Google Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content, and others. Unlike PageRank, however, Google makes all updates to this algorithm public.
Naming the algorithm update
The Penguin update went live on
April 24, 2012. However, Google did not announce an official name for it until
two days later.Penguin’s effect on Google search results
By Google’s estimates, Penguin affects approximately 3.1%
of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German,
Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in "highly
spammed" languages. On May 25, 2012, Google unveiled another Penguin
update, called Penguin 1.1. This update, according to Matt Cutts, was supposed
to affect less than one-tenth of a percent of English searches. The guiding
principle for the update was to penalize websites using manipulative techniques
to achieve high rankings. The purpose per Google was to catch excessive
spammers, but it seems some legitimate sites and SEOs have been caught with
this latest algorithm change. Few websites lost search rankings on Google for
specific keywords during the Panda and Penguin rollouts. It appears anchor text
was to blame in these cases, as the links pointing to these sites concentrated
on only one or a few keywords while the content of the websites was
satisfactory. As the update focused on the quality of backlinks, so the result
varied for different websites. Some sites lost rankings for everything while
some sites lost rankings on only specific keywords. One affected site had too
many doorway pages with city/state pages. Google specifically mentions that
doorway pages, which are only built to attract search engine traffic, are
against their webmaster guidelines. Regardless, many people still use this
technique. Penguin 3 was released Oct.
5, 2012 and affected 0.3% of queries. Google internal team uses different
numbering for its Penguin updates despite what others are calling them.
The difference between Penguin and previous updates
Before Penguin, Google released a series of algorithm updates called Panda with the first appearing in February 2011. Panda aimed at downranking websites that provided poor user experience. The algorithm follows the logic by which Google’s human quality raters determine a website’s quality.
In January
2012, so-called page layout algorithm update was released, which targeted
websites with little content above the fold.
The
strategic goal that Panda, Penguin, and page layout update share is to display
higher quality websites at the top of Google’s search results. However, sites
that were downranked as the result of these updates have different sets of
characteristics. The main target of Google Penguin is spamdexing (including
link bombing).
Google’s Penguin feedback form
Two days
after Penguin update was released Google prepared a feedback form, designed for
two categories of users: those who want to report web spam that still ranks
highly after the search algorithm change, and those who think that their site
got unfairly hit by the update. Google also has a reconsideration form through
Google Webmaster Tools for the 700,000 sites. Matt Cutts explained that over
600,000 of them were about black hat and less than 25,000 about unnatural
links.
