Confirmed: Google Penguin 3.0 released late Friday Night (17th October)

[Robert Charlton]

Per Barry, it's now official, but details still forthcoming...

Confirmed: Google Penguin 3.0 Released Late Friday Night
updated midday Sun Oct 19, 2014
by Barry Schwartz
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-3-19313.html [seroundtable.com]

Update & Confirmed: Google Sunday afternoon has confirmed they have done a Penguin update. I am trying to get more details at this moment.

From Barry's original report, dated Oct 18...

Special Report: Google Penguin 3.0 Likely Released Saturday Morning

I am working on getting confirmation from Google but I have never seen the forums light up as much as they are now...

...It is unclear if this is a refresh to the Penguin algorithm or a revised algorithm update. Again, I am waiting to get more details from Google on this.

But it seems like 90%+ of SEOs are in agreement that Google refreshed Penguin over the weekend. Will they reverse it? Was it a test? Will it stick? That is the big question.

PS: Thanks to member elguiri for spotting this in the Google Updates thread [webmasterworld.com...]

[louieramos]

if you are seeing fluctuations on your rankings, its normal while Google is rolling out penguin. It takes weeks before all datacentres are synced with the latest datasets, hence you may see old results and unusual activities.

[Wilburforce]

hence you may see old results

Apropos of Shepherd/seoskunk/Robert Charlton's earlier posts on cache/index dates, you might see very old data factored in as well.

I'm just trawling through a new pile of crawl errors from linking pages that haven't existed for at least 6 months (and in a couple of cases for over two years).

I do hope the current refresh is being run on current (or at least recent) data. I did a major revision of my disavowed links a few weeks ago, and it would be galling to have all the dead pages I removed from the current list counted as spam anyway.

[petehall]

Seriously, Google?

You think this is an improvement?

It's shocking.

The timing of this update however is no surprise. Trying to upstage Apple with their Yosemite release.

How can sites which sailed through all previous Penguin updates suddenly be affected? It makes no logical sense.

On the other hand if what they actually did was dial up the importance of links with this update, then it all makes perfect sense to me. Links are now more important than ever.

[Nutterum]

I for one am happy of the SERP movement so far. Our niche keywords that are strongly connected to our service perform better than anticipated moving 3 to 5 places up and in some cases being 1st in results on first page. At the same time the big websites with semi generic data are near the bottom of first page and some are down to second page.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves here, plenty of movement is still to be seen.
Oh the niche is hotel booking service in case you are wandering.

[Nutterum]

I for one am happy of the SERP movement so far. Our niche keywords that are strongly connected to our service perform better than anticipated moving 3 to 5 places up and in some cases being 1st in results on first page. At the same time the big websites with semi generic data are near the bottom of first page and some are down to second page.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves here, plenty of movement is still to be seen.
Oh the niche is hotel booking service in case you are wandering.

[Jez123]

I didn't see anything much happen with this Penguin. Bit disappointing really. I have watched one site, badly affected by Penguin 1.?, abandon its site and spam its way back into the top ten with a new site, exclusively linked to from the old, penguinized one. It's risen in the SERPs. I was hoping to see some justice there.

[Wilburforce]

I didn't see anything much happen with this Penguin. Bit disappointing really.

So far, that summarises it for me, too.

[stgeorge]

Fantastic.

Black hat hacking has stormed back into our niche WORSE than ever.

Unbelievable. Just breathtaking.

[Iceman88]

I didn't see anything much happen with this Penguin. Bit disappointing really.


So far, that summarises it for me, too.

Same for me in the UK, absolutely nothing in my niche.

Still hoping to see movement.

In the meantime update should be renamed 'tumbleweed'.

[RedBar]

UK based and lots of movement for my global widgets, some excellent, many I have yet to check.

For my UK sites it mostly looks positive, along with valid competitor rankings, other than some relevant but unable to supply US listings. Why can't they get this right?

One other thing I have noticed is that image searches do not mirror each other now, UK v US for some of my image widget searches are definitely different now.

[Wilburforce]

Still hoping to see movement.

Yes, and...

Black hat hacking has stormed back into our niche

...anything storming anywhere would at least be interesting.

Possibly UK DCs (or some of them, at least) haven't updated yet, but from here it looks more like continuous steady drizzle than hurricane.

[stgeorge]

Trust me, seeing 30 - 40 hacked sites redirecting to a crappy list site sitting above your sites for numerous keywords is NOT interesting in the slightest.

[petehall]

Fantastic.

Black hat hacking has stormed back into our niche WORSE than ever.

Unbelievable. Just breathtaking.

I think that's because G has combined the update with a dial-up on the importance of external backlinks.

It makes sense to scare people away from links and once the desired effect is achieved to make this a more important ranking factor again.

[Wilburforce]

@petehall

I think that's because G has combined the update with a dial-up on the importance of external backlinks.

How do you think nofollows and disavowal would affect this?

Since I began disavowing links I have noticed that a significant number of long-standing links - some of them junk, some of them not - have vanished altogether. I suspect that this phenommenon is general and, if you are correct, will have some negative impact on many smaller sites.

[petehall]

How do you think nofollows and disavowal would affect this?

Massively.

I've been seriously contemplating the whole disavow thing... it is just an easy way to make the people police for G.

People will have reported thousands of URLs as 'bad links' which must have gone into a log for discounting.

So you discount all of the guilty submissions and dial up the focus on what's left... simple.

[Shai]

Just an update. We have 3 clients with confirmed full penguin recoveries. All were affected by Google 2.1. All ecommerce sites and all have had nothing but a well researched disavow file uploaded to Google. There was no point in even attempting removal of links as the chances of getting even 5% off were minimal. The latest one was submitted at the end of August. Will further document it on our blog when I get a chance. Busy day giving good news to a few clients :)

If anyone want to know any more specifics, just ask and ill try and expand as much as I can.

Regards, Shai

p.s Sorry, that's 4 recoveries. Just checked cache dates and they are all pre 11th of October apart from one that is 18th.

[Mentat]

Strange update.
having 15 000 domain: lines in my disavow tool I was expecting some impact, but nothing seriously.

The problem is that G really needs to run the Pirate Update, as not, the SERPs is like this:
- big spammer site (multiple language domains)
- strange spam sites
- piracy site (blogspot and facebook)
- torrent site
- a lot of strange non-english sites
etc

It's FUBAR...

[SnowMan68]

@ Shai

What country were the clients in?

[Shai]

Sorry.. all UK.

[chrisv1963]

all have had nothing but a well researched disavow file uploaded to Google

This should not be necessary. Google should be able to detect and ignore questionable links. With the disavow files WE are doing Google's work!

It is no longer possible to just make a good site with good content. You have to be an expert in disavow files and other sorts of crap to avoid that competitors hurt your website with negative SEO.

[Shai]

Good luck with that.

[particleman]

This confirmed to me that you can escape penguin only temporarily if you are keyword stuffing and don't fix the root cause. A client of mine and I have been dealing with penguin since V1. I have been on them to do the tough work of redoing their keyword stuffed content. Rather they took the easy way out and changed their domain name. While they picked up a few nice SERP positions for the last year, no long tail positions came back because of it. The underlying problem (the stuffed content) was not addressed. Not surprisingly they have lost any gains since Friday by switching the domain name it appears. The previously held top SERPs are gone now.

[Wilburforce]

keyword stuffed content

Are we talking about Penguin, or Panda?

[RedBar]

<Is this off-topic?> Mods please move if required.

Can anyone explain this to me with this update?

I have a keyword1 keyword2 keyword3, in both G.com and G.co.uk 22/30 results have:

Nike Free keyword1 keyword2 keyword3

The .com and co.uk results are not the same plus I cannot find any keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 on any of these 22 pages, keyword2 is used, it is the colour white.

Backlink checkers show all these sites have basically "nothing" and the keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 are not at all a popular term, it is purely for an exclusive specialist construction product of ours.

I'm baffled, FWIW I am #1 in the UK however the .com results are simply an unbelievable mess. If you want to see it, you know where I am.

[petehall]

Has anyone with ranking issues recently made the switch over to https?

[James0084]

my site also effect google penguin 3.0 update last friday . now i don't know how to do with site because 80% traffic down. all page gone from 1st page google results to 7,8,9 page

[Hollywood]

I submitted a huge but extremely well research disavow file about 9 months ago. I have no way (I think I have no way) of telling if Google acknowledged the disavow file yet or not, how the heck are we supposed to tell if they implemented my disavow file? I see decent gains, like up anywhere from 3-9 positions on most terms, but I have done a ton of good quality white-hat work over the past 1.5 years. I got creamed by penguin and a tiny bit by panda. But we have reworked the entire site.

Still don't know how to tell if the 'disavow' file has been implemented or accepted etc.

~H

[Shai]

There is no 'Implementation' or 'acceptance' of a disavow file. The way you should think about a disavow file is like applying a filter between the sites containing the links and your site. The filter just changes the link to a NOFOLLOW only when the link gets re-crawled. Once the disavow file is submitted, every time a website containing your link gets re-crawled, the links get rediscovered but this time, as they are followed, they are turned into a NOFOLLOW. This explains why it normally takes around 3-4 weeks before the majority of the bad links get re-crawled and neutralised. There is no manual intervention in this process from Googles side at all. Also, I will always recommend that the disavow file is continually updated on a weekly basis if possible.

[edited by: Shai at 4:56 pm (utc) on Oct 20, 2014]

[aristotle]

I wonder if anyone has any reports on sites that were created and launched since the last Penguin update (Oct 4, 2013), more than a year ago. I haven't launched any myself, but there must have been plenty of them launched by others.

At any rate, this latest penguin update would be the first one for these new sites, so it would be interesting to know how many have been affected. A lot of spammers, especially churn and burn experts, must have launched some new sites during the past year. I noticed that one of the members here at WebmasterWorld has been boasting about how great his spammy sites have been doing, banking big profits, even though they have few if any natural backlinks (according to at least one recent post). If anything should be hit by Penguin, it would be this type of site.

[Wilburforce]

There is no 'Implementation' or 'acceptance' of a disavow file.

Well, it is acknowledged in Messages in WMT ("The file containing disavowed links to http://www.example.com/ has been updated. You successfully uploaded a disavow links file with x URLs and y domains").

'Implementation' is likely to remain a permanently grey area, as I very much doubt Google will publish or wish anyone to deduce the relationship - if there is one - between disavowing sites and SERPs.

They did say - I now forget where - that disavowal was "advisory" (so if you disavow a site that is beneficial or doing no harm they may ignore it), and as petehall points out ("it is just an easy way to make the people police for G"), it is probably more for their benefit than ours, but I still use and update it.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:30 pm (utc) on Oct 20, 2014]
[edit reason] replaced the dummy url with example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]