New Google Penguin Update Imminent

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It’s now well over a year since Penguin 3.0 was refreshed in October 2014, until now there was very little word on when Google would next update its algorithm. However, Search Engine Journal (SEJ) recently reported a Twitter conversation in which Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes revealed that the next iteration of Penguin is coming in ‘weeks’ but didn’t give a specific launch date.

But what is Penguin?

Introduced in April 2012

Designed to punish old school linking techniques that companies used to use to increase ranking in the search engines

Two types of penalties: Manual & Automated

Can be devastating – sites have been pushed to the dark regions of Google (page 10 – 20) overnight

Regular sites can still be punished, by over optimising anchor text

The most concerning aspect of this news is Penguin will be updated, rather than refreshed. The 2014 refresh only ran the same algorithm from a previous update; this upcoming update will be a fundamental change in Penguin itself, most likely introducing real time updates. This would make maintaining your links a more manageable process, an automated penalty could be reversed in a short-time frame if you disavowed the offending links quickly enough or created a stronger more diversified linking profile.

Currently if you were to receive a penalty it would still take a matter of months to recover, with Google’s data refreshes happening sporadically. This could mean if you were hit by this new update it could be months before your site regains its visibility for its search terms.

Historically the introduction of Penguin updates has been devastating for some businesses; at this stage reviewing your link profile in preparation could be essential to avoid a day one penalty when it finally rolls out.

However, we will not know the full details of this update until it goes live but you can be sure we will be keeping a keen eye on any developments to make sure we are at the forefront of any news about this key algorithm update.

If you are concerned about your link profile, or believe that you have spam links that could be flagged up with the next update please contact our SEO team straight away today for a link review, so we can create a strategy to ensure your business does not get hit in this algorithm update, chat@infinitynation.com / 01793 238 697