Penguin 4.0 Becomes Real Time and is Part of the Core Algorithm

For the past four years Google has made many changes in its search algorithms with the target to offer the best and relevant results for the search phrases. We have already heard a lot about the Penguin algorithm and its impact on websites. SEO specialists and website owners had to face penalties for not following Google website guidelines. And it is after two years that Google’s Penguin algorithm has again been updated recently making it Penguin 4.0. This is the latest release and Google has declared that it is now running in real time and is also a part of Google’s core algorithm.  Here in this blog, I will discuss more about this updated Penguin algorithm.

The Penguin algorithm was first announced in the year 2012 and it was released to target web spam in general.  The biggest targets were those who were engaged in manipulative link schemes to attain a higher rank in the SERPs. After about two years, it is now finally updated again and this fourth release is designed to capture the websites that spam the search results by implementing various illegal ways that Google’s regular system cannot detect. In simple words, the Penguin algorithm will now detect sites that are deemed spammy and penalize the sites, which would remain same even if they change or make improvements to overcome the penalty. As Google re-indexes or re-crawls the pages, Penguin filter will assess them and if they are spammed, then they will be heavily penalized.

The algorithm is now more page specific

According to Google, the latest algorithm is now more granular, which means that it now devalues spam by affecting the ranking that is based on spam signals instead of affecting the ranking of the entire site. Earlier the algorithm penalized the entire site, but now it has become more granular, which means more page specific. In simple words Penguin will now affect specific pages of a site or it may also affect particular sections of the site, while the other pages may be fine.

Real time updates

Earlier the sites that were detected spam by Penguin were periodically refreshed and the webmasters improved their website and its online presence to overcome the penalty. Many Google algorithms considered the sites and considered them very fast, but Penguin needed to be refreshed. With the latest changes, Penguin’s data is now refreshed in real time and the changes will also be visible faster and the effects will also take a short time after the page is re-crawled and re-indexed. The real time feature states that the effects of the Penguin algorithm, i.e, the demotions or promotions of a site’s organic ranking due to spams or unnatural links will now happen faster than it used to happen in the past. The new changes in the algorithm state that, it won’t take much time to recover from the Penguin affects and Google will also indicate the changes quickly.

Thus, while concluding; we can say that the webmasters will soon observe that changes in the ranking of their websites if they are engaged in spamming the site to attain a higher rank in the SERPs. So, with Penguin becoming real time, both the positive and the negative changes will happen faster than before.