According to Google: Penguin 3.0 is continuing

[Robert Charlton]

Search Engine Land reported this morning that it had received confirmation from Google that serp changes many were reporting over the Thanksgiving weekend are a continuation of the Penguin 3.0 rollout that began on Friday October 17....

Google: Penguin 3.0 Rollout Still Ongoing
Google says the Thanksgiving ranking shuffle is related to the Penguin 3.0 release from six weeks ago.
Barry Schwartz on December 1, 2014 at 11:48 am
http://searchengineland.com/google-penguin-3-0-rollout-still-ongoing-209886 [searchengineland.com]

Google has confirmed with us that the shifts and changes reported throughout the industry on Thanksgiving day were a result of the Penguin 3.0 refresh that first began rolling out 6-weeks ago.

Google told us in response to what we saw on Thanksgiving day, "the Penguin rollout is ongoing, and this is just the effect of that."

There's been lots of speculation in several discussions here about whether this was a Penguin algo Update. As I interpret what Barry has reported, what we're now seeing is an ongoing rollout of Penguin version 3.0.

My own speculations here: I'm thinking that the algorithm may be highly "recursive"... with the same or related processes repeated on the results of the previous operations, giving us results that are increasingly refined. There's likely a pause to check results at every step, so Google can gauge whether the algorithm is working as anticipated and decide what to do next. Perhaps this will eventually lead to a procedure that can be maintained on a more continuous basis.

See...
Recursion Vs. Iteration
[www2.hawaii.edu...]

I'm not a mathematician, but I'm guessing that this is the kind of routine that might be involved.


PS: Mod's note: Added link I accidentally omitted a few months back to Barry's SEL article

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:24 pm (utc) on Mar 4, 2015]

[xelaetaks]

It seems that way to me too. I also think they are tweaking the algorithm and possibly working on making it to be able to run more frequent like they do with Panda. John Mueller has also hinted at this in Webmaster Hangouts - more updates as opposed to the time it took between Penguin 2 and 3.

[Kelowna]

so where is the proof that Google said anything and who from google said what exactly. <snip>

[edited by: goodroi at 3:02 am (utc) on Dec 2, 2014]
[edit reason] Let's be careful to keep the discussion on a professional level :) [/edit]

[xelaetaks]

Barry Schwartz who wrote it openly talks with John Mueller on Twitter. He also shows up on Google Webmaster Hangouts which John Mueller is a part of. If he was making it up he can get called out pretty fast. Even if the post seem a little tabloid or whatever, Barry Schwartz isn't the type to make something like this up. He's been on top of Penguin news since months before they rolled it out this year.

[seoskunk]

Google says the Thanksgiving ranking shuffle is related to the Penguin 3.0 release from six weeks ago.

Then the article goes onto to say "Google has confirmed with us that the shifts and changes reported throughout the industry on Thanksgiving day were a result of the Penguin 3.0 refresh that first began rolling out 6-weeks ago.

Trying to read between the lines here and I would say the shuffle was a result of index changes from penguin impacting other web properties. Not an ongoing rollout but a refresh of other statistics the Penguin rollout impacted.

[netmeg]

Barry doesn't post "loads of crap", searchengineland is not just "a blog" and I don't think personal attacks on a respected industry journalist are appropriate.

[rustybrick]

Yea, I sourced Google. I don't make that up. If I do not have confirmation, I'll say so. In this case, I have confirmation.

I wrote about the fluctuations on last Friday, and worked hard to get a comment from Google over the weekend. Finally, Monday morning, they gave me a one line confirmation.

Trust me, getting a few thousand visits from SEOs about a Penguin post isn't making me rich. It is something I do as a hobby, my real job is not blogging.

[seoskunk]

I think its a badly worded article I don't think Penguin is still running either.

[seoskunk]

Rustybrick thanks for posting can I ask what were the exact words of the "one line confirmation." Did they say Penguin RELATED or Penguin was still RUNNING?

[rustybrick]

I asked if what we saw on Thursday was a new Penguin refresh. The on the record response was "The Penguin rollout is ongoing, and this is just the effect of that."

[seoskunk]

Thanks Rustybrick, that does sound like the situation described in the article.

Definition ongoing "continuing to exist or develop, or happening at the present moment".

So in the words of Google, Penguin is still RUNNING. Wow with all that hardware you would have thought they could do it quicker wouldn't you.

[xelaetaks]

I think they're still tweaking the Penguin alogirthm. Maybe they are trying to get it down to a tee like a math formula. My hope with all this is it means more frequent refreshes so chances for sites to recover and also demote sites that are spam - so a win on both sides.

[TheMadScientist]

Maybe they are trying to get it down to a tee like a math formula.

Maybe, but keeping in mind what Google uses for it's results is really a heuristic, rather than an algorithm, might help people keep things in perspective a bit ;)

[SnowMan68]

wait for it....and Kelowna is gone. The ole pie in the face moment :)

Most of us appreciate what Barry does for our industry, without him we may never know for sure what is going on at Google.

[aristotle]

I think they're still tweaking the Penguin alogirthm

If anyone wants a really simple explanation for what Google has been doing, imagine a "dial' that controls how much weight Penguin gets relative to the other ranking factors. for example, by twisting the dial clockwise, they could incease Penguin's influence, etc.

So during the past few weeks they could have been testing various dial settings. By turning the dial clockwise, they would get rid of more spam, but also increase the number of innocent sites that suffer colateral damage as well as make negative SEO easier. Or by twisting the dial counter-clockwise, they would get rid of less spam, but produce less colateral damage and make negative SEO harder.

So the testing of different dial positions could explain some of the traffic and ranking changes that have been reported over the past few eeks.

That's a very simple explanation, but of course it's also mostly speculation.

[Clay_More]

If Penguin is link based, there will be impacts for quite a while after any adjustments. Site A link profile changes which affects Site B. Site B new link profile affects Site C. All the way down the food chain.

[GreyBeard123]

^^^^ 100%

[aristotle]

If you drop a stone into a pool of water, the waves will reflect back and forth for a while but slowly fade away.

Similarly, if Google pushes a rollout onto its algorithmic representation of the web, the biggest effects will normally occur initially, and followup effects will become less apparent over time as the changes work through the system. But in this particular case, another big unexpected shakeup suddenly occured much later. So there may have been at least one subsequent intervention, rather than a simple working out of the original impetus.

[GreyBeard123]

Or there were 2 separate rollouts/updates or whatever you want to name it :)

[GreyBeard123]

Let’s speculate...

Let’s say Penguin devalued a certain group of links...

Thereafter Google waited for a certain time to judge the results...

Once they’re happy with the results they rollout part 2 that devalues a second group of links...

And out of the blue we have the second big unexpected shakeup...

Now, was the second rollout part of the first rollout, or a new rollout or something completely new?

[rish3]

As with anyone else commenting, I have only an educated guess based on what I saw. I saw a distinct pattern of two rollouts, and the second one was much kinder to previously penguin afflicted sites. My guess is that when the first rollout finished, Google noticed too much either collateral damage, or not enough recovery for sites that tried to clean up. And, so, they rolled out a less aggressive update.

[TheMadScientist]

According to Google: Penguin 3.0 is continuing

And from a recent JohnMu hangout, might continue continuing indefinitely...

[FranticFish]

I've only recently seen gains for a site that, whilst it didn't have major problems, had perhaps 5% undesirable links (OK sites but very abusive anchors that were highly noticeable). Those were cleaned up towards the end of last year and start of this year, along with some careful link building. Low key, brand anchors.

No link-building within the past 6 months. After everything was on hold for a while, we've been busy planning new features and and outreach campaign. But nothing that would impact the link graph and no changes to the site.

Last week they jumped back onto page one. So far it's sticking.

Looking at the SERP, one site that was using crud links is gone completely, and others that had them in the mix have lost. I think we've won because others have lost.

[aristotle]

According to Google: Penguin 3.0 is continuing
And from a recent JohnMu hangout, might continue continuing indefinitely...

That suggests that they've added a new aspect to Penguin, and/or made a major change in how it's implemented, since the previous rollouts essentially only lasted 2-3 days with long time gaps between them.

[xelaetaks]

Google destroyed my traffic again back to nothing. One Google visit today. I think they are still working with the same data as when they started Penguin 3.0 going by the statements from Google on Penguin still being worked on.

[TheMadScientist]

That suggests that they've added a new aspect to Penguin, and/or made a major change in how it's implemented, since the previous rollouts essentially only lasted 2-3 days with long time gaps between them.

Yeah, what it sounded like to me is right now it's constantly running on top of the main algo and they hope to keep it that way.

[aristotle]

TMS - I'm not so sure about "constantly running" in the sense of producing slow gradual changes. Maybe that's their ultimate goal, but right now the road still feels bumpy.

[TheMadScientist]

I'm not so sure about "constantly running" in the sense of producing slow gradual changes.

I was thinking more along the lines of what Robert_Charlton said and it's running recursively. I would guess the bumps will smooth out more the longer it runs. I also wouldn't be surprised if they're editing, adjusting, and turning knobs right now, which would explain some of the flux and what look like rollbacks we're seeing.

[louieramos]

I can confidently say, that Penguin is indeed running.. Search results in Google Australia are in-flux, I am seeing 2 sets of indexes. SEO Ranking tool (Cloud based) are also seeing this (because it's reporting 2 different rankings one day after another). So what is really going on? A bit hard to explain this to clients especially to the ones with new websites, it seems like they are the most affected because of this dual index issue.

[RedBar]

I would guess the bumps will smooth out more the longer it runs.

I feel that was their intention however in practice it doesn't seem to be happening in my sector but to do such a thing during the Xmas period seems a little misguided to me however their main problem, for me, is still the US-centric results for many of my widgets in G.co.uk.

Actually I've noticed more and more US Amazon and Ebay results in their UK results as well come to think of it.