Google’s Release Of Penguin 3.0 Updates Previous Version
Back in October 17, 2014, Google released Penguin 3.0 that focuses on combating spam. The update was highly anticipated by webmasters, as it was the first update to the Penguin filter in more than a year. Unlike other versions of Penguin, this one targets spammy, low quality backlinks pointing back to a webmaster’s site.
Changes in the search results on Google were noticeable in less than 24 hours after the release of Penguin 3.0. Most thought that the changes were related directly to this update. At the time, Google did not have further details on how many the update would affect over time by the changes it will bring about with search engine results. Now, though, we know that less than 1% of search queries have since been affected by this update.
The Various Versions of Penguin
Over the past three years, Google has released 6 versions of the Penguin filter, including the latest 3.0 one. While Google has not provided numbers for each one of its versions, so we will just number them 1 – 6 to discuss each one’s impact on search queries in the following information:
Google introduced Penguin 1 on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, and it affected a huge 3.1% of search queries. Then, on Saturday, May 26, 2012, Penguin 2 was introduced as an update to the filter, and it only affected less than 0.1% of the queries. Penguin 3 came along on Friday, October 5, 2012 and only about 0.3% of the queries felt the effects of the release of this version. Now, with Penguin 4, Google did name this version 2.0 and introduced it on Wednesday, May 22, 2013. The version included significant alterations to the filter and, therefore, affected 2.3% of the queries. Penguin 5 came out later that same year on Friday, October 4, 2013 and affected approximately 1.0% of the search queries. All this brings us to Penguin 6, also known as Penguin 3.0, that came out as we already mentioned on Friday, October 17, 2014 and currently has affected about 1.0% of the queries.
Of all the Penguin releases, 3.0 was the most anticipated one by publishers. They have eagerly awaited this refresh ever since the last version of Penguin to learn what progress they have made with the changes they made to their websites.
Understanding How to Work With Penguin
Ever since Penguin’s initial release back in 2012, publishers have been nervous over the way it affects the rank of their websites. In part, this is because when Penguin does impact them, they have to wait for the next update to learn if their changes please Google. For example, publishers who were negatively affected by the Penguin update of October 2013 did not find out if their website changes, including the removal of low quality backlinks, were effective with Google until the release of 3.0 over a year later.
Publishers should not wait until the last minute to make changes either, since changes made 3 weeks ago will not affect a Penguin update if it happened today. The publishers have to watch over their sites constantly and quickly make changes whenever they realize that Penguin is negatively impacting their queries.
Penguin will not be the reason for every drop in rank for publishers, though, since this filter causes a high number of links to be diminished in value for various reasons. As these links lose their credence, they no longer act as the votes they may have been at one time. Websites that once prospered from these so-called votes will lose ranking with Google once the links lose credibility with the search engine. A penalization such as this is an indirect way of losing rank.
Google vows that the 3.0 version of Penguin will allow a more frequent refresh rate for publishers, but this remains to be seen by the affected parties. Only time will tell for sure if 3.0 is an improvement as far as this concern.