Penguin 4.0 is Live
For the uninitiated, Google released search algorithm update Penguin 1.0 in April of 2012. It was designed to clean up Google search pages that had been littered by spammy websites. Spammy sites are marked by keyword packed, worthless content that has no practical or informative use to the visitor. Google’s goal has always been to show the best, most useful results on their search pages. Penguin, and its predecessor Panda, have effectively relegated these spammy sites to the trash bin, or at least far down the search results.
Penguin 4.0, the latest and last Penguin update was released on September 23rd. Google announced on its Webmaster Blog that Penguin is now part of the core search algorithm, updating in real time. Since Penguin is now part of the core algorithm, future updates will not be announced.
What this means to you
If your website is filled with useful, current and original content, there is nothing to worry about. At worst, you will climb in the search rankings. If you had problems with worthless, spammy content, duplicate content, then the news is still good. If your listing was demoted in the past, the changes you make to the site to delete the spam and other detrimental content will be recognized faster. So rather than having to wait for a reset, your changes will be recognized in days rather than weeks.
Further, Penguin is now more granular, meaning if individual pages are spammy the entire website may not be punished for it.
But if your website was negatively affected, the results should be known in days, not weeks. It is too soon to tell how much of the search universe was affected. Penguin was designed to affect all languages and all locations. So even if only 3% of websites are affected, the results will be noteworthy.
For more information see https://moz.com/blog/penguin-4-was-it-worth-the-wait.