Penguin is now running in real-time as a part of Google’s core algorithm. The update goes into effect today in all languages. Here’s what else has changed, based on some of the top requests from webmasters:
Real-time Updates
Before today’s update, all sites affected by Penguin would get refreshed at the same time. It wasn’t until a Penguin update occurred that those sites affected by it would be able to recover. This can become problematic when considering that the last update to Penguin was over 700 days ago.
With Penguin running in real-time, changes, both positive and negative, will occur much faster. Google says the length of time between seeing Penguin changes will be roughly the length of time it takes to crawl and re-index a page.
More Granular
Rather than affecting the ranking of an entire website, Penguin now devalues spam by affecting the ranking of individual pages based on spam signals.
About Penguin
Penguin was introduced by Google as a standalone algorithm update in 2012. It is designed to devalue pages that engage in spammy link building practices for the purpose of ranking higher in search results.
Penguin received periodic updates throughout the years, but still ran separately from Google’s core algorithm. Now, Penguin is part of the over 200 signals used in Google’s core algorithm. With that being the case, we’ll begin to see Penguin-like updates more frequently.
As far as Google is concerned, the company is not going to make any further comments about future refreshes.
Want to learn more about what this change means for your brand? Join us in NYC for SEJ Summit on November 2nd, 2016.
Glenn Gabe will be sharing insights and advanced strategies for keeping your site Google-friendly. Register for the event.
