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...]

[Catalyst]

For anyone that's wondering if this is it - or if it's still rolling out...

John Mueller from Google said in a video hangout this AM, that the Penguin roll out is now complete and fully done.

So what you see is what you get and the rankings should be settled in pretty much as far as Penguin affected sites go, I think.

[youtu.be...]

Penguin discussion starts 46 minutes in. Much of the 1st part is about Google News.

Linda Buquet

[edited by: Catalyst at 5:16 pm (utc) on Oct 20, 2014]

[Shai]

@Wilburforce Ok, obviously when you submit the file, there is a message that lets you know it has been submitted correctly. That is not what the OP meant by acceptance.

[petehall]

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.

Let the 'guilty people' submit a nice file pointing them to what webmaster consider spam and then remove all of these sites from the algorithm.

I wonder if anyone declared a high authority site, such as Google as a low quality link? Doubtful. Basically any link that's gone into a disavow file has been excluded IMO.

Doesn't sound quite so advanced when you put it like that, does it?

Excluding sites like this would take a lot of processing power also... so that explains that. You're not examining the site itself, you're re-evaluating the whole web with 'named and shamed' sites taken out of the equasion.

[EditorialGuy]

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

Same here. No discernible effect on us or the SERPs that I watch.

[petehall]

How many sites do you manage EditorialGuy?

[williamkammer]

I'm seeing dramatic increases for the clients I submitted disavows for after seeing spammy link profiles (even on ones that didn't have manual actions).

I'm also seeing more changes in the map packs than usual. Both the frequency they show for and the ranks in them. So far, I'm seeing less or smaller map packs now for searches that don't specify a geo in the search term.

[Brownstownz]

I'm not seeing a lot of changes on my end with my sites. Some are slightly up and down, but nothing major.

[rish3]

And old MFA site that I had forgotten about. That last data point is just so far today, and we're only about 1/2 way through the day:

mfa site [i.imgur.com]

Haven't done anything with it all. No link removal, no disavow. Historical RPM was around $50, so I guess I'll enjoy it while it lasts :)

I'm not sure what's different about it versus the other old sites I had built when gaming G was simple.

[JfmMultimedia]

@aristotle

We launched 3 different sites back in May of this year, and 2 of the 3 were "hit" by Penguin over the weekend.

What has got me scratching my head is that sites that are now ranking in front of us for upwards of about 30+ search terms, a good majority of them are literally crap spam sites with some horrible backlink profiles.

We've had no messages in WMT hinting towards a penalty, our rankings are down to anywhere from page 9-20 literally from position 1-3 on page 1 of "G".

Our backlinks have ALL been "white hat" no monkey business going on, original unique content, low ratio of exact match anchors to "naked" and "natural" links.

These sites have been developed with "authority" in mind, not some crap spammy intentions.

To be quite honest... this weekend has gotten me a little "aggravated" to say the least. This update that has put literally trash on the first page of search results and knocked us down into never-never land has caused our company to lose a substantial amount of money in sales.

BTW, this "whirlwind" of a weekend landed me on this forum looking for some info about it and I suppose I should say "hello all" and introduce myself as well as to say thanks for all the input and info regarding things!

[EditorialGuy]

How many sites do you manage EditorialGuy?

One main site with a related small site and blogs.

I wasn't expecting any direct impact from Penguin, but I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been any noticeable secondary impact from other sites moving up or down as a result of Penguin 3.0.

[johnhh]

Update: John Mueller updated me on Google+ saying, "I might have spoken a bit early, hah - it looks like things may still be happening. I'll double-check in the morning."

[seroundtable.com ]

(bottom of article)

[diberry]

Interesting pattern. I have one site that saw a big drop in Google traffic after the first Penguin. A few weeks before Penguin 2 was confirmed, my Google traffic increased considerably. A few weeks ago, my Google traffic doubled, and here comes Penguin 3. My strategy? I concentrated on other sites and barely touched that one for all of 2914. I did get a better coded web design, but have barely added or altered any content. So, aside from reducing a bit of code bloat, it's exactly the same site Google thought worthy of half as much traffic a year ago. Shrug.

And before anyone gets all defensive of poor Google, I'm not whining. I focus entirelly on social media promotion these days, and generally Google treats my sites very well without any effort on my part. I'm just sharing the facts.

[nuthin]

All is well and good and after leaving the industry for a couple years and then jumping back in.. its good to see that I still don't need to pay attention to updates as everything is always on the positive... kind of funny when colleagues come to me and point out a update going on and then I let them know that we no longer worry about them... great trying to change the thinking of a company that was set in there ways.

[Planet13]

Kind of funny...

One site that had been number 1 for a long time (and had many spammy link directory links) is down around #15 now.

One of the old time sites, which had been down for a while, is now #3, only behind amazon and walmart.

The fun part of that is that I think they got a boost from Penguin, even though they have an active link exchange program in plain site. Basically, it says, "link to us and we will link back to you." Although not nearly that subtle...

[sampendleton]

The update gave my site a positive impact on search result ranking. I'm thankful for search engine watch for a giving a heads up last August.

[petehall]

@ johnhh that's good to know - thank you.

I thought it was unlikely with the amount of vanishing home pages. Something went wrong or is still churning...

[McMohan]

One of the few updates in my career (quite a longish one if you care to look at my joining year!) I was needed to be told about an update, for I didn't know from the look of it :-) Quite a silent affair for the sites I monitor.

What do I make of it?


1. It was only a data refresh and most didn't get it right in their link removal/disavow request process.
2. If it is an algo update (which I doubt), it is strikingly similar to Penguin 2.1. What ranked well then, continue to rank well now.
3. People have learnt the ways of Google and its flightless bird. Each iteration of Penguin affects fewer websites, until another algorithm plugin in succession to Panda and Penguin comes about.
4.?

[edited by: McMohan at 10:05 am (utc) on Oct 21, 2014]

[JesterMagic]

More confusion regarding Penguin 3.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-3-impact-roll-19321.html [seroundtable.com]


Pierre Far on a Google+ post says that this is just a refresh and that it is a slow rollout lasting the next few weeks.

On Friday last week, we started rolling out a Penguin refresh affecting fewer than 1% of queries in US English search results. This refresh helps sites that have already cleaned up the webspam signals discovered in the previous Penguin iteration, and demotes sites with newly-discovered spam.

It’s a slow worldwide rollout, so you may notice it settling down over the next few weeks.

This sounds like it may not even be "Penguin 3" since a "refresh" indicates that they are just updating the data and not the Penguin algorithm.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 10:16 am (utc) on Oct 21, 2014]
[edit reason] Made the link clickable [/edit]

[engine]

I was just coming here to post that, JesterMagic.

On Friday last week, we started rolling out a Penguin refresh affecting fewer than 1% of queries in US English search results. This refresh helps sites that have already cleaned up the webspam signals discovered in the previous Penguin iteration, and demotes sites with newly-discovered spam.

It’s a slow worldwide rollout, so you may notice it settling down over the next few weeks. Penguin refresh rollout over the next few weeks. [plus.google.com]

It looks as if there's going to be a couple of weeks of movement before it all settles.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 10:20 am (utc) on Oct 21, 2014]
[edit reason] Made Google+ link clickable [/edit]

[Nutterum]

I do not know if anyone else see this but more than half of my SERPs are now back to pre Saturday positions. Kinda sad really, my keywords jumped all across the board after the initial reset.

[Wilburforce]

More confusion regarding Penguin 3.

"The only thing we knew for sure about Henry Porter is that his name wasn't Henry Porter".

[samwest]

I'm seeing a pattern typical of updates a few years ago...my competitors dead, non maintained duplicate websites rise, then fall. The rise happened on the 19th and 20th, bit we'll see if it falls or if Google still thinks outdated, non maintained trash should still rank.

I was always 180 degree out of sync with that pattern, now it looks like they may have grouped me in with my competitors dupe sites. Makes more room for adsense partners.

Now seeing odd surges, followed by total blackouts. Traffic is all of the zombie variety...no conversion in the last 48 hours.

[souvik_2002]

Google has been thinking out of the box, always staying ahead with unexpected twists though not sure which direction it is

[Lorel]

I'm tracking 15 sites that filed a disavow file and cleaned up some links (questionable whether some of them were affected by a Penguin penalty) and I'm not seeing any movement in any of them, so far.

All US ecom.

[crobb305]

the serps look exactly the same to me today as they did a week ago. I've tracked several sites that disavowed links a long time ago. No changes. So much for webmasters being "delighted".

[EditorialGuy]

crobb305: Some Webmasters will be delighted, some will be demoralized, and many will wonder what the fuss was about (especially if, as Google has said, the update is affecting only about 1 percent of English-language queries).

[Shepherd]

Is there anyone in the U.S. that has experienced positive movement?

We have not, BUT we did see a slight improvement during the previous update (oct/2013) so I'm not sure whether we should expect to see anymore improvement or not.

[Hollywood]

I submitted a huge disavow file at least 7 months ago. I see regular improvements in SERPS but I think they are all due to the steady rise we have had anyway over the past 6-7 months with tons of new stories, a 100% site fixup and many other items. Not even close to the hits we had before Penguin first arrived and slapped us SILLY.

[mrengine]

Is there anyone in the U.S. that has experienced positive movement?

No. This has been just as big of a disappointment (if not more) than the recent panda for me. In fact, judging from other websites reporting on penguin, the serps don't coincide with Google's rhetoric when it comes to helping small sites at all. Many people are complaining they spent 1+ years fixing content, removing links and disavowing other links with absolutely no improvement. I can see why they would be a bit upset after wasting all that time for absolutely nothing.

[netmeg]

Is there anyone in the U.S. that has experienced positive movement?

Yep, quite a few, judging from the chatter I'm party to.