OK I resisted the urge to include some image of a penguin on horseback, or to a lesser degree a rip-off of a March of the Penguins pic. You’re welcome.
Penguin. We all know Google’s search algorithm Penguin right? Either way, if you have a website you’ve been impacted by it, for good or bad. Penguin is Google’s algorithm for punishing bad SEO link building — it’s pretty brutal, and it can take a long, agonizing time to get your SERPs back even if you take immediate action.
A little history: when Penguin 3 is released, it’ll be the 6th update to the algorithm. Here’s a history, thanks to Search Engine Land:
- Penguin #1 (1.0): April 24, 2012
- Penguin #2: May 25, 2012
- Penguin #3: October 5, 2012
- Penguin #4 (2.0): May 22, 2013
- Penguin #5: October 4, 2013
- Google Penguin 3 (#6): sometime in 2014
So say for instance, you had an SEO firm building links for you, and you placed your trust in them, and actually saw some great results, placing higher in search results for your keywords. You LOVED that SEO firm! Then, BAM! In one of those releases you disappeared (this actually happened to a friend’s company). You dig in, basically asking “WTF happened?!” Well, you got ‘Penguined’. Google got tired of link bait and other so called ‘black hat’ gaming of Google’s search results and put the hammer down. Hard.
The issue is, so many legit folks, probably just inexperienced or naive in the way of Google’s SEO were screwed. And even if they took immediate action, removing bad links and such, the Penguin releases have been so infrequent it’s tough to see any benefit. But that is the way it is, at least for now. But the good news is, a new release is supposedly coming this year, so keep up your ‘white hat’ legit efforts, think ‘customer experience’ when putting efforts into SEO and you will hopefully be rewarded!
Penguin 3.0 is expected to be a major update, and they say with it should be able to make more frequent updates, kinda like Panda that runs monthly. We hope so!
We’ll keep you posted as we hear more about the release.