Penguin Now Part of Google’s Core Algorithm

Since it first arrived in April 2012, PENGUIN has become a household name in the search marketing world — with periodic updates causing a stir in the SEO community.  On September 23, 2016 Google announced that Penguin is now part of their core algorithm with real time, live implications.  Let’s take a look at the key changes associated with this announcement.

Penguin is Now Real Time

Here is Google’s announcement on their Webmaster Tool Blog stating that Penguin is now part of their core algorithm.

In the past, if a site was hit with the Penguin Update it would take time (sometimes up to 2 years) for the site to be freed from its “penguin flippers”. This will no longer happen as Google stated in their announcement:

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.

That’s great, right! But there is one small catch. Google will no longer be confirming future Penguin updates. This means SEO’s should monitor their analytics and ranking data a little more closely instead of waiting for updates from our pals at Search Engine Land.

Penguin Is No Longer Site-wide

In the past, when a site was impacted by Penguin the whole site got penalized. This is no longer the case. Google stated that:

Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.

SEO’s now have a little breathing room as only a page on a site or a section of the site could be penalized which means that some organic visibility may be lost instead of all of it.

The Bottom Line

Google created Penguin to help users get the best search results possible. The primary focus was to catch sites that were spamming search results, especially through means of buying links or using link networks to boost their rankings.

SEO’s should remember the Penguin lesion:  Don’t cheat because in the end you will only get slapped by the flipper of a Penguin.

Joe Goers September 27, 2016

Joe Goers is a Sr. SEO Specialist with over 8 years of experience. He has a Bachelor of Science in Packaging and an MBA with a focus in Marketing from Walsh College. Joe has extensive experience working in automotive, real estate, multi-family, marketing and software industries.