Penguin Update

Google Penguin (since 2012) combats web spam: unnatural backlinks (link buying, link farms, too rapid link growth) and over-optimized anchors/keywords. Affected sites lose rankings – better: natural link building + good content.

The term Penguin Update refers to a series of updates that the search engine Google made to its algorithm. Of the total five updates, the first Penguin Update was rolled out in April 2012 and the last one (Penguin 3.0) in October 2014. The version number 3.0 for the last Penguin Update came about because smaller updates on the web were, for example, designated as 1.3 or 2.1.

Which forms of spam does the update penalize?

Unnatural links: For example, through link buying to influence ranking
Artificial Links: When a website mainly sets keyword links
Unnatural link growth: if links to a page grow unnaturally fast, it can be penalized.

Background of the update and websites affected by Penguin

The search engine Google rolled out the Penguin update to address manipulations in search results caused by on-page and off-page over-optimizations. Analyses of penalized websites indicate that these were violations against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Affected were particularly those websites whose backlink structure appeared "inconsistent," which includes link buying, unnaturally many links with money keywords, and too rapid link building. Likewise, Google "addressed" low-quality backlinks from link farms, article directories, or blog comments, as well as references from non-topic-relevant websites as part of the Penguin update. All of this aims to improve a website's link structure, which is supposed to naturally evolve for Google. The Penguin update also affected those websites that showed themselves to be overly ambitious in keyword optimization, standing out due to keyword stuffing.

Since the Penguin Update, it has become more difficult to actively engage in link building, e.g., through link exchange. Instead, there has been an effort to provide high-quality content so that other sites voluntarily set links. Social Media Marketing is also used to distribute content and links.

Criticism of the Penguin Update

After Google's algorithm updates, criticism quickly arose. This was mainly because webmasters, compared to other updates, found few clues for their penalties or downgrades and did not receive the necessary information from the search engine. Inexperienced webmasters, in particular, found it difficult to assess whether a ranking loss was justified or not. In these cases, only a professional examination of the link profile and content helps. Since Google's guidelines for building a link structure and writing content are more or less concrete, the mistakes are apparent to most webmasters. And because most webmasters are aware of spam measures in search engine optimization and therefore avoid them, only three percent of search queries were affected by the Penguin update. Compared to other updates, the percentage is very low. The Panda update affected 12 percent of search queries.

Meaning of the Penguin and Panda Update for Search Engine Optimization

With the Google Penguin and Panda updates, which focused more on good content and spamming through links, the quality in Google's SERPs was significantly improved. But what does this mean for SEO?

With the two Google updates, the main achievement was that modern SEOs focus on producing content not just for the search engine, but for visitors to a website. The goal is to provide users with high-quality content without overloading it with keywords. Links are also used more conscientiously, linking to content that makes sense and is related to the topic. Blackhat SEO and short-term SEO measures have since faded further into the background. It's always better to invest time in profitable and legal SEO practices anyway.