pretty good case of a recovery? The Google Analytics graphs show a huge dip in traffic on April 24th and then a huge spike on May 26th, retur [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO

Google’s New Stance On Negative SEO: “Works Hard To Prevent” It

May 29, 2012 at 1:49pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google’s admitted the possibility of "negative SEO" for years. But in the wake of the Penguin Update, some have claimed it’s now easier than ever. Does a new change by Google in its help pages acknowledge this? Google’s admitted the possibility of negative SEO since at least 2007. On its help page, it previously had said this about "negative SEO," a term used to describe a way a competitor might harm another site: There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index. If you're concerned about another site linking to yours, we su [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | SEO: Spamming

Google Releases Penguin Update 2

May 26, 2012 at 12:48am ET by Matt McGee

No matter that it's late Friday night on the start of a three-day holiday weekend in the U.S., Google has just pushed out the first update to its recent webspam-fighting Penguin algorithm. Let's call it Penguin 2. Google's Matt Cutts announced the news a short time ago on Twitter, calling it a "data refresh" that impacts less than one-tenth of a percent of English-language searches. Minor weather report: We pushed 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. Affects <0.1% of English searches. Context: goo.gl/4f7Pq — Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 26, 2012 Although webmasters and SEOs h [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

Bing Offers Advice On Google’s Penguin Update: Diversify

May 21, 2012 at 9:40am ET by Barry Schwartz

Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Bing, wrote a blog post on the Bing Search blog named Penguins & Pandas Poetry. The post is about Google's latest Penguin update and how SEOs and webmasters need to be better prepared for such updates. The basic advice is simple, SEOs and webmasters need to do one thing - diversify. Duane is not just saying, focus on Bing and make sure your site does well there too. Yes, if you lose all your Google traffic, ranking well in Bing is nice but since Bing only has about 30% marketshare, you are still missing out on a lot of traffic. [...]

Google’s Penguin Update Makes The Wall Street Journal

May 17, 2012 at 9:20am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Google Penguin Update is now mainstream after The Wall Street Journal covered it in a feature story named As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web. The story interviews a few small business owners who were hit hard by the update. One business owner saw his sales drop to $25,000 this month, down from $68,000 the previous month. Another small website owner saw roughly 30% of his traffic disappear over night. And another lost 20% of their traffic. Most of the article goes through small business owners who lives have changed for the worse due to this update. But there are some st [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Penguin Update | Google: SEO | Top News

In Wake Of Penguin, Could You Be Sued For Linking To Others?

May 15, 2012 at 9:59am ET by Greg Finn

Many webmasters have been desperately trying to fix poor SEO work done to a site thanks to the recent Penguin update targeting webspam and the bad link warnings sent from Google. The only current way to discredit a link is to have it removed as reverse nofollow functionality for webmasters simply doesn't exist. One recent example of a link removal request was particularly concerning as it claimed that the webmaster was partaking in illegal action against the company. A recent example from IT blog pskl.us brought to light a harsh tactic for a link removal. A company had cont [...]

Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO

May 10, 2012 at 9:00am ET by Danny Sullivan

It's been about two weeks since Google launched its Penguin Update. Google's happy the new spam-fighting algorithm is improving things as intended. But some hurt by it are still wondering how to recover, and there remain concerns about "negative SEO" as a threat. I caught up with Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web spam team, on these and some related questions. Penguin: "A Success" The goal of any algorithm update is to improve search results. So how's Penguin been for Google? "It's been a success from our standpoint," Cutts said. What About Those Weird Results? Of course, soon after [...]

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