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...]

[aakk9999]

Anyone watching non-English SERPs? Any changes there?

[Shepherd]

Great Netmeg, I know you had mentioned you knew of one early on that had seen some positive movement, and you've also heard of quite a few others, that's good news. Well maybe not for those of us that haven't seen anything, but like they say, the devil you know...

[diberry]

I saw big positive movement in late September, just as I did with that Phantom update a few weeks before Penguin 2.0. And I'm in the US. I do believe it's all Penguin related.

[kellyman]

I am seeing slight reversals here in the UK, One site i monitor got a moderate hit, but many big keywords are jumping up back to where they were pre penguin.

maybe still dancing around but back to page one for some keywords for now... ill keep you posted

[bhartzer]

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

Yes, actually I have a client who is in a service industry. They go after terms like cityname + servicename and they were nowhere to be found for the past year or so.

Now they're #1 and sometimes #3 for all their keywords. Started over the weekend.

I have yet to see a site that's not local-based that has had a big jump in rankings and traffic because of this Penguin refresh.

[Shepherd]

That's interesting Bhartzer, sounds like you're seeing more movement in the long-tail searches.

[IanCP]

I have noticed some improvement in traffic, the first in a long while.

However it could be some unrelated coincidence, and experience tells me a few days of improvement means absolutely nothing, just as one swallow doesn't make a summer.

We shall see.

[Robert Charlton]

More information from Google's Pierre Far regarding the status of this "refresh"... which in another spot in his post, he calls an "update", so it's not clear to me which it is.

Pierre indicates that this is a slow worldwide rollout, and suggests that it's liable to take a few weeks yet to settle down....

Pierre Far - Google+
12:49 AM - 10/21/2014
[plus.google.com...]

Penguin update rolling out

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.

[micklearn]

So, one employee (Mueller) says Penguin is done running and hours later another employee (Far) says it won't be done for a few more weeks. Mueller's lost a lot of credibility this time around.

[Robert Charlton]

So, one employee (Mueller) says Penguin is done running and hours later another employee (Far) says it won't be done for a few more weeks. Mueller's lost a lot of credibility this time around.

micklearn - Actually, John Mueller had corrected himself, I believe before Pierre Far had posted, and then three of us here posted Far's news, all quoting the same comments in this thread...

johnhh in msg#4710019 from yesterday cited John Mueller (via Barry in SER):

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."

The next day in the early hours of the morning, some 12-hrs later, both JesterMagic (msg #4710070) and engine (msg #4710072) posted Pierre Far's correction, one quoting SER and one quoting Google+. I caught the same correction again from Pierre Far's Google+ page and posted it just above.

John Mueller's credibility is OK in my book. YMMV. Sorry for all the confusion, though.

[Vipul_Saini]

Hello friends..
Thanks for posting the updates but what will be the next step to recover from this penguin update ..Please suggest me some points.

[Wilburforce]

it's liable to take a few weeks yet to settle down

Does "settle down" mean "happen"? I'm still seeing nothing in my sector.

[Nutterum]

I am trying to update the situation in my niche (B2B Hotel reservation services) and I can say that, par one site that (assumption here!) was penalized by the previous Penguin that is now back in Page 1 for most keywords, everything else is going OK for the service I monitor. The the long tail keywords however, boy did those SERPs change.

Seems so far this new penguin is bringing up the quality on these types of queries. Anyone can anyone check how their long tail keywords perform? So far a few friends reported similar results as mine (as in good quality long keyword serps are on the rise)

[Whitey]

Hopefully the mods will let me quote Barry, since his article was quoted at the beginning of this thread. I wanted to make an observation around his words in bold below here :

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.

But the key here, Pierre said "refresh," which means to me there were no new signals added to the algorithm, that the only thing Google did was rerun the algorithm. Why couldn't they just "refresh" the algorithm several months ago is beyond me. I thought we were waiting for a major rewrite that adds more signals and makes it faster to run?

Penguin 3.0 Recap
•Started rolling out late Friday night, October 17th
•Will continue to roll out for next few weeks
•Is a worldwide roll out
•Impacts less than 1% of English queries (but may have a smaller or greater impact in other languages)
•Only a refresh, no new signals added
•It helps sites recover from previous Penguin updates that fixed their link profile
•It demotes sites that have a bad link profile

[seroundtable.com...]
Is Google committing to applying time penalties as a deterrent with this and future "refreshes" ?

@John Mueller ... (it) helps to keep in mind here is that you shouldn't be focusing on individual factors of individual algorithms, it makes much more sense to focus on your site overall -- cleaning up individual issues, but not assuming that these are the only aspects worth working on.

@Robert Charlton ... I'm assuming that most who didn't work on the site overall but just disavowed bad links aren't going to see much recovery.

What's probably going to be most confusing and most discouraging for many, though, are situations where members did work on their sites overall but didn't see recovery.

...hmmm , the next couple of weeks will be interesting to see how folks see this play out for further remedial work as well as recoveries.

[Robert Charlton]

But the key here, Pierre said "refresh," which means to me there were no new signals added to the algorithm, that the only thing Google did was rerun the algorithm. Why couldn't they just "refresh" the algorithm several months ago is beyond me. I thought we were waiting for a major rewrite that adds more signals and makes it faster to run?

We're not sure what they've done, Whitey, nor do we know what the infrastructure changes behind this might have been that will enable, eg, Penguin to run in the future on a monthly basis.

Also, as I noted in my post above, Pierre used both "update" and "refresh" in his announcement, and I'm not clear what he meant by that. Given the time situation, he may simply have been hedging his bets and using both terms. Obviously, a data refresh is a necessary part of whatever happens, but I assume that the new Penguin 3 features announced also strongly suggest something of an algo update or change. There was strong indication, as I had read things earlier, that Google was intending to dial back some factors that might have produced false positives... something which by itself implies an update.

It may be that, after some testing, they've decided to do some of this in phases, rather than all at once. I can even imagine that this might be tied into ongoing infrastructure changes. There have been several infrastructure updates happening throughout Google, and a new way of computing Penguin might possibly become a part of those. Perhaps what's been done is not as seamless as Google wanted it to be, and they're still working on it.


As to remedial site work... I don't think site owners should be sitting on their hands waiting to see what happens. Worth tossing into the mix here is a revisit to a thread you started, Whitey, about the time it takes dependable ranking signals to develop and the time it takes Google to recognize them. Very applicable at this stage of Penguin recovery, I think...

Search engines need time & other signals to confirm a site is "fantastic"
June, 2012
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4467831.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Certainly, the same old link building methods some are suggesting, of getting links by outsourcing them to India, is simply not going to fly... and half-measures like simply making cookie-cutter content longer, is not going to suffice. In competitive areas, many sites will need to be significantly better in order to compete. And those changes are going to take time to plan and execute, and time to bear fruit in competitive rankings.

[JesterMagic]

The funny thing with this update is that it erased almost all the gains I received from Panda 4.0. I was originally hit in a major way by Penguin 2.0 and 2.1 in 2012. Since then it was a slow decline ever since. No notice affect by any Penguins or Pandas (beyond the slow decrease in traffic) until Panda 4.0 in May were my site jumped 30% and had a steady increase in traffic until August. With Panada 4.1 I saw a decrease of 10% and then with this Penguin it looks like another 25%.

Panda 4.0 was suppose to help small sites, well it looks like Penguin 3 took that away. Our nich serps have more larger sites than before. I was actually surprised I saw such a gain in Panada 4.0 since I had always though I had issues with the Penguin.

I have done a lot of other things to try to improve my site (in the eyes of the Penguin) except a disavow file. With my 10+ year old site it has tens of thousands of links. A huge undertaking in trying to figure out what is good and bad. I have always tried to naturally get links through offering quality content. The only thing Google would frown upon these days is the link exchanges I did with about 20 other related sites (ie Blog rolls). I removed this about 3 years ago and hadn't actively looked for links this way for about 5 years.

Over the years my site has been targeted a number of times by spam bots posting links to my site (and others along with it) to message forums and comments. I remember one time a couple of years ago I had over 200,000 links reported in WMT, most generated by these bots. I am not sure how someone is suppose to keep up with something like this manually in a disavow file.

I am not sure why Google can't ignore these spam sites automatically. It should be the responsibility of the site owner to worry about his own site and create quality content not with other peoples sites. If they have spam on their site (or it is a spam site) that is the site that should be punished.

Anyways... I guess I know what I will be doing for the next week. Creating a disavow file. I hope Google does live up to the promise of running Penguin more regularly.

[Shai]

@Robert Charlton - Agree completely about not sitting down on your hands doing nothing while all this is happening. My advice to anyone with a site in trouble is to forget all the "it’s not my job to clean up the web" point of view propagated here recently; If you want results, you need to be proactive. Clean, disavow, source good links, enjoy good results. It’s as simple as that.

[freshpaul]

Although I'm nervous to speak too much about it, especially since this update/refresh/whatever is still rolling out -- we've seen positive movement. It appears as though we've been released.

[Jez123]

If you want results, you need to be proactive. Clean, disavow, source good links, enjoy good results. It’s as simple as that.

I tend to agree. Especially if Google ARE going to refresh Penguin more often. Perhaps it won't seem so daunting if it is.

[aristotle]

This may be a little off-topic, but I don't understand exactly how a "rollout" works. I used to think it meant that the update was distributed to all the various datacenters one after another. But I don't see why that would take several weeks. So I've tried to think of other possibilities such as

-- the new data is fed into the algorithm in "chunks"

-- each website's "ranking power" for various search terms is updated, one website at a time

-- there are a series of successive iterations in which the results asymptotically approach their final form.

Obviously my thinking is rather hazy, so maybe someone has a clearer, more accurate understanding

[Lorel]

I hope Penguin 3.0 eliminates the effect of Negative SEO -- which Penguin brought on by itself by no longer just ignoring bad links but making site owners get rid of them. And so, low class competitors think, "ok, bad links hurt so I'll pay $10.00 and sent 10,000 junk links sent to my competitor using his main keywords so he gets penalized."

[rish3]

I assume it's temporary, but there's something that a few people have noticed.

Sites that appear to have taken a Penguin hit are showing either "no data available" or only a very small number of backlinks in the "links to your site" area of Google Webmaster Tools.

Anyone else seeing this on a site that seems Penguin afflicted?

[Shepherd]

Not seeing it in our WMT links section, same amount of links as usual.

[EditorialGuy]

I hope Penguin 3.0 eliminates the effect of Negative SEO -- which Penguin brought on by itself by no longer just ignoring bad links but making site owners get rid of them.

I think that's probably an oversimplification. Others have noted that Google seems to ignore "bad links" if a site has enough natural, relevant links from trusted sites.

[Wilburforce]

I don't see why that would take several weeks

Recursive elements?

[petehall]

This may be a little off-topic, but I don't understand exactly how a "rollout" works. I used to think it meant that the update was distributed to all the various datacenters one after another. But I don't see why that would take several weeks.

And you'd be right to think that.

I would imagine it depends on the level of change / processing required per DC, however in this instance I think it's time to *fix* whatever went wrong.

I do not believe that one person from the team thought it could be possible to complete in a couple of days when in reality it was always going to take weeks.

[EditorialGuy]

I do not believe that one person from the team thought it could be possible to complete in a couple of days when in reality it was always going to take weeks.

I do. As the old saying goes, "There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

Besides, when "the team" consists of people in at least several different countries who may or may not be involved in a project's day-to-day grunt work, its unrealistic to assume that everybody is going to up to date on everything at any given moment in time.

[dvduval]

I'm waiting for confirmation that the disavow tool can be used. I cannot email 200,000 sites about removing my link. I have a software product that was popular before Google decided that requiring a link back for people using a script was a bad thing. Really, I've mostly moved on now to something that doesn't depend on Google search results, and do most of my advertising on Facebook.

[chalkywhite]

Its definitely still rolling out, 10% down on this time last week per hour.

[micklearn]

John Mueller's credibility is OK in my book. YMMV. Sorry for all the confusion, though.

No need for an apology on your part, and maybe I should offer one to Mueller for my somewhat harsh statement. I didn't realize he corrected himself later on. What bothers me is the nonchalant manner in which he/they approach/report on these updates. If he wasn't fully aware of the completion date of the rollout, he really shouldn't have posted/commented on anything about it. Thanks for clarifying things, though.