Google: Friday’s update was not due to the Penguin algorithm

Google’s John Mueller said this morning during a live webmaster hangout on YouTube around 5 minutes into the video that the Friday update the SEO community is chattering about is not related to the Penguin algorithm.

John said we can cross Penguin off the list for reasons why some SEOs and webmasters are noticing changes in the Google search results. He added that Google is constantly doing updates to the search results but he did not give any specific reason for this update or name the update.

Again, we asked Google for an official comment on this update and Google has yet to give us a comment. But John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analysts, just said this is not related to the Penguin algorithm.

Here is the video:

Today is also a new milestone in the wait for the Penguin Update. An entire Martian year has now passed since the last one. Yes, that’s correct. Mars has orbited the sun in the time since the last Penguin Update happened.

Our new How many days has it been since the last Google Penguin Update? page gives you the precise count, for those wanting to keep track going forward. Here’s where it stands now:

To learn more about the Friday update, see our post named Is a big Google search update happening? Chatter thinks so.

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Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.