Marcus Miller says, “So it happened. Google finally released Penguin 4.0 — the last Penguin update of its kind, as it now processes in real time as a part of Google’s core ranking algorithm. In this post, I want to take a look at what Penguin is, how this update affects the SEO community as a whole and how the brave and the bold can continue to safely improve their organic visibility without fear of repercussions from punitive search engine algorithms. The announcement After a few weeks of turbulence in the SERPs, the announcement that many had predicted was finally made. The Penguin 4.0 announcement had... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google launched the real-time, more granular version of Penguin on Friday. Google wrote in its announcement that it “now devalues spam.” Many SEOs and webmasters took that to mean that Penguin no longer penalizes – and it seems like they are right. Google’s Gary Illyes said on my public Facebook post that the new Penguin algorithm “managed to devalue spam instead of demoting.” But he also said that Google’s recommendation for using the disavow file has not changed. In other words, you should use the disavow file to help recover from Penguin issues. But... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google’s John Mueller said this morning during a live webmaster hangout on YouTube around 5 minutes into the video that the Friday update the SEO community is chattering about is not related to the Penguin algorithm. John said we can cross Penguin off the list for reasons why some SEOs and webmasters are noticing changes in the Google search results. He added that Google is constantly doing updates to the search results but he did not give any specific reason for this update or name the update. Again, we asked Google for an official comment on this update and Google... [...]

Erin Everhart says, “Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, confirmed on Twitter that we’ll be graced with the next Penguin update before the end of 2015. This means that all of those webmasters who were hit by the last Penguin update (in December 2014, mind you) now have the chance of recovery, since historically, this update hasn’t been refreshed automatically. This next Penguin update should also be a real-time version, so as Google detects spammy links, sites may be impacted immediately — and when spammy links are removed, those sites may see a more immediate recovery. While... [...]