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The latest announced release, Penguin 4.0, will also be the last, given its new real-time nature.



After a nearly two year wait, Google’s Penguin algorithm has finally been updated again. It’s the fourth major release, making this Penguin 4.0. It’s also the last release of this type, as Google now says Penguin is a real-time signal processed within its core search algorithm.

Penguin goes real-time
Penguin is a filter designed to capture sites that are spamming Google’s search results in ways that Google’s regular spamming systems might not detect. Introduced in 2012, it has operated on a periodic basis.

In other words, the Penguin filter would run and catch sites deemed spammy. Those sites would remain penalized even if they improved and changed until the next time the filter ran, which could take months.

The last Penguin update, Penguin 3.0, happened on October 17, 2014. Any sites hit by it have waited nearly two years for the chance to be free.

Those long delays are now to be a thing of the past, according to Google. With this latest release, Penguin becomes real-time. As Google recrawls and reindexes pages — which happens constantly — those pages will be assessed by the Penguin filter. Pages will be caught and/or freed by Penguin as part of this regular process.

As Google said in its post:

With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page.
Penguin becomes more page-specific, not sitewide only
Google also said this new Penguin algorithm is “more granular.” From its post:

Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.
Previously, Penguin was a sitewide penalty. So, does being “more granular” mean that it’s now page-specific? Yes and no, it seems. We asked Google for more clarity about this, and we were told:

It means it affects finer granularity than sites. It does not mean it only affects pages.
Our best interpretation of this statement is that Penguin might impact specific pages on a site, or it might impact sections or wide swaths of a site, while other pages are fine.

Google will no longer confirm Penguin update
Google also said with this update, it will no longer confirm future Penguin updates. That makes sense. Since it’s a constant process, there’s nothing to confirm.

Is Penguin fully live?
This real-time Penguin update is probably not fully live yet. It is now “rolling out,” Google said. Google didn’t tell us how long it may take to roll out, but I suspect it won’t take that long, maybe a couple of weeks. If Google regularly revisits your pages, then you should likely see the change quickly. If Google comes to your site more infrequently, it may take longer.

Some swore they saw this roll out yesterday, but Google would not confirm that.

Past Penguin updates
For history buffs, here’s the rundown on Penguin updates over time, as well as the impact they’ve had on queries, according to Google:

Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)
Penguin 1.1 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)
Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
Penguin 2.1 on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
Penguin 3.0 on October 17, 2014 (impacting around 1% of queries)
Penguin 4.0 & real-time on September 23, 2016

Penguin 4.0, Google would not give a specific number of the percentage of queries it impacted, mostly because the update is constantly happening and the percentage will constantly be changing.

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Google's algorithms rely on more than 200 unique signals or "clues" that make it possible to surface what you might be looking for. These signals include things like the specific words that appear on websites, the freshness of content, your region and PageRank. One specific signal of the algorithms is called Penguin, which was first launched in 2012 and today has an update.



After a period of development and testing, we are now rolling out an update to the Penguin algorithm in all languages. Here are the key changes you'll see, which were also among webmasters' top requests to us:

Penguin is now real-time. Historically, the list of sites affected by Penguin was periodically refreshed at the same time. Once a webmaster considerably improved their site and its presence on the internet, many of Google's algorithms would take that into consideration very fast, but others, like Penguin, needed to be refreshed. With this change, Penguin's data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page. It also means we're not going to comment on future refreshes.

Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.

The web has significantly changed over the years, but as we said in our original post, webmasters should be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling websites. It's also important to remember that updates like Penguin are just one of more than 200 signals we use to determine rank.

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So we had this from John Mueller a couple weeks ago, that the next Penguin update that Google plans on releasing will be real-time and hopefully by the end of the year.


Gary Illyes kind of echoed what John Mueller said yesterday at SMX. He was careful this time to not give the attendees a date. It seemed like there was a timeline in his head and that he wanted to share it but he refused to. Last time he shared a timeline, Google pushed back the date a bunch of weeks.

Gary said that the next Penguin update is in the "foreseeable future." I think that means that it can come as early as the next few weeks. But again, Google can push it back. For him to have a timeline in his head, it must mean it is coming really soon.


He also said it should be the real-time/continuous version that we are expecting. So if you get slammed by Penguin and the algorithm is real time, as soon as Google processes your link removals (i.e. disavows or links are actually removed) you can potentially recover immediately.

Will it all happen? Who knows. But if I had to guess, we will see a Penguin update by the end of this month.

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Yesterday, as I covered at Search Engine Land, Google said at SMX East on stage that the Google Panda 4.2 update that began rolling out around July 18th of this year is indeed still rolling out.


Google's Gary Illyes said on stage that he checked on Wednesday with the team and it is indeed still rolling out.

It is expected to continue to roll out, as I said earlier this month, because Google back then said it would take several months. And several months from July means probably into early next year.

While the Panda 4.2 update seemed to have reversed itself in late August, it now does seem to be back on track.

Looking at my traffic data, since I know I was impacted by the Panda 4.1 update and recovered in Panda 4.2, I can check a lot of these metrics.

Around July 17th I noticed a ~10% lift in my Google organic traffic, then on August 17th, it seemed Panda 4.2 reversed itself. Then on September 3rd, the Panda gains I saw returned.

I am not seeing on average 20% gains after September 3rd Panda 4.2 from my Panda 4.1 penalty days.

The gains do slowly continue, so it does seem to be rolling out very slowly.

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Yea, we are all waiting for the next Google Panda refresh, we have been told time and time again it is coming soon.



But as you know, it has not yet come.
The thing is, it may already be too late to make changes to your site for this Panda refresh cycle. What I mean by that is that if your site was hit by the last Panda update and today you decide to refresh all your content by having experts write the most authoritative and useful content pieces, it still may be too late. Google may have already ran all the data for the Panda refresh but they have not yet pushed the release. There are many stages of a Panda update and if it is coming soon, I suspect the data aspect has already been refreshed and the Panda score your site has, probably is set in stone for the upcoming Panda 4.2 or Panda 5 (whatever we name it).

I asked Gary Illyes from Google about this on Twitter last night:



And unlike Gary, he did not answer the direct question. He gave a Google-like response and avoided the question. He basically said keep improving your site, stop focusing on specific Panda refreshes. The lack of an answer, to me, implies it is too late. But I am just reading into the lack of the response.

Here are his responses when I pestered him last night about this:



The second response means that although you are hit by Panda, other algorithms might take notice and you may see a small gradual increase.

Either way, I think any changes you make today won't be recognized in the next Panda refresh. I can be wrong but that is my gut.

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Google's Gary Illyes said over the weekend on Twitter that a Google "Penguin refresh is months away."

The last official Penguin update we had was Penguin 3.0, which took place on October 18, 2014 or almost 9-months ago. The last time we saw a shift with the Penguin algorithm was before December 11, 2014, which was over 7-months ago.


So realistically, even though Google has said time and time again, that they will be making Penguin run faster - we are likely not to see a Penguin refresh for a while. Maybe it will take over a year like we saw between Penguin 2.1 on October 4, 2013 and Penguin 3.0 on October 18, 2014. Before that, Penguin 2.0 on May 24, 2012 and the original Penguin release on April 24, 2012.

At this rate, I suspect Penguin won't happen for a year or so after Penguin 3.0.

Here is Gary's tweet:



We did hear from Gary at SMX that the goal is to make Penguin run in real time, not Panda. And that it will take a while for that to happen. So Google is still working on a faster Penguin, believe it or not.

But to wait over a year, or even several months, for a Penguin or Panda refresh, is a bit too long.

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So it didn't happen last week over July 4th, it didn't happen within the 2-4 week time frame we expected from Gary Illyes message out of SMX Advanced. It is not happening this weekend either.


Gary Illyes posted on Twitter yesterday "heyya, it's [the Panda refresh] still in the "soon" phase, but can't give an ETA for technical reasons."

I am not sure what he means for technical reasons but it does seem to imply that Panda will not be refreshing today or this weekend. Will it be next week? I am not sure, I am starting to believe this is going to take longer than any of us expected.


The last official Panda update was Panda 4.1 which was on September 25, 2014, or over 9.5 months ago. I believe the last unofficial Panda refresh was October 24th or over 8.5 months ago.

I really do hope it comes soon and those sites that have "cleaned up" their web sites can come back to life. Of course, new sites will be hit, but Google needs to refresh these algorithm more regularly. Both for the sake of businesses failing and for the sake of the quality of the search results.

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Yesterday we covered a statement where Google said you should not even ask for links. It was from the Portuguese Webmaster blog written by Diogo Botelho from the Google webmaster team. It said then "do not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links."


I emailed Google about it over 24-hours before I published my stories about it, to make sure they were communicating the proper message and they didn't respond. That was until several hours after I published my stories on it and the SEO community kinda of blew up about it.

Now they are retracting that statement somewhat. They emailed me that they've since updated the blog post to change that line to read "not buy, sell or ask for links that may violate our linking webmaster guidelines."

It makes you think, does the changed language change much?
On the one hand, we have Google seeing the community reaction and deciding to actually change the statement. That is a clear sign that asking for links, is NOT against Google's guidelines. There is no other way to take the message of them changing the line of text. If it was against their guidelines, they would not have changed anything.

On the other hand, what changed? Their guidelines say unnatural links can be penalized. Are links you ask for natural? That is up for interpretation.

But the clear message Google made by changing this statement was that asking for links is NOT ALWAYS considered against their guidelines, but only when it violates their guidelines.

Got it? Thought so.

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Google has issued new guidelines on the guidelines for representing your business on Google page, specifically around how SEM/SEO companies can represent their clients within Google My Business/Google Maps listings.
The new guidelines don't really seem that enforceable, but it at least sets the groundwork for spammy SEO companies that hold their client's Google Maps business listings hostage.
Google said that "only business owners or authorized representatives may verify and manage their business information on Google My Business." They then listed the "additional guidelines for authorized representatives."

Here it is:
Any individual or company that manages business information on Google My Business for a business that they don’t own is considered an authorized representative. Examples: a third-party SEO/SEM company; a friend of the business owner; an online ordering, scheduling, or booking provider; and an affiliate network provider.

Authorized representatives must:
Never claim a business listing without express consent from the business owner.
Never make false, misleading, or unrealistic claims.

Never use harassing, abusive, or untrustworthy tactics with potential or existing customers.
Always work directly with the business owner to complete verification. Learn more about verification

Always ensure that the business owner understands what Google My Business is and where Google My Business data is used. Authorized representatives should share the following resources with the business’s owner:

Google My Business: Be Found
About Google My Business
Edit your business information
How Google uses business information
Someone else verified my business
Always keep the business owner informed about which actions the authorized representative will take on the business listing.

Always follow Guidelines for representing your business on Google. Note that the phone number and website for a listing should always be the single, authoritative phone number and website for the business and be verifiable by the business owner. Website content must be owned and managed by the business owner.

Always respond to management access requests promptly, and always transfer listing ownership to the business owner immediately upon request. Authorized representatives must, whenever possible, encourage the business owner to create an account, own the listing, and add authorized representatives as managers. Learn more about transferring ownership

And if you don't follow these guidelines? Google says, "failure to adhere to these policies may result in a suspension for the listing and/or account."

So there you have it.

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A month ago today, we reported that Gary Illyes from said a Panda refresh is coming within 2-4 weeks or so. Well, it has been over 4 weeks now and still no refresh, but that is not uncommon, launch dates with Google often get delayed, yes - even with the Panda updates.


Yesterday, in a German Google Hangout, John (Johannes) Mueller from Google said in German that the refresh is coming soon. Oliver Engelbrecht from seo-portal.de transcribed it, "I think the next update, I don't know if it's coming this week or next week, but in any case it should be released soon."

But I was nervous even with the transcription by a German speaking individual, that something got lost.

So I asked John Mueller in the English hangout this morning on Google+ about what he said at the 24:15 mark.

He basically said, yes, it is still coming "fairly soon," but he wouldn't expect it to go live on the July 4th weekend. Today, July 3rd, is an official holiday, so Googlers are off in Mountain View. But he did say expect it to happen "in a few weeks." If I had to guess, maybe next Thursday night.

Here is the video at the start time:



Here is the transcript as I typed it:

We have this question from Barry *sigh*

On Thursday, in the German hangout, I am told you said the Panda refresh is coming this week or next. Or did you still mean it can come even later than next week?...

So a few weeks ago we said that this refresh will be happening in a few weeks and so it is kind of coming up. I doubt it is going to happen this week because it is a holiday and it is Friday and people are busy doing other things.

But I imagine in the next couple of weeks this is something that might be happening. So that kind of sets expectations. We try not to provide an exact date for when these things roll out because things can always change. But I expect this to happen fairly soon.

Next week, John is on vacation and I am pretty sure Gary Illyes is traveling - so I am a bit nervous the communication line around the Panda refresh will be delayed. But I will do my best to keep you updated.

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A little over three weeks ago, Google's Gary Illyes said on stage at SMX Advanced that the Panda data refresh is coming soon. He said, somewhere around 2, 3, or 4 weeks.


So as the fourth week approaches, SEOs and Webmasters are getting anxious - which is why Gary didn't want to mention how soon. Google needs to approve and push the change and that might take a week or it might be postponed for weeks on end.

Gary replied to questions about it on Twitter today saying, "And that's kids, why I should stop giving timeframes." He added, "yes, it's coming soon as far as I know."

This is in regards to Panda.
I currently do not see any signs of Panda rolling out today, but that might change later on today or next week. But at this moment, I see no Panda update signs. But do not worry, it is coming soon.

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On June 17th, we reported about a Google update, Google later confirmed the update as being part of their core algorithm and not related to Panda or Penguin or even HTTPS.


Marcus Tober provided some really interesting insight into this update basically showing how sites with news or fresh content seemed to see the biggest lift from this update. He showed how the Wall Street Journal saw a 19% lift in search visibility in Google, USA Today saw an 11% climb, Business Insider saw a 20% climb. Heck, this site saw a 134% increase according to SearchMetrics.



I am no where near pre Panda 4.1 days but it was a nice uptick. Referrals from Google jumped 25% overall as well.

The interesting part, which may just be coincidence, is that the Google Trends relaunch. Google Trends is now run in almost real-time, which may have given Google better data for their core search feature?

Again, pure speculation on Marcus' part, but could be true.

Take a look at his post over here.

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Yesterday we reported about weekend chatter that was so low that I called it the Google cricket update. But starting yesterday afternoon, that chatter in the SEO community spiked significantly.

Meaning, I am seeing signs of a possible Google update based on the vast number of webmasters and SEOs saying the rankings have changed. But I honestly don't think it is Panda. My Panda expert sources (I have a few) are telling me they see no movement, plus the forum chatter doesn't really show Panda yet.

The folks at WebmasterWorld in two different threads and the folks at Black Hat Forums in two different threads are discussing a possible update. Some are saying Panda, but others are saying not so. Some are seeing ranking changes, some are seeing huge shifts in crawl rates.
Here are some quotes:

We are observing some ranking movement across a wide range of our client base. Some more violent than others. I am, as of yet, not found a common denominator for the most unsettles sites. I think it may be a tad too early to point fingers at any Pandas just yet but with the recent chatter its a strong possibility.

I'm seeing shifting that smells like a panda.

I have been noticing the same. Maybe it is the panda update we heard about a while back?

I know we are expecting a Panda update soon but if this was it, I'd expect it to be way larger. So maybe Google is testing something or not? I am not sure.

The Google tracking tools like Mozcast, SERP Metrics, Algoroo and a new one named SERP Watch show changes - mostly yesterday. SERPs.com hasn't updated for yesterday yet, although neither has Mozcast.

One thinks it might be mobile related only but I am not sure.

Normally Panda updates don't happen until Fridays based on my experience.

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The local SEOs are buzzing big time right now. It seems like over the past few days, Google has done a major algorithmic change that has shifted how the local results rank in both Google Maps and the local packs in web search.

It is believed that the Google Maps Googlebomb fix led to this and I actually said then "expect the traffic change some for many local businesses in the near future."

It seems to be related, although Mozcast features shows the shift on the 15th. I cannot find any serious discussion around changes in local results as early as the 15th, only shortly after the Google apology after the 22nd.

The Local Search Forums has tons of local SEO experts documenting the change. You have Mike Blumenthal calling the location results screwy and the forums are simply lighting up around this.



I find it hard to believe it is not around the change Google made for the Google Maps bomb.

It seems like something went wrong with location detection and ranking of local results. It is almost believed to be a bug with Google's location detection systems. But it is awkwardly around the same time of the Googlebomb fix.

I'll try to find out more from the source, Google.

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Danny Sullivan posted that Google's Matt Cutts, the face behind Google's search team, the head of web spam, has officially been replaced at Google with an unnamed Googler. The new head of web spam is not revealing himself.

Matt Cutts has not officially left Google, he is still on leave and with the company. But he has been replaced, in terms of his title and day to day activities. That should come as no surprise, as Matt went on leave almost a year ago and decided to extend the leave longer. We have not heard about the status of his leave since.The majority of the readers here feel Matt won't return to Google.

Who has taken Matt's role? Several Googlers. But his official position, as the head of web spam, that person is not ready to make an appearance or be known to the SEO world. Instead, Google has people like John Mueller, Gary Illyes and many other Googlers who will be the face and bridge between Google and the webmaster community.

When someone asked Matt about this, he said on Twitter "I'm still around. :)"



I suspect within a month or two, we will hear the official word from Google on Matt's future with the company.

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In the responsive design hangout, Google's John Mueller was sharing his browser and one of his most recent tabs in the Chrome browser has the title tag "Penalty Server."

You can see a screen shot of it below, where it shows a Google search box but the title of the page is "Penalty Server." It can be seen at the 12:36 mark of the Google+ Hangout. Here is a screen capture:



I assume this is where Googlers like John and others can go to quickly see if a site was hit by a manual action and/or Google algorithmic penalty such as Panda or Penguin. Which leads up back to the automated action viewer which is not coming any time soon.

Wouldn't you love 5 minutes with this Google Penalty Server bookmark. :)

This was first spotted in my comments by Han.

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I know, we just covered huge chatter around a Google update last Friday but there is no doubt in my mind, Google is testing algorithms maybe around Panda or Penguin or the doorway algorithm is being released or maybe a whole new beast.



This morning the WebmasterWorld thread started heating up again. Plus I received emails, social media mentions and more around major changes in the Google search results. Here are some quotes from the thread:

Definitely movement here and not for the good. Another 3-4 spots lost on all main keywords.

Today I see penguin related movement.

Today I see movement (further shuffling similar to yesterday). Why do you think it is Penguin-related?

Lots of SERP movements in Google Australia, seeing a lot of new sites showing up on page 1 for root keyword searches but not city based (ie: keyword sydney), not much changes there. Most of the fluctuations are from money keywords or root keywords search results. That's my observation so far.

One of the tracking tools said on Google+ that they saw the largest shift in a long time:

We've recorded a sudden jump in SERP flux today. Volatility was above 2 roos which is the most turbulent day since the mystery update on the 5th of February.

The only tools that were updated this morning so far were SERP Metrics, Algoroo and Advanced Web Ranking and they all show more activity in changes in the Google search results compared to the norm. Mozcast and SERPs.com should update soon. Update, Mozcast is also showing major volatility in the search results at Google.

Either way, I think Google has been heavily testing something but I am not sure if today is the day it is released or not.

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Google announced they are releasing a new “ranking adjustment” to their doorway page classifier to better handle doorway pages in the search results.


In short, Google does not want to rank doorway pages in their search results. The purpose behind many of these doorway pages is to maximize their search footprint by creating pages both externally on the web or internally on their existing web site, with the goal of ranking multiple pages in the search results, all leading to the same destination.

Google’s Brian White said:

Over time, we’ve seen sites try to maximize their “search footprint” without adding clear, unique value. These doorway campaigns manifest themselves as pages on a site, as a number of domains, or a combination thereof. To improve the quality of search results for our users, we’ll soon launch a ranking adjustment to better address these types of pages. Sites with large and well-established doorway campaigns might see a broad impact from this change.
Google will be launching over this new ranking adjustment shortly and those who have created doorway pages may see them really soon.

How do you know if your web pages are classified as a “doorway page?” Google said asked yourself these questions:

Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?

Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?

Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?

Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

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