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...]

[netmeg]

Can't say I agree with that, but if haven't been Penguined and you know your link profile is clean, I don't see why you'd bother making disavow files into a full time job. Crap links happen; we all get them. I've got tons and tons of new scrapers every day. I barely even look anymore. But my sites have been around a long time, users love them, I have no link building history, and I'm pretty sure I don't need to disavow them. If you go down that rabbit hole without needing it, it's hard to climb out.

[besnette]

I think it can be argued either way, but there is a lot of hype created by these updates, and we all know of people or sites that have gotten burned by not being proactive enough - either with Panda or Penguin. There hasn't been much official direction that I have seen from G or other trusted sources saying specifically that bad links won't hurt otherwise strong sites. It's just hard to know where the line is of being safe and no longer having to worry about or manage it.

I also remember seeing fairly recently (and I apologize for not being able to cite the source, but I think it was John Mueller, saying that if you see bad links, disavow them and move on...basically saying that it's easier to disavow than dig out after a penalty).

I don't know - leaning towards proactive - maybe it's not needed. I wish I knew, as it is a significant time investment staying on top of it.

[glakes]

Can't say I agree with that, but if haven't been Penguined and you know your link profile is clean, I don't see why you'd bother making disavow files into a full time job.

I've yet to see an established website with a pristine link profile. Snippet scrapers, whois type sites and a lot of low quality junk is just ripe for being disavowed since Google is really slow (if at all) to ban these worthless sites from their index. The saying better safe than sorry comes to mind because none of us knows how high/low of a threshold Google will dial penguin down to in the future. But we do know it can take a year or more for any corrections to be acted on by Google.

I know a lot of people that want to be ahead of the curve by using the disavow tool. Sharing disavow files among trusted associates is another way to deal with garbage links before they even come without having to waste a lot of time. But time is money, and I classify whatever disavowing tasks I perform under online reputation management.

[netmeg]

I've yet to see an established website with a pristine link profile.

I've seen a couple hundred of em.

Google doesn't ban the crap sites or toss them out of the index (sometimes I think they leave them around on purpose just to test to see if the algo changes float them to the top), but I don't think they necessarily count them against you either. They look for patterns; either the link manipulation pattern is there or it isn't.

But if you think it's a worthwhile endeavor, then by all means you disavow em.

[IanCP]

@netmeg

Well said. I agree,

[louieramos]

What do you think fellas, is Penguin still rolling out? I can see some signs it is & some signs that it's finished. How about from your end?

[Itanium]

I don't think it is. Looks more like Panda is refreshing every friday now.

[Itanium]

I have to take it back. I think Google is still doing something Penguin related. Today a few site sof mine just bounced back to an earlier version in the Google cache. The changes were indexed like always but today they were back to 21st of october. Strange.

[martinacastro]

In one site that I made some work with links, has better positions now. Other ones that I have, and made very low work are a bit better (mostly because I asked links to be deleted or somes sites that linked them are dead now...)

[louieramos]

Itanium that is exactly what I am seeing, old results thats why I have a strong feeling that Penguin is still rolling..

[McMohan]

If you've never suffered because of them, then why are you doing disavowal files?

One of the biggest mistakes a webmaster can do is living in peace under the assurance given by Google that there is "almost" no reason to be afraid of the spam links generated against your site. And that Google "almost" always gets it right. Yet, I "almost" always cover myself with a disavowal file.

Having a clean link profile is not an insurance against Penguin or a manual penalty. A large, trusted website might have a clean link profile or an average, mom-dad website might have clean link profile. Google almost always protects the trusted site against spam, but NOT the average site. That average site must be on its guard and actively disavow links that look suspicious.

[Nutterum]

There is this grand misconception that Penguin is all about links. Well it is, _BUT_ it is about the work you have done to make/disavow them. I have seen a slight yet positive dynamic on several key landing pages on my website, just because I started promoting them on social networks. The traffic from them was minimal, however 2 weeks after penguin I manged to push them from page 2 in to page 1. Granted the competition is not that great after the first 4-5 results on the SERP but still even the little things you do get noted by the bot.

TL:DR - Penguin 3.0 is way more about being proactive in your linking and promoting/cleaning work on your website than gauge and execute website algorithm

[Wilburforce]

Penguin 3.0 is way more about being proactive

We still have no statement or other evidence to suggest that this is "Penguin 3.0".

As far as we know it is a refresh, not an update.

Interspersed as it is with Google's ongoing refinements of other algorithm changes, I'm personally unable to derive any clear view of what it is about, but I doubt that anything as nebulous as "being proactive" will help negatively affected sites.

[shaadi]

looks like fun to me...

[Jez123]

refresh, not an update

What's the difference again please?

[Itanium]

Don't put too much emphasis on the wording some Google employee used on some social media site or conference call. Google is so secretive about this whole thing, I'm sure they have no intention whatsoever in clearing things up.

So refresh, update or whatever you might call it - I think we can savely assume, that it's still going on. At least with the last Penguin-Updates it was different, which might indicate, that something changes behinde the scenes.

[aristotle]

Well they worked on the Penguin part of the algorithm for more than a year trying to fix it, so surely they must have made some changes to it. If this current rollout were nothing but a simple data refresh, they could have done that six months ago.

[RedBar]

My widget sector is a mess, again, simply diabolical and nonsensical results and traffic way, way down for a Monday, USA traffic has almost stopped.

Great G, fill the UK serps with US and AU sites who are totally unable to supply and top it off with inane forum board posts, incorrect Houzz images and companies selling faux items!

Awesome stuff, you're making your results less worthy by the minute.

[Lorel]

I think it's almost impossible to tell if you've been hit by Penguin or not - when it takes (so far) 3+ weeks to roll out because Google often updates other algos at the same time so we can't figure out what's going on. It's just a wild (maybe educated) guess if you've been hit by Penguin or not.

Re sites having pristine links - wait till you hit the top 5 -- then you'll be vulnerable to Negaive SEO attacks.

[mrengine]

Great G, fill the UK serps with US and AU sites who are totally unable to supply and top it off with inane forum board posts, incorrect Houzz images and companies selling faux items!

Don't feel bad, I see a number of .ca sites popping up for US queries and a very high bounce rate on my site.

If Google can't figure out how to fix national queries, it may take decades instead of years for Google to figure out how to make a fine-tuned penguin work. Here's hoping it's only going to be a very brief period before Google corrects this.

[aristotle]

it may take decades instead of years for Google to figure out how to make a fine-tuned penguin work

I don't see how it can ever be fixed by "fine-tuning". It has a fundamental flaw that can cause innocent sites to be punished and allow competitors to sabotage your rankings. It takes a fundamental change to fix a fundamental flaw.

[Wilburforce]

refresh, not an update

What's the difference again please?

Refresh means same algorithm, new data. Update means revised algorithm.

I don't know of anything more explicit than Pierre Far's statement on 21 October [plus.google.com...]

"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."

That doesn't say "we have rewritten the formula" to me. In fact, as plainly as anyone from Google has ever said anything, it says they haven't.

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:28 pm (utc) on Nov 10, 2014]
[edit reason] Made link clickable [/edit]

[seoskunk]

Link doesn't work ^^^^

If this is merely a refresh then why has it taken so long to do so. They could have run it months ago.

[Wilburforce]

[plus.google.com...]

If this is merely a refresh then why has it taken so long to do so.

Any answer to that question can only be speculative, but it would probably raise some indignation if they ran it before people had finished cleaning up the webspam signals discovered in the previous iteration.

The words "previous iteration" are among several indications in that sentence that it was another iteration, not an update.

[Nutterum]

Well one thing is for sure, the long tail keywords I monitor for my sector flipped upside down. Lots more spam, a lot less quality, while the on the surface the change was somewhat minimal.

[Jez123]

Things just went a bit crazy in my vertical!

[aristotle]

Most likely Google realized that they had to make some changes to Penguin before this current rollout in order to avoid having a lot of sites hit by negative SEO. That would explain why it took them more than a year to work out the changes that they made. The changes probably didn't completely eliminate the possibility of negative SEO, but may have reduced it.