Penguin: Core, realtime and updated today

[Shaddows]

[webmasters.googleblog.com...]

Penguin is now real-time. Historically, the list of sites affected by Penguin was periodically refreshed at the same time. Once a webmaster considerably improved their site and its presence on the internet, many of Google's algorithms would take that into consideration very fast, but others, like Penguin, needed to be refreshed. With this change, Penguin's data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page. It also means we're not going to comment on future refreshes.

[Shaddows]

what's bad enough to invoke Penguin but not bad enough to invite a manual penalty.

Manual penalties don't scale.

Google's entire downranking methodology is to replicate penalties while doing away with the "manual" part.

Interestingly, the Penguin episode is a classic scalable strategy- fear, uncertainty, doubt. Stops all that nasty manipulation before it gets started, then you don't have to spend all your resources fighting it.

[Wilburforce]

Stops all that nasty manipulation before it gets started, then you don't have to spend all your resources fighting it.

Now about 3/4 of the way through an audit of my backlinks and disavow file, it looks to me like it has succeeded: nearly all the spammy-looking links have gone, along with a fair proportion of the sites that hosted them. It will be interesting to see what happens now that the threat of algorithmic penalty has been lifted.

There has been some shuffling in my sector, but I only see one example of what is probably recovery (a site that has many self-posted links with keyword-laden anchor-text in low-relevance forums, which has moved from #26 to #10 for our main key-term).

[Shepherd]

Oh yeah, the manual actions. Maybe penguin keeps devaluing links to a certain point and then triggers a manual review.

[Wilburforce]

Further to my last post, I find on one of the sites I had disavowed, the following statement:

"Google caused too many DMCA take-down notices due to their whole "bad links" speel. I do not have time to respond to them all so the directory on this site has been disabled. sorry guys."

I'm not sure how '"bad links" speel' (which sounds like some Penguin-related issue) has anything to do with DMCA notices, but clearly the overall climate has had an effect.

[Uber_SEO]

A site I'm watching has seen a hit. It's not a website I was expecting to take a hit from Penguin (whiter than white), so it's either a false positive, some major negative SEO that I'm not aware of, or Google have introduced some other algo factors on the 23rd. I noticed rankings fluctuate from the 22nd, so since Google announced Penguin I've been watching very closely. Over the last 10 days ago, the website fluxes from ranking first page, to not ranking at all. I've noticed that a Google Site search (i.e. site:www.domain.com blue widgets) shows some really weird results - not what I'd expect to see at all. I'll be honest, this is quite unlike anything I've seen before. I've started checking queries multiple times throughout the day (say for "blue widgets") and I'm keeping an eye on the SERPs - it'd kinda like Google are bucket testing multiple SERPs for the same keyword. At the moment I'm hopeful that this is all just prolonged testing, and the website in question will end up back in the SERPs, but it's enough to give an SEO a heart attack at the moment!

[Shai]

Major changes mostly positive for sites that have had some patchy history. Changes from each search but both sets are very positive. I'm seeing this across 7 sites so definitely Penguin related. Keep checking every few minutes and getting two different data sets but as mentioned, they are both completely different from yesterday and both very positive. One more than the other.

[aristotle]

Even if a site is totally released from a Penguin penalty, it probably won't have a "full" recovery.

In fact, if a site had previously (before Penguin) gotten most of its rankings boost from artificially-built and/or purchased backlinks, and those backlinks are now judged to be worthless by P4, the site's new rankings after the release from P3 may not be much of an improvement at all. Maybe not even enough to notice.

Or to put it another way, don't expect your rankings and traffic to suddenly skyrocket.

[Maximum44]

We gained traffic after every Penguin update before this one. Now we suddently drop. It seems to have stopped since monday though. It does not make much sense to me that we dropped now, but we gained after all the other updates. Hoping it is because they still are reindexing the internet :D

[Peter07]

Yesterday morning we saw main keywords recovery from a few websites in the Netherlands and Germany, yesterday evening everything reverted backwards.

Did anybody see the same?

[dipper]

that is dependant on which datacentre(s) you are hitting with search .. I'd be thinking that the changed ranking (whichever way it is) is probably the new (soon to rolled out fully) ranking you will see. Note: this is Penguin 3.0 penalties removed, and not withstanding any other ranking overlays, or filters, or when Penguin 4.0 starts moving through results and re-ranking them.

[Maximum44]

We are quite stable on the rankings, but there is rich card on top of us in the searches on many of the searches that is taking traffic away from us. Even if we are ranked number one there might be a card that is from the second or third poistion. They are listed twice. Bleh.

[javadth]

every thing is just #*$!

i just see decrease and drop in my serp

12 our of 20 google serp is occupied by sites of a company

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:20 pm (utc) on Oct 9, 2016]
[edit reason] Inappropriate language. [/edit]

[Nutterum]

Well the latest results do show that the SERPS deprecated to ~ 8 links for first page. If we add 4 ads on top that number can further shrink to 3 or 4 links depending on the monitor size. I can testify for this as one of my oldest clients who occupied the 3d-6th place for over 2000 different money phrases lost over 40% of their organic traffic over the past two years, while not loosing real-estate on the SERPs (actually they increased their fingerprint by 5% on average)

[dolcevita]

I've noticed today that my sites affected by Penguin 3-4 years a go started to come back. They are not position what were 4-5 years a go but i'm glad to see positive vibration and moving to top 30 for many terms and for a couple terms to top 10 / top 20. It give me hope. A couple weeks a go even for searching for domain keywords terms site was not in top 100: 'blueorangegreen.org' by searching for 'blue orange green' do not come in top 100 but today by top 30 :)

Some of the website received manual penalty (it was lifted out i think 2 years a go) but some not. I'm a bit excited about this results. It is still not something where i will open champagne but it is very very positive impulse to me and my website after waiting for a years on comeback.

Websites are very quality regarding content and did have a many good positions. My mistake was to be megalomaniac and force top 5 to all terms that were within top 20 for examaple.


But i've learned my lesson and 3/4 years sentence out of 100 like me more than enough.

[superclown2]

Note: this is Penguin 3.0 penalties removed, and not withstanding any other ranking overlays, or filters, or when Penguin 4.0 starts moving through results and re-ranking them.

Are we to understand that Penguin 3 penalties have been lifted, period? Or that they have been lifted pending a re-calculation? If the former, then is Google admitting that it made an error in applying them in the first place?

Or are they just playing games to keep webmasters in a state of FUD?

[goodroi]

Google's job is to generate profit for Google. Google's job is not to make it easier for webmasters to manipulate their rankings. So Google does utilize a certain level of FUD to combat the manipulation of rankings. If you built a search engine you would probably do the same exact thing. Since we all are smart webmasters we know to use our brains to analyze & research a path to clear away the FUD without being sidetracked by whining.

My understanding is that Penguin 4.0 is a modification that is built upon the previous iterations. It is intended to minimize the false positives and catch more of the false negatives. Google is juggling over a trillion webpages. Even if Google is 99.99% perfect (and I think we can all agree that is not the case) they would still have over 100,000,000 pages incorrectly flagged. Some of them are guilty but not caught and others would be caught but not guilty. Since none of us can buy 51% of Google stock to take control, we probably should focus our efforts on things we can control like our own websites.

If you are worried about Penguin, I suggest you start with building new links. Don't start with disallowing links. Disallowing links at best removes the poison but doesn't do anything to replace your lost ranking power and at worst you end up deleting good links sabotaging yourself. So start with building new links that generate real converting traffic to your site. If you can't convince other websites to link to your site, you probably need to work on your content and/or usability. It is not easy to develop new traffic sources but it is worth it and makes you less dependent on Google. Too few webmasters focus on building up referring websites.

[Wilburforce]

Or are they just playing games to keep webmasters in a state of FUD?

Well, they are keeping webmasters in a state of FUD, and I am sure a degree of obfuscation is intentional, but I doubt that either of these is their primary aim,.

The site I mentioned in my previous post has now moved from #10 to #3, and I think it very likely that this is a direct result of lifting negative Penguin weighting.

[Shepherd]

direct result of lifting negative Penguin weighting.

We are seeing the same thing, nice breath of fresh air.

[Nutterum]

Well I have seen the reverse for some of the competitors who lavishly exchanged huge amount of links in between their network of websites, only to be deleted from the SERPs. Especially when we talk about Local SEO. UK, Australia and Germany were all tarnished in favor of "hyper-local" results. Not saying it is a bad thing. Just saying there are a lot of in-house link builders out there who are on expended unpaid leave. Sectors : roofing, gardening, cleaning, babysitters, plumbing and more.

[superclown2]

If you are worried about Penguin, I suggest you start with building new links

Maybe. My experiences with several hundred sites suggest the opposite. I'm not saying that you're right or wrong, but I don't think it's as simple as that.

[goodroi]

You might want to be careful taking just a single sentence out of a lengthy response since you can lose context and the overall message. I did not claim penguin or building links was simple. I do think that building quality links is a good starting point of a longer overall process. I also think that inexperienced webmasters can do more harm than good with an uninformed disallow review.

From my personal experience, too many webmasters disallow too many links and ignore positive link building ... but as always in life, your personal mileage may vary :)

[superclown2]

The very term "building links" is the bit that disturbs me. By it's very nature a 'built' link is not a natural one, given freely, without persuasion, by a site owner who recognises content which is valuable enough to lose visitors to. Google contains some of the best statistical brains in the world and they know what the likelihood is of what sort of links a site should get and when these should appear. Anyone who is not privy to this formula (in other words, all of us!) should tread very carefully IMO, secure in the knowledge that what is right today may well be wrong tomorrow. Perhaps some analysis of successful linking patterns would help? I seem to remember a few pointers here on this subject a few years ago.

[Shaddows]

By it's very nature a 'built' link is not a natural one, given freely, without persuasion, by a site owner who recognises content which is valuable enough to lose visitors to.

There are lots of ways to build links naturally, from viral linkbait- (low effort, low success rate, but big impact if successful), to old-fashioned networking within your niche (reliably successful but hard work)

When you're new, it helps to bring your site to the attention to non-competing related publishers. But that's networking again.

Then there is the grey areas which may or may not be statistically problematic, such as content-for-links, guest publishers etc.

How about off-line sponsorship of your local grass-roots sports team? Just how grass-roots you go will depend on your budget.

Participation in non-NF fora can also pay dividends if you play a long game and avoid sig links.

[Maximum44]

We got positively hit when they added Penguin 3 (when all Penguins hit really). Now we are dropping. Hopefully we will regain the losses once Penguin 4 is in full effect.

I have noticed they added cards to most of our searches. Even though we are number one in many of the searches. They show a card on top of people ranked 2 or 3. Making them being listed 2 times.

[aristotle]

What about clearcut recoveries from Penguin? Shouldn't they be reported in this thread?

[Lake]

Gary Illyes confirmed Penguin 4 has been completely rolled out and that old Penguin penalties have been fully removed.

[Rasputin]

@aristotle, of four sites I control that had penguin penalties we have seen two 'full recoveries' (although slightly less than the original drop) and two with no change, although after such a long time I am not sure whether the two with no change have already recovered or are now in penguin 4 (these two are less visited sites so changes are harder to monitor day by day whereas the two that recovered are quite popular sites).
All four sites had a history 7-9 years ago of getting links from free directories and article sites when that approach was popular but nothing inappropriate since.
Notably I had long ago done disavow files for the two that saw no change, but not for the two that did recover, and have done no active link building for any of them for at least 5 years.
Only other change I made, when penguin first hit I removed every single link in place between our group sites (there used to be quite a few).

[Simon_H]

What about clearcut recoveries from Penguin? Shouldn't they be reported in this thread?

Yes, seen good recovery. Our traffic has over doubled. Lots of keywords that were previously completely filtered are now page 1/2. Recovery started on 4th October, still seems to be lots of flux, so probably best to wait a good while longer before making any final calls (irrespective of what Gary has alluded over the past few days).

[teokolo]

We've seen a recovery on 3th October, traffic increased +40%. We came back for some keywords and we saw an increase in some high traffic keywords where we were already ranking (from #9 to #2). Our peak was on 13th October, than some fluctuations and now everything seems stable. +25-30% traffic right now compared to previous months.
Our website got a manual penalty back in 2013, than partially recovered thanks to disavow which was updated every week till the end of 2015.

[Nutterum]

How many thousands of links did you have disavowed teokolo? This seems like quite the 3 year ride you had.