John Mueller: Pretty confident that Penguin 3.0 will be launched before the end of 2014

[Shepherd]

Google's John Mueller said this morning that expects penguin 3.0 to be launched sometime before the end of 2014, probably, maybe.


Nearly A Year Later, Are We Finally Going To Get A Penguin Update Refresh?
Sep 12, 2014
http://searchengineland.com/nearly-year-later-finally-going-get-penguin-update-refresh-203210 [searchengineland.com]

English Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout
Sep 12, 2014, at 54m 45s into the hangout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SueY_ea4D9k&t=54m45s [youtube.com]
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[edited by: aakk9999 at 10:56 am (utc) on Sep 13, 2014]
[edit reason] Tidied up links [/edit]

[SnowMan68]

There is a really good chance it should most likely probably happen very soon within the next 4 months maybe...wow.

[rish3]

I get the distinct feeling that those asking for the update may not like what they get when it arrives :)

[Shepherd]

update may not like what they get when it arrives :)

Well, the only good thing about losing ALL of our organic traffic from google on April 24, 2012 is that they can't beat us down any more! Any change for us would be a positive one. ;)

[Robert Charlton]

Mod's note: Cut one post out of this discussion and moved to new thread in the Google Business Issues forum.

New discussion at...

Google's business model following Penguin 3.0 update
http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/4701817.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[Shepherd]

Well, here we go again. Talk of a penguin update coming next week (between 10/3 and 10/13 I would guess).

[searchengineland.com...]

[rish3]

Well, here we go again. Talk of a penguin update coming next week

Here's the most direct quote I could find...

Q: When can we expect that overdue Penguin update, Gary? (Danny Sullivan asking Gary Illyes of Google)

Illyes replied quickly, “Soon. Very soon. Maybe next week,” and explained that the next update will be a “delightful update.” He adds that Google has probably made updates every single week or every single month since the last update, attacking sites on all sides, however, the new “maybe out next week” penalty is aimed to make both users and webmaster’s lives easier. “We want webmasters and users to be happy,” concluded Illyes, to a cheer of claps and laughs.

It's an interesting change of language and style...especially the nod about webmasters.

[mrengine]

Good find rish3.

It's an interesting change of language and style...especially the nod about webmasters.

Google did the same thing with recently launched Panda 4.1 when they said:

This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

It would seem that Google is wording their public comments in such a way that recognizes the need to address the concerns of small sites.

Actions speak louder than words, and this small business owner has not seen any visible changes in the SERPS that give Google's choice of words any credibility. I would like to see that change, but I'm not holding my breath.

[samwest]

"Actions speak louder than words" - Amen to that brother!

[EditorialGuy]

Actions speak louder than words, and this small business owner has not seen any visible changes in the SERPS that give Google's choice of words any credibility. I would like to see that change, but I'm not holding my breath.

I've seen big changes for the queries that I watch since Panda 4.0 rolled out. (The apparent trend away from generalist megasites and toward specialist sites in my sector has been going on for a while, but it increased with Panda 4.0. I'd expect it to become more pronounced in the future, based on comments that Matt Cutts has made about rewarding topic authority.)

As for Penguin 3.0, I suspect that many site owners are going to be disappointed. Google is probably more interested in making Penguin more efficient and accurate (e.g., by eliminating false positives) than in reducing the overall impact of Penguin.

[netmeg]

I saw some big changes in Panda 4.0, but nothing in 4.1. So far have never seen anything in the Penguin line, but links have never really been my thing anyway. Glad they're finally updating it (if indeed they are) as I have some friends who have been waiting for-freakin-ever.

[mrengine]

Glad they're finally updating it (if indeed they are) as I have some friends who have been waiting for-freakin-ever.

This is how I feel as well. Though my site is solid, I'm not in an industry that has people who do a lot of linking. It's those who we supply product to that tend to get linked to and they have been hurting for a long time. When they hurt, it hurts us. But what replaced them in the SERPS hurts the entire economy because the lack of diversity has left mostly similar Amazon listed products that are produced and imported from low wage countries. Not that I want to get into the whole intellectual property theft issue, but actively promoting these types of "knockoff" products in a large USA based search engine (Google.com) is a tad bit upsetting.

[Robert Charlton]

Here's a link and more detail on the announcement cited by rish3...

Is Google Really Releasing Penguin 3.0 Next Week? Maybe...
Oct 3, 2014 - by Barry Schwartz
[seroundtable.com...]

Per Barry, regarding comments by Google's Gary Illyes...

...this new update will support faster refreshes of Penguin in the future, as we knew, but when prodded more, he said likely on a monthly cycle. I guess a lot like how Panda is run monthly now.

Gary also explained the new Penguin refresh should be less painful. He said they could have run Penguin over and over again but that would have just hurt more and more webmasters. But the new one will be "easier a bit" on webmasters, so much so webmasters will find it a "delight."

...But he clarified, if the tests show issues, then they won't push it out.

[dvduval]

I did spend some time with the disavow tool earlier in the year. I hope my time was not wasted.

[aristotle]

If I'm not mistaken, tomorrow (Oct. 4) is the one-year anniversary of the last announced Penguin update.

Someone mentioned recently in another thread that such a long gap between updates gives spam link-builders and churn-and-burn experts plenty of time to rake in big profits before Penguin takes them down. And the longer this next update is delayed, the more profits they'll make. It also extends the time that innocent victims of previous updates have to suffer.

[EditorialGuy]

Someone mentioned recently in another thread that such a long gap between updates gives spam link-builders and churn-and-burn experts plenty of time to rake in big profits before Penguin takes them down.

Or it could leave them stewing. It all depends on the individual case.

[rish3]

Someone mentioned recently in another thread that such a long gap between updates gives spam link-builders and churn-and-burn experts plenty of time to rake in big profits before Penguin takes them down.

That's true. The spammers that know what they are doing moved to churn-and-burn once they discovered the long lag time between penguin updates.

I think the people that the long lag time hurts most are small business owners that didn't fully understand, or didn't know, the risks their hired SEO was exposing them to.

[aakk9999]

I find this part interesting:

He said they could have run Penguin over and over again but that would have just hurt more and more webmasters. But the new one will be "easier a bit" on webmasters, so much so webmasters will find it a "delight."

So it appears they changed the mechanism on how they do it. From the first sentence I wonder whether they had so far run Penguin analysis only over a certain part of the dataset.

Lets try to figure out what could they change so that the new Penguin is "easier a bit on webmasters".

Could it for example be that they ignore known scapers? Every site I look after has many of these low value links that came from scraped SERPs, various "domain evaluation", or "SEO report" or "keyword analysis". This will help small websites that may not have any other links so these low quality links can perhaps weigh such sites down.

Or perhaps it is not this, it is something else.

We can look at two parts of Penguin: the algo and the data. What do you think will be changed in Penguin 3.0 for it to be easier on webmasters?

[rish3]

Lets try to figure out what could they change so that the new Penguin is "easier a bit on webmasters".

It's hard to read what you quoted as anything other than an admission that Penguin was slinging out a significant amount of undeserved collateral damage.

I wonder if this is a shift, where they are actually trying to be more transparent, or just the consequence of the more PR savvy guy (Matt) being out of pocket.

[samwest]

But the new one will be "easier a bit" on webmasters, so much so webmasters will find it a "delight."

- what? they gonna use lube this time?

What's up with WMT? Mine is stuck back on Sept 28. I suppose now they consider me so irrelevant now that I don't deserve their processing power. Wouldn't surprise me one bit.

[EditorialGuy]

Lets try to figure out what could they change so that the new Penguin is "easier a bit on webmasters".

Well, they could:

- Reduce the number of false positives.

- Give site owners the benefit of the doubt in "grey area" situations.

- Integrate what they've learned over the past year about any number of things related to "over-optimization" and outright Webspam, to make the algorithm less like a buzzsaw and more like a scalpel.

[EditorialGuy]

Addendum to above:

- Integrate Penguin into the main algorithm (I believe that was mentioned), so that bug fixes, tweaks, and other changes would take effect quickly.

This improvement alone would "delight" many Webmasters.

[rish3]

- Integrate Penguin into the main algorithm (I believe that was mentioned), so that bug fixes, tweaks, and other changes would take effect quickly.

This improvement alone would "delight" many Webmasters.

I agree with that, but it would have to include more than just rolling it into the main algorithm, based on this statement:

Gary also explained the new Penguin refresh should be less painful. He said they could have run Penguin over and over again but that would have just hurt more and more webmasters.

To me that reads like it had to include at least one of the other possibilities you listed (less false positives, benefit of the doubt for gray areas, etc). After all, incorporating it to run more often is pretty much the same as "run Penguin over and over again".

[Shepherd]

Pretty sure they are at least testing penguin right now. Seeing some big movements.

[samwest]

If it's rolling out, then I guess it's no lube again. Another downward plunge.

[JD_Toims]

Sorry it's not good for you, but, LMAO! at your post/analogy.

[martinibuster]

I did spend some time with the disavow tool earlier in the year. I hope my time was not wasted.

Good luck with that. :)

On a related note, any data prior to the last two weeks will be incorporated. Anything submitted within the prior two weeks will be a part of the next update, which if all goes well is presumed to be a month from this coming update.

[JD_Toims]

BTW samwest, I should probably add:

I do know where you're coming from -- There are some people I work with who "bought" user-metrics "saying the right thing" (according to the "experts" who are great at sales pitches) as a *huge* ranking signal, so after a while when they kept wanting to make changes "to help the site" I finally got to, "Whatever, it's your site, let's go with Option B..."

What "Option B" did was increase page views by 100%, time on site went up 60%, bounce rate went from +85% to around 60%, and while the numbers kept looking better, traffic completely plummeted...

I guess the moral of the story is:

I know where you're coming from and sometimes "great improvements" based on "what everyone says" aren't so "great" after all, so it might be best to "forget the numbers", "forget what 'everyone' says", and do what you see working the best for rankings in your niche.

[rbarker]

Gary also said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it will likely be too late for this next Penguin refresh. But Gary added that the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent because of the new algorithm in place.

Now that's what I'm waiting for. Our disavow list has been sitting in WMT since March 2014 with a minor update to a particular site a month ago. Sounds like they've already gathered the lists they intend to use. I hope they count all the social media links, follows and Likes we've received this past year...

[Shepherd]

Seeing what appears to be a rollback of penguin targeted keyword rankings to pre October 2013 placements right now. Might be the tide going out before they roll out the new update.