Less than one week ago Google announced the release of a new search algorithm known as the “Penguin Update.” As most Google algorithm changes go, this had many business owners feeling nervous and holding their breath in fear. However, this algorithm change was going to be different than your typical Panda updates—it was supposed to catch webspammers. According to Google, the update affected about 3% of search queries.
For those who are unfamiliar, there are many websites that use tactics that have no value to the reader simply to rank highly on a Google search engine results page (SERP). In most SEO circles, these are called “Black Hat Tactics,” which include keyword stuffing, cloaking, and doorway pages. You can learn more about black hat tactics here. Although Google has made clear that these approaches to SEO are off-limits, many websites still find loopholes and somehow cheat their way to the top of SERPs. The response was the Penguin Update, which was launched on April 24, 2012. Now that it has been a few days it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room: Did this update really help clean the web?
Google Penguin Update Analysis
Despite the name change, Google is sticking to the old Panda tricks by not telling anyone what changes were made to the new algorithm. This leaves much analysis up to speculation, so the easiest way to tell whether or not anyone was improved is by looking at a few examples.
Example #1: Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land tests Viagra search results.
Sullivan decided to take a look at the search Viagra because Viagra is a product that creates a lot of spam. When typing in this search query, Sullivan found that four of the top ten results were hacked by spammers, three of which Google knew were hacked because there were warnings posted on the searches. Two additional top ten results had absolutely nothing to do with Viagra. That makes the majority of top ten results irrelevant, which is a big red flag when analyzing the effectiveness of the Penguin Update. However, Sullivan did add a postscript explaining that there is no way to prove that this problem is due to the algorithm change.
Example #2: Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide tests his own articles.
This example shows Shotland typing in the title of articles he wrote into the search box of Google. Shotland found that not only was his article not on page one, but page one was full of scraper and spam results. He then tried searching for another article he wrote and the same thing occurred. However, 3 hours after posting his article was ranked number four. This brings Shotland to the conclusion that the Penguin Update might work, but it takes some time to see results.
Example #3: Aaron Wall of SEO Book searches for baseball cardholders for mini-cards.
Wall decided to type in this search query only to find the first page full of old blog posts, a Facebook note that was auto-generated feed, and a Yahoo! shopping page that was completely empty. Wall eventually concluded that this new algorithm still puts too much emphasis on domain name and authority.
What Do These Google Penguin Update Examples Really Mean?
It is still tough to know whether or not this Penguin Update is making a difference. The examples above suggest that this update did not help clean up the web, but these could be isolated examples. Every example that I tried on my own seemed to turn-up a nice SERP, but I was unaware what the SERP looked like before the update. This seems to be the problem for most when trying to determine whether or not this new change has really made a difference, so some are giving it a little bit more time.
It is also important to note that those who were hurt by the Penguin Update are going to be much more vocal than those that saw a positive change. This also makes it tough to come up with a conclusion about the update.
Over to You!
What are your thoughts on the Penguin Update? Do you think it has really helped clean the web, or are you still seeing just as much spam?
I follow the Viagra niche as well through these updates just to see the affect of massive spam on hacked .edu domains and am always surprised to see these updates bring irrelevant domains. A few restaraunt and food related websites kept popping in and out of the last few weeks for “buy viagra”
A friend’s site that was deindexed ages ago is reindexed and #1 for his old niche while the rest of the serp is webspam (even forum profiles ranking for financial terms)
An old insurance related domain I hit with probably 600k xrumer links 2 years ago and haven’t touched since is now ranking.
My informational site (like a wiki for my niche) that was #1 for over a year dropped to #100 and the only page ranked is a a forum post by my administrator account on a thread that doesn’t include my keyword. Results 1-10 are ugly, low content, ad heavy sites with little value to the audience.
One of my spam sites is now ranking for a big pharmaceutical term I was never even going for. This whole update is a mess, but who am I to have any authority in the topic… I’m just one of the small work from home SEO guys trying to make a living online.
I want to say that their whole intention is to shake the weak hands from the SEO business and drive webmasters back to PPC (I worked with clients to reduce PPC spending and replaced that traffic with organic, saving them money while earning money for myself).
I’ll sit patiently and continue adding quality content and backlinking as I was before.. that’s my action plan.
I do a lot of internet research via Google every day and I can tell you as a researcher this update is a disaster. I don’t know what researchers are going to do. The crap I pull from the simplest search strings is unbelievable. The black hatters are still winning this game. They’re just recreating old posts and giving them new dates. It’s awful. And, worse, I’m now constantly having to swim through FORUMS. The other day I tried to google something simple – “teen suicide rates CDC.” The website for the CDC didn’t even pop up. This has happened dozens of times. I’m wasting time and I’m starting to want to migrate to a different search engine. Do you have any suggestions. This may not be the end of SEO, but it will be a loss of market share to Google. I don’t have time to swim through the crap I’m drawing. I used to know how Google thought, but I don’t anymore. 10, 12 years of “googling,” and I knew intuitively how to search for information, how to pare down keywords. I wish they’d just go back to the way it was.
oh, and the other thing – my own blog – a crashing Alexa rank in one month. it’s gone from nearing the 200,000s to around 650,000 for the month. I have a quality site. Never bought a backlink or performed any black hattery. I’m sure it will all level off, but really, how annoying.
The Penguin update had good intentions, but the main thing it got wrong ( by “wrong,” i mean disasterous) is that, for all the sites that were negatively affected, their pages were replaced in the SERPs by scraper sites. It happened to me and now i have to spend all my time writing DMCA copyright reports to the ISPs. Maybe that’s what Google really wants – All of us to do the hard work to take down the scraper sites; then google doesn’t have to deal with it.
What I’m surprised no one is talking about is how this update is going to affect antitrust proceedings in Europe and potential antitrust violations in the USA. To me its pretty clear, if someone was developing a search engine specifically looking for the flags that google is “guidelining” down now and say that new “seo search engines” results were harmed because google is forcing everyone to play by their rules, to me, that is clearly and antitrust anti-competitive behavior.
for instance, what if i was building a new search engine that relied heavily upon anhor text? now my model is broken.
how will these guidelines affect ask and bing results?
after this new update, google’s serps are a freaking mess. so much so, ive been wandering over to bing and liking it.
I guess first off I have been doing SEO for 15 years so I am not new to the subject. I have never been a black hat guy buying links or doing any sort of gaming of the system, but rather producing quality content and spending hours on end manually building links and such only to find out that all my link building is now a problem because of a spam filter problem.
It would appear that google has decided that if you have to many links that have anchor text in them with what they would perceive as monetizable keywords and not enough links that say your company name or click here or maybe view site and such you are doing something wrong.
I guess in all the years this has never been said until now. So I think saying only 3.1 percent of US searches are affected I believe is an understatement, as well as many sites got caught in this filter unjustly and the SERPS have been extremely screwy for a lot of searches I keep an eye on.
I find it disturbing that the perspective on their part is “success”. I think they are and continue to loose market share due to screwy results and the forcing of local and personal results even when you are not trying to search that way.
Also take a look at bing and just think about how much they are now looking like the old google when it comes to the SERP’s page.
I guess like everything else google will fall as a monopoly in search that it is currently. I miss the days of having multiple search engine for traffic and not having to rely on one engine for the majority of your traffic.