It’s been more than a month when the first notification for Penguin 4.0 becoming live came. Well, that was a time for great excitement for all of us indulged in the field of search engine optimization. In my personal views, penguin 4.0 is nothing less than a boon for SEO companies across the planet.
It was a really long waiting time (700 days) for the latest update of the Google Penguin algorithm. Google never took so long before in any of the former penguin updates.
The Past Penguin updates
- Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)
- Penguin 1.1 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
- Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)
- Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
- Penguin 2.1 on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
- Penguin 3.0 on October 17, 2014 (impacting around 1% of queries)
- Penguin 4.0 & real-time on September 23, 2016
Now, when Google Penguin 4.0 is live, it’s way more than what everyone has expected; at least I did not expect such a huge evolution. Some of the highlighted points that I would like to pick up from the sack of Penguin 4.0 are:
- Penguin is a real-time algorithm now.
- It’s a part of Google’s core algorithm now (derived from point 1).
- The whole site won’t be penalized for a mistake in a particular link.
- Frequent changes would be seen in the SERPs now.
- It devalues spam and quality content is still the king. In fact, it’s more important now.
Penguin 4.0 is that relief package which the sites already suffering from the previous update’s penalties were waiting for. For most of the SEO professionals, an update in the already existing algorithm was never anticipated to be such a huge evolution. Most important was Penguin becoming real time. This was already anticipated, but still, it was more of a rumor back then.
Impact of Penguin being real time now-
The Penguin 4.0 has not come alone. In fact, with the new Penguin 4.0 update, Google has made itself so clear that no more Penguin updates would be seen in the future. What does this mean?
Penguin algorithm has been integrated into Google’s core algorithm now. There was a time when webmasters used to prepare their site for the worst cases whenever a new Penguin update was expected to roll out. But now, with Penguin becoming the real-time algorithm, webmasters have to keep their site Penguin friendly forever.
Penguin is a no more seasonal hazard. Those who do not believe in playing by rules will now have to live in the fear forever. If you are playing a rogue, and not sticking to the fair side of the game, then you would see the aftereffects quicker like never before.
No one knows, how many times the Penguin crawls your site in a day. Like, Google’s core algorithm, Penguin now crawls in real time and no one can say how many times or when it crawls. So, if you are lucky enough to not get caught in the first crawl, no one can say you would not get caught in the next crawl.
A more granular approach is being followed now-
Google uses 200 different signals to decide the ranking of a page in its SERPs. Out of which Spamming has become one of the most important signals. In its official release, Google made it clear that it will check your whole site (all sections not just pages) for the spamming signals. It means that each and every crawl-able component on your site will now have to go through Penguin’s Anti-spamming check. It also means that not just the pages but also the links and backlinks on your site would now be examined thoroughly.
The Penguin is competent to catch the spammy signals on your website and decide the new rank accordingly in real time with immediate effect.
Effect of Penguin on NSEO-
Google always denies the effect of NSEO(Negative SEO) in its SERPs, but it is really hard to believe that Google’s SERPs are not at all affected by the NSEO. The main purpose of NSEO is to downgrade your competitor’s site by stamping them with negative signals used by Google to downgrade the sites.
Well, when Google announced the Penguin 4.0 update, it also made clear that from now on the whole site would not be penalized for a rogue signal on any particular page. However, the page still has to suffer the penalties. As, the concept of the whole site being downgraded is not at all supported by Google anymore, the effect of NSEO would now be negligible. It means that Google has finally deactivated the existence of NSEO in its SERPs.
As a positive effect of this, organic SEO would now be valued more than ever encouraging the site owners and webmasters to focus on legitimate SEO and site promotion.
No more manipulation- legitimate SEO backs the marketing now-
With the devaluation of Spam and rogue practices, legitimate SEO and marketing have again gained their importance. This shift from spam to marketing practices would surely play an important role in de-motivation of rogue practices and motivation of legitimate SEO practices.
Marking has always been an integral part of a legitimate SEO strategy. But, in the past few years with the growth of spammy practices, marketing had lost its importance. Now at least Google is promoting marketing more than ever and it is expected to revive the marketing practices in the near future.
Penguin is the child on which Google must be feeling proud of and it should be. For a long time, we have seen the rogue players shaking the SEO world with their unethical practices. With this new update, a new hope to restore the importance of legitimate SEO is shining, giving everyone the same chances to rule the SERPs with their ethical approach. The quick penalties and quick revival is the most looked forward feature of this update as it will give SEO service companies more clients with actual work to be done in terms of legitimate SEO and marketing.
Description: Penguin 4.0 update has come as a ray of hope for those players who stick to the rules and believe in legitimate SEO. With a powerful tool like Penguin becoming the part of Google’s core algorithm, Google has shown its intentions to encourage legitimate SEO practices.
