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SEO's Beware Penguin 3.0 is Here

by sweezeter
39 replies
  • SEO
    • |
The SEO community is going crazy right now with people talking about massive fluctuations in rankings in the last 12 hours. Skype groups are posting pictures of massive drops (or increases) in rankings and there's a lot of chatter on Twitter as well.

Algoroo's Graph
Penguin 2.0 Update - October '13


Current Graph - August '14


Notice the red roo score of 3.21 in the past week? Compare that to Penguin's release back in October with a score of 3.11

Hold on to your pants ladies and gentlemen, this may be Google's biggest Penguin refresh to date.

Better hope you've got those link profiles cleaned up, because it won't be pretty if you don't.
#beware #penguin #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Affiliate Ninja
    As long as your building high quality links and natural links are coming in there really isn't anything to worry about. Google does so many updates every year, I would focus on building high quality backlinks and don't worry about what updates Google is throwing out.

    It's all about being user friendly also.
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    • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
      Originally Posted by Affiliate Ninja View Post

      As long as your building high quality links and natural links are coming in there really isn't anything to worry about. Google does so many updates every year, I would focus on building high quality backlinks and don't worry about what updates Google is throwing out.

      It's all about being user friendly also.
      I agree, but there are still a lot of people out there that hired SEO companies to build backlinks. Those backlink techniques are now outdated and being proactively targeted by Google with each new algorithm update. Unfortunately your linkbuilding past can come back to haunt you.

      That means that a lot of people will be hurt by Penguin 3.0 as a result.
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    • Profile picture of the author TLondon
      Originally Posted by Affiliate Ninja View Post

      As long as your building high quality links and natural links are coming in there really isn't anything to worry about. Google does so many updates every year, I would focus on building high quality backlinks and don't worry about what updates Google is throwing out.

      It's all about being user friendly also.
      Yes there is a reason to worry, because Google's algorithms aren't that smart and do penalize pages that should not be penalized. I have proof in the pudding right now with my own case, and I have no idea what to fix because there's NOTHING to fix. All I can do right now is blackhat to AVOID Google's algorithm, which is why - yet again - I repeat: Google is NOT smart. I tried the honest, genuine approach and got screwed. So now Google is pushing me into adopting sneaky techniques on how to not get my original bona fide medical material penalized. IDIOTS.

      I'll gladly debate anybody on this.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hemanth Malli
    Until and unless we have low Quality backlinks there is no need to worry about any Google update even if our ranking goes down slowly it can regain its position with in one month or two. The baclinks are the keys to be on top for any site.
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      I don't know what you guys are doing that causes such fluctuations but I haven't seen much changes here, and I track 150+ sites in Serpfox.

      I also have about 30 affiliate sites of my own and the rankings of those didn't change a single bit in the last days/weeks.
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  • Profile picture of the author online only
    Looking forward to it. Don't think it's being launched yet, but definitely coming in the following weeks.

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  • Profile picture of the author godoveryou
    No changes here... yawn
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  • Profile picture of the author altonroot
    The Other way we can see it that so many webmasters who have cleaned up their back-links profile and waiting for this update desperately in the hope to revive the business got a reason to smile if it is true. No?
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    Just like with SSL, move to trust. Punish those uisng cheap methods favouring those with money to throw at it and those who put in effort with constant real content. We like those "not affected our 10s of sites yet" comments - Google take a long term view - don't worry they will find you and when they do - reminds us of Taken!
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  • Profile picture of the author SEOWizard417
    Haven't noticed any changes with my/client's sites. Too many rumors about penguin 3.0 but last time I heard, Google was having issues due to negative seo.
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    • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
      Originally Posted by SEOWizard417 View Post

      Haven't noticed any changes with my/client's sites. Too many rumors about penguin 3.0 but last time I heard, Google was having issues due to negative seo.
      I am definitely seeing changes in teh keywords I track. Just like nik0 I track over 500 kws, many in the top/competitive niches.

      From what I can tell it's the very competitive niches that are seeing the fluctuations. Typically Google does this to test the algorithm before rolling it out to everyone. If that goes smoothly expect to see it fully released soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author Arowana
    There are many reports from Blackhat and webmasterworld forums last 24 hrs but it keep changing back and forward as if Google is testing something. very strange.
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  • Profile picture of the author twilightofidols
    Looks like an unconfirmed major update at this point. I've seen zero movement in some niches, and wild fluctuations in others. They are probably live testing this algo change segment by segment.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Eddie
    Just minor fluctuations, as usual, for me.
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  • Profile picture of the author Carlsbadd
    Nothing on our networks, everything is going along smoothly.
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  • Profile picture of the author Houlian
    Last I heard, I think on SearchEngineJournal, they said at the meeting the next Penguin update was going to be released 'soon'. I wonder what is taking them so long -- they must be building something extra special into this one for us marketers. Personally, I think it will be a lot of the same old stuff. Maybe a tweak here or there. They'll probably save the catastrophic changes for some other animal update coming in the next few months.
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    • Profile picture of the author Arowana
      Originally Posted by Houlian View Post

      Last I heard, I think on SearchEngineJournal, they said at the meeting the next Penguin update was going to be released 'soon'. I wonder what is taking them so long -- they must be building something extra special into this one for us marketers. Personally, I think it will be a lot of the same old stuff. Maybe a tweak here or there. They'll probably save the catastrophic changes for some other animal update coming in the next few months.
      People say it's taking so long because of the negative SEO.
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      • Profile picture of the author Xelaetaks
        Originally Posted by Arowana View Post

        People say it's taking so long because of the negative SEO.
        It must be a tricky issue on Google's end how to deal with it. It seems like oenguin being more of a regular update might make negative seo less of a factor but who knows. Ideally if they would count more of the good links and not pay so attention to the bad ones maybe that can level the field, unless a site is clearly being spammy and shows no sign to change it.

        Either way hopefully this penguin update can get sites out of penguin penalties.
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    • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
      Originally Posted by Houlian View Post

      Last I heard, I think on SearchEngineJournal, they said at the meeting the next Penguin update was going to be released 'soon'. I wonder what is taking them so long -- they must be building something extra special into this one for us marketers. Personally, I think it will be a lot of the same old stuff. Maybe a tweak here or there. They'll probably save the catastrophic changes for some other animal update coming in the next few months.
      They've gotta test it somehow, and testing a small subsegmant of keywords allows for proper analysis of results and more importantly user response to it. By response I don't mean people's opinion of how they think the SERPs are but it's affect on Adwords spend, and CTR to the new results compared to the previous ones. They are essentially A/B testing results right now with different data centers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Icematikx
    Why do I never see anything when algorithms are "released?". The only action I've had is one of my keywords going from #2 to #1 yesterday, and then from #1 to #2 today. So exciting!
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Bleh, not seeing or hearing anything much yet. Perhaps too many people I know are into contextual links (PBN and otherwise). I am most interested in hearing from people who were still doing tiered link building though. The other thing is you still have a lot of people doing link spam to money sites so them dropping will cause instability all by itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Blaine Smitley
    We have about 30 sites now and we're not seeing much of anything. A little upwards movement on a couple of sites but that's it.
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  • Profile picture of the author RandySwanston
    Haven't seen any major changes yet, just 1 or 2 positions jumping up and down as usual. Brace yourselves for whatever happens in the coming weeks.
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  • Profile picture of the author serpyre
    Yes, but it is not working the way most people understand which is bottom-up. Google are working from the top-down - this is how enterprise companies do it. So if you haven't experienced it yet it means you are not in the top 5% (current target) - and will now start to progressively be squeezed from the top-down.

    That is the interesting part about all this - we know consultants who work laterally to Google not mulitiple levels under them. If you haven't been affected yet then either you have a very high quality site (minority) or you are in the lower percentile of sites that they haven't got to yet (majority). Only time and the process you used to get to your current state will determine which one it is - the problem is that everyone thinks they are in the minority group.
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    • Profile picture of the author Catalyst eMarketing
      For anyone that's wondering if this is it - or if it's still rolling out...

      John Mueller from Google said in a video hangout this AM, that the Penguin roll out is now complete and fully done. So the rankings should be settled in pretty much as far as Penguin affected sites go.

      Penguin discussion starts 46 minutes in. Much of the 1st part is about Google News.

      English Google Webmaster Central AND Google News office-hours hangout - YouTube
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      • Profile picture of the author Zoiden
        Originally Posted by Catalyst eMarketing View Post

        For anyone that's wondering if this is it - or if it's still rolling out...

        John Mueller from Google said in a video hangout this AM, that the Penguin roll out is now complete and fully done. So the rankings should be settled in pretty much as far as Penguin affected sites go.
        Yah I saw that but I feel like it's still rolling out on a smaller scale. I checked rankings this morning and from last night it went from 2pg to 5th and now back to 2page. hmmm
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  • Profile picture of the author jrod11
    I didn't see a lot of updates on my end. Some slight fluctuation, but nothing major.

    I did however see a lot of my sites going crazy about a month ago. Perhaps it was testing prior to the roll out?
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  • Profile picture of the author webmonopoly
    Im seeing some odd fluctuations as well for one of my sites that got hit for no reason. I never built 1 link to this site besides sharing on my social networks, and everything is high quality !00% unique with video and everything. Im fairly surprised and disappointed with this...
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  • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
    While I was wrong with my original assessment of Penguins roll out, I'm glad that wasn't it. I cleaned up my links and my rankings are back for many of my keywords pre-Penuin 2.0
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  • Profile picture of the author npoint
    It`s not so bad for me so far, several little drops and a lot more increases.
    What suprised me much is my GSA test projects I mean done only with GSA SER survived LOL, maybe because I done it with proper filters and with tiers, didn`t blasted to much but it seems google has no clue how to fight with this (((: yet. I read a lot of posts around on many forum sites and most of the people who done the SEO quite carefully (as it should be done) survived, those who blasted their projects (does not matter which tool and quality of backlinks) get burned. It is happening all the time, no suprises in my case this time again (:

    Several projects which got hit in the past came back to the game
    So if they thought they got us this time - they are wrong (: (AGAIN)
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  • Profile picture of the author Ghoster
    Who depends on Google anymore? It's pretty clear that you can't.
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    • Profile picture of the author online only
      Originally Posted by Ghoster View Post

      Who depends on Google anymore? It's pretty clear that you can't.
      If you are doing things right, you actually can... People who can't evolve are the ones who can't depend on Google anymore.
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      • Profile picture of the author sweezeter
        Originally Posted by online only View Post

        If you are doing things right, you actually can... People who can't evolve are the ones who can't depend on Google anymore.
        The thing is that it's foolish to ignore Google because they roll out a few major updates a year.

        No you shouldn't depend entirely on Google, but ignoring the benefits of SEO and free traffic because you are scared of an update is a bad idea.

        Don't rely solely on one traffic source, but don't ignore SEO.
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        • Profile picture of the author RandellB
          Originally Posted by sweezeter View Post


          Don't rely solely on one traffic source.
          I agree, there are still many ways to increase traffic, I say engaging in social media is good option.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    Apparently, this update KILLED many tiered sites. We're not just talking about sloppy PBN links but 3-tiered sites that use heavy blog comment, profile, forum, and web 2.0 links.
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  • Profile picture of the author RandellB
    The update targets spammy sites and links. As long as you are using Google-friendly strategies, there is nothing to worry about.
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  • Profile picture of the author maryamnawaz
    My websites are also safe. I hope It will remain same. It is only for those a
    who are involve in the spamming.
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  • Profile picture of the author michaelvn
    if you follow google rules and regulation than there is nothing to worry about.this update only targets spamming site and links.But i haven't notice more fluctuation.
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