Google Penguin Update
Google Penguin has arrived in the web world, with bad news for spammers and their bankers. Penguin is a new Google algorithm, with an ultimate mission to eliminate bad content from the web. It precisely means judgment day has come for those websites that practice unethical SEO tactics by putting irrelevant content, links, pop-ups to get their site ranked high in Google search. The new penguin update’s action plan is to get up and go hunting these spammers in the web world, who violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. According to these guidelines, bad content includes ‘Black Hat SEO’ tactics used in many sites such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and content spinning. It might be a surprising fact to many that Google changes its algorithm about 500 to 600 times a year. While most of them are small changes, sometimes the search engine titan comes up with a few major updates that get the web world indulge in heated discussions. The new algorithm which got released on April 2012 has new strict guidelines on web optimization that would make web a better and safer place for websites with proper content. Even though it’s not figured how ‘Google Penguin’ assesses the rank of the websites, many consider this as a technical update which might not completely restructure the way Google ranks a site. It is speculated that the mission of new algorithm is that to make the web world a better place, by cleaning the spam. The websites who are playing by the rule won’t be affected by this impressive update.
The Penguin Data Refresh Updates
English language queries are drastically affected, by the abrupt impact of Google Penguin update. The percentage for the decline in English queries is said to be:
• Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (3.1%)
• Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1%)
• Penguin 3: Oct. 5, 2012 (0.3%)
• Penguin 3, data refresh: Oct. 9, 2012(0.7%)
Google’s head of webspam team, Matt Cutts tweeted on 9th October that 0.7% English queries are noticeably affected by Penguin Data Refresh.
Penguin 3 Trivia
3.1% English queries are noticeably affected by the New Google Penguin Updates, says Google Head of webspam team, Matt Cutts. He elaborated that the new update is created to deal with the content (“the stuff in the middle” is the word he used) between high quality content and spam while ‘Panda updates’ alone take care of the spam He opined that the update might even affect small percentage of queries in other languages such as Italian, Spanish and French. The percentage of other language queries affected is given below:
Italian – 0.4%
Spanish – 0.3%
Penguin and Percentage of Queries Affected:
It is observed from the impact the first Penguin updated caused that this new version of algorithm targets those websites that contains great number of low quality inbound links, which make them ‘link farms’. Before Penguin was launched, these websites with low quality content and a lot of links were rated high in rank and often displayed in the first page itself. Penguin is the result of Google’s decision to get rid of this disastrous trend that mocked the real internet audience for years. People were subjected to obvious shock when their searches got them into sites that are either link farms or filled with low quality content. Penguin is keen on two things: identifying link farms and other websites who have so many paid links in their site and degrading these websites in its ranking. This process eventually will clean up the web while empowering good sites, brimming with quality content. The impact of Penguin will also push online marketing companies to redefine their strategies.
Content is, of course, still considers as the breath of quality websites in the web world. If your website is blasted with irrelevant ads and junk pop-ups, it’s high time you clean them up or be prepared to take a plunge in its Google ranking. Many websites, in the past, were the benefactors of content spinning as they got good ranking without sweating for writing good articles. With the new Penguin updates, situation is drastically changed and hence, such sites are degraded with low rankings. Penguin, which is on a prowl to straighten the web world up, favorites the websites that have natural and relevant content .It is observed that Penguin also targets overly optimized sites that are entwined with the black hat tactics such as keyword stuffing, content spinning and cloaking. But Matt Cutts, through his blog, tried to clarify that Google Penguin’s target is not SEO service but webspam. Anyway, from the perspective of internet marketing companies, this is a new challenge that might result in innovative SEO solutions and services. Good websites with natural and fabulous content can expect an improvement in their ranking from now on and let’s hope it will be a new dawn of optimism in web arena.
Tags: Google Algorithm, Google Penguin, internet marketing company, online marketing company, SEO service, SEO solutions and services, SEO tactics
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