Penguin’s effect on Google search results

Google Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content, and others.

Naming the algorithm update

The Penguin update went live on April 24, 2012. However, Google did not announce an official name for it until two days later.

Penguin’s effect on Google search results

By Google’s estimates, Penguin affects approximately 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in "highly spammed" languages. On May 25, 2012, Google unveiled the latest Penguin update, called Penguin 1.1. This update, according to Matt Cutts, was supposed to affect less than one-tenth of a percent of English searches. The guiding principle for the update was to penalise websites using manipulative techniques to achieve high rankings. Penguin 3 was released Oct. 5, 2012 and affected 0.3% of queries.

The differences between Penguin and previous updates

Before Penguin, Google released a series of algorithm updates called Panda with the first appearing in February 2011. Panda aimed at downranking websites that provided poor user experience. The algorithm follows the logic by which Google’s human quality raters determine a website’s quality.

In January 2012, so-called page layout algorithm update was released, which targeted websites with little content above the fold.

The strategic goal that Panda, Penguin, and page layout update share is to display higher quality websites at the top of Google’s search results. However, sites that were downranked as the result of these updates have different sets of characteristics. The main target of Google Penguin is spamdexing (including link bombing).

Google’s Penguin feedback form

Two days after Penguin update was released Google prepared a feedback form, designed for two categories of users: those who want to report web spam that still ranks highly after the search algorithm change, and those who think that their site got unfairly hit by the update. Google also has a reconsideration form through Google Webmaster Tools for the 700,000 sites. Matt Cutts explained that over 600,000 of them were about black hat and less than 25,000 about unnatural links.