Penguin 3.0 to hit before the end of the Year

There is a disturbance in the Force…

We have seen the signals that Google was preparing to make an update or change to their search system, in regards to refining the way the algorithm evaluates links, for some time now. Tremors in the search surrounding links comes in the form of changes in GWMT’s link reporting, changes to authorship, concerns with directory and forum linking along with the ever-controversial advertorial links. Penguin focuses on links and Panda focuses on low-quality content.

Search Engine Land offers a great history of Penguin update and Barry Schwartz shares his thoughts on this news as well. According to their records, the order and dates for releases are:

• Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (initial release, affected about 3.1% of search queries)
• Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1% affected)
• Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (less than 0.5% of queries were impacted)
• Penguin 4 (Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013 (2.3% of queries affected)
• Penguin 5 (Penguin 2.1) on Oct. 4, 2013 (1% of queries affected)

The next update is planned to be a complete update of this backlink evaluator of the algorithm with a focus on allowing Penguin to run like Panda does now, which is monthly. When the algorithm runs, it refreshes the Google index to align better with the signals and values of web pages; meaning that see improvements  becomes quicker. Currently, it can take a few weeks (6-10) for changes made in regards to links to be fully realized.

The Wrapper

Although Google is not giving out many details or officially announcing ever update, John Mueller with Google announced their anticipation of releasing a Penguin update within 2014 “in the reasonable future.” This really means that it will be easy to see recovery after a penalty and to see search improvements faster with white hat and organic link building.