In early 2012, Google released an algorithm update that was codenamed “Penguin.” This update was touted as an anti-spam measure, apparently mostly aimed at bad linking.
Another thing about Penguin was that it wasn’t something you could recover from, (they said), without cleaning up your previous spam.
But there was nothing you could do once you’d “cleaned up” other than wait for them to refresh the filter. No reconsideration requests allowed. Just a “natural” recovery when it ran again.
The Endless Wait
All well and good. Except that Penguin didn’t exactly refresh often. Or regularly. If at all. And that mean that people who were (or felt they had been) hit by Penguin had real problems recovering from it, even if they did everything they were supposed to do.
But hopefully that might be about to change.
Penguin 3.0 Announced
In typically vague Google fashion, an upcoming update to Penguin was announced last week in a Google Webmasters Hangout. No firm timeline was given, (although it is supposed to happen by the end of the year), and no real details.
However, one thing that Google’s John Mueller did say was that the new version of Penguin would probably refresh much more frequently than it did in the past. Which means that if a site is affected by Penguin, recovery should be a bit easier once you’ve done the necessary cleaning up.
What Can We Expect?
Well the simple answer here is that nobody knows.
When asked about the size and impact of the update, Mueller was fairly non-specific, and simply said that when your own website is affected by an algorithm update it always seems to be a big impact.
All that we really know so far is that Google has acknowledged the problem with the Penguin algorithm – that website owner’s changes aren’t reflected for a long time between refreshes – and that they’re going to try to work on updating the algorithm more regularly.
That’s all the information that we have on the new Penguin Algorithm so far. As more information comes to light about what we can expect from the algorithm and what its release date will be, we’ll be posting it here so keep an eye out for that.