Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
When people asked Cutts about the next Penguin Update he thought: You don’t want the next Penguin update, the engineers have been working hard.
For Penguin:- The updates are going the be jarring and julting for a while.
Webmasters who want to get as much visibility as possible should look at the spectrum of value you’re adding.
From Matt Cutts' latest clarification at seroundtable:
we're still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals, and as a result will have more noticeable impact. It's not the case that people should just expect data refreshes for Penguin quite yet.
This sounds like something that was rolled out before it was ready.
[edited by: indyank at 4:49 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2012]
The Penguin is Oswald Cobblepot. He is an enemy of Batman.
Like many Batman villains, there have been different versions of the Penguin on page and screen, but some key characteristics remain constant.
The Penguin is so called because he resembles the aquatic Antarctic bird, with a squat body and a long pointed nose. He usually accentuates the resemblance by wearing a tuxedo, often accessorized with a top hat, spats, white gloves, monocle, and a cigarette holder.
The Penguin's other great arsenal is his birds, which are most often penguins, but can be any kind of fowl. He is an expert trainer, and his flocks can be the size of small armies.
The Penguin's greatest weapon, however, may be his devious mind. He has often convinced the public that he is an honest citizen, even to the point of becoming a mayoral candidate. While he is a very intelligent and cultured man, enjoying opera, fine cooking and reads Nietzsche and Goethe, the Penguin hates most people and considers himself above them, often blaming them for his status as an outcast.
The Penguin's weakness is his vanity. No matter what the crime or misdeed, he desires recognition, and Batman has often exploited this desire to trap him.
[imdb.com...]
[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 7:23 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2012]
"Oh right, yeah, links and over-optimization. Luckily I am good on both fronts."
So was I, and Penguin took 80% of my Google traffic. I am not penalized (asked for reinclusion and got that confirmed) and I never have had a warning email about unnatural backlinks or anything. An SEO pro from this forum looked at my site and was mystified. I've never really done any SEO. I have four sites that are similar but in different niches and only one of them was hit. The biggest difference? The hit site had a lot of genuine, editorial outbound links. It's possible Penguin mistook genuine linking for a spam tactic. You can bet I'm linking out far less now.
@BaseballGuy
If you are a click based advertising engine, the documents you would be looking at would be those that interfere with your objective (ad clicks).
Tux is a penguin character and the official mascot of the Linux kernel.
Originally created as an entry to a Linux logo competition, Tux is the most commonly used icon for Linux, although different Linux distributions depict Tux in various styles.
In video games featuring the character, female counterparts, named Penny and Gown, accompany him.
The character is used in many other Linux programs and as a general symbol of Linux.
An SEO pro from this forum looked at my site and was mystified. I've never really done any SEO. I have four sites that are similar but in different niches and only one of them was hit. The biggest difference? The hit site had a lot of genuine, editorial outbound links.
I know I'm scared to give out genuine editorial links on the scale I used to. My site that got hit by Penguin was very like three other sites I run, except the hit site used to have "resource pages" full of carefully chosen and constantly updated links readers found useful. That was the only thing an SEO pro who looked at my site could come up with to explain the Penguin hit, and so I removed most of the links on those pages, and I'm linking out minimally these days.
An SEO pro from this forum looked at my site and was mystified.
In the short term, Google won't leave links behind.
Actually Google engineers hate SEO's. I've spoken to a few that said as much, off the record of course.
the implication for me is that a majority of google search staff are not supporting, explicitly or implicitly, or even in favour of, webmasters' interests.
What do we do now?
or make friends with the bosses
I'm thinking they might look at your ratio of nofollow/dofollow links as normal websites don't have more than 5-10% nofollow, while aggressive SEOs tend to have 10%+.
How about signs that the webmaster is closely monitoring their rankings and making regular changes based on the ranking changes they see? This seems to be the focus of a newly granted Google patent
I dunno. I have a few and know of more sites with the same scenario - plenty of Wikipedia cites, entries in DMOZ, and thus heavily scraped, and none of them seem to be getting link notifications or being slapped (and I've asked) There must be a ginormous number of sites with the same circumstances. I just can't shake loose the thought that there's something else going on here.
