Google Penguin 3.0 is coming and here’s what to do to prepare

Update: Google Penguin 3.0 was launched on October 17th. As predicted, the company confirmed the update would help sites that have cleaned up bad link profiles in response to previous versions of Penguin. Owners of sites that haven’t recovered or have been adversely affected by Penguin 3.0 should follow the steps outlined below.

There is rarely a dull moment in the world of search engine optimisation (SEO). Haven’t you heard? A huge Google algorithm change is on the way. Scary.
Last month, Google said a new Penguin update would likely be launched before the end of the year, and now it looks like it may be here this week.

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said at Search Marketing Expo East that Google “may” be launching a Penguin algorithm refresh sometime this week, which he described as “a large rewrite of the algorithm”. Also, Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land believes that this next update will be all good news and that it could make webmaster’s life a bit easier.

Understanding the major implications of these updates is critical to search performance, so today we’ll talk you through the upcoming release of Google’s Penguin 3.0 update, what it is, how it can affect your website and rankings and what you can do to prepare for its release.

What is Penguin 3.0 all about?

Over the past few weeks, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller has been actively discussing:

• The imminent and long-anticipated Penguin update
• Google’s efforts to make its algorithm refreshes rollout quicker
• Helping websites to recover faster from ranking penalties

In a Google Webmaster Central hangout on September 12^th, Mueller confirmed that the new Penguin update would roll out in 2014. In the video he said:

• Google is working on a “solution that generally refreshes faster” specifically talking about Penguin.
• He mentioned that “we are trying to speed things up” around Penguin.
• He also admitted that “our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time”, referring to webmasters’ efforts to clean up the issues around their sites being impacted by Penguin.

As you can probably tell from all the buzz on the web, Penguin 3.0 is expected to be a major update that will hopefully enable Google to run the algorithm more frequently. This would mean that those impacted by an update won’t have to wait too long before seeing a refresh.

In other words, those who have taken measures to clean up their backlink profiles should (in theory) be able to recover more quickly than in the past.

Here’s what Mueller said in a previous Google hangout on September 8:

“That’s something where we’re trying to kind of speed things up because we see that this is a bit of a problem when webmasters want to fix their problems, they actually go and fix these issues but our algorithms don’t reflect that in a reasonable time, so that’s something where it makes sense to try to improve the speed of our algorithms overall.”

Can a site recover from ranking penalties without an algorithm refresh?

A day after the September 8 Google+ Hangout, Mueller replied to a post in the Webmaster Central Help Forum, stating that while a Penguin refresh is required for an affected site to recover, it is possible for webmasters to improve their site rankings without a Penguin update.

With Google using over 200 factors in crawling, indexing and ranking, Mueller said that if webmasters do their best to clean up site issues and focus on having a high-quality site rather than on individual factors of individual algorithms they may see changes even before that algorithm or its data is refreshed.

“I know it can be frustrating to not see changes after spending a lot of time to improve things. In the meantime, I’d really recommend not focusing on any specific aspect of an algorithm, and instead making sure that your site is (or becomes) the absolute best of its kind by far,” Mueller recommended.

In the thread, “Has Google ever definitively stated that it is possible to recover from Penguin?“ Mueller replied: “Yes, assuming the issues are resolved in the meantime, with an update of our algorithm or its data, it will no longer be affecting your site.”

That’s also all the more reason for webmasters to welcome this next update with open arms.

The history of Penguin

Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6^th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.

Google launched the Penguin update in April 2012 and Penguin 3.0 would be the 6^th refresh. The purpose of Penguin is to uncover spammy backlink profiles and punish sites that are violating Google’s quality guidelines by lowering their rankings in its search engine results.

Overall, what Google is trying to do is to catch and penalise websites that are trying to rank higher in its search results through:

• Keyword stuffing meaning loading a webpage with the same words or phrases so much that is sounds unnatural
• Low quality backlinks, often generated using automated software
• A large numbers of links optimised using the exact same anchor text
• Excessive link exchange
• Forum comments with links added in the signature
• And various other link schemes.

Penguin focuses on the link-related aspects of this list.

Here’s a timeline of the previous Penguin updates:

• Penguin 1.0 – April 24 2012 (affected 3.1% of searches)
• Penguin 1.2 – May 26 2012 (affected 0.1% of searches)
• Penguin 1.3 – October 5, 2012 (affected 0.3% of searches)
• Penguin 2.0 – May 22, 2013 (affected 2.3% of searches)
• Penguin 2.1  – October 4, 2013 (affected 1% of searches)
• Penguin 3 – October 2014? 

What can you do to clean up your link profile for future updates?

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop working on removing bad links.

Google’s Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst and Search Quality Engineer, said that if you disavow bad links now or as of about two weeks ago, it may be too late for this next Penguin refresh. However, he added that since the Penguin refreshes will be more frequent you should never stop working on removing bad links.

So, here are a few things you can do to prevent your site from getting penalised by a future Penguin update:

• Do a thorough link clean-up and remove all unnatural links pointing to your site. When it comes to Penguin, bad links are usually the cause of the penalty so make sure you remove as many bad links as you possibly can and then disavow the rest. Here’s a good article with steps to find and remove unnatural links.
  
  
• Make sure your disavow file is correct. Find out more about disavowing backlinks.
  
  
• Assess the remaining “good” links. Do you still have enough valuable links for your site to rank well or do you need to build some more links? Don’t shy away from link building campaigns, just make sure that this time you build links on high-quality, relevant, authority sites.
  
  
• Other common sense actions to ensure that you have a healthy website. Read this excellent article from Moz with some great advice on how to ensure your site is healthy and how to handle life after an algorithm update, whether it’s Penguin, Panda or any other Google update.
  
  
• Don’t treat an algorithmic penalty as a manual penalty. Keep in mind that there may be other factors that might be preventing your site from ranking well, which may not be linked to an algorithmic penalty like Penguin or Panda. Check out this useful article with the complete list of reasons that may be causing your traffic to drop.

But if you do get hit, what are the signs?

Since this is an algorithmic penalty, if your site has been hit by Penguin, Google will never notify you which means that you will need to check your site’s traffic, among other things including:

• You’re no longer ranking well for that one keyword you should always rank well for – your brand name. When this happens, it’s a clear sing you’ve been hit.
• Your site is dropping from page one to page two or three in Google’s search results although you’ve made no changes whatsoever.
• Your site has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
• You get no results when you run a site search (eg: site:yourdomain.co.uk keyword).
• Google Analytics (or any other analytics tool you’re using) is showing a significant drop in organic traffic a few days after a big Google update.

Check out our YouTube video on how to tell if you’ve been penalised by Google:

So, what we recommend is that you monitor your organic traffic closely for at least two weeks after a Penguin update. If your traffic dramatically drops during this time, it’s likely due to the update. Also make sure you keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools notifications to see if you have any manual penalties applied to your website.

If you do discover your site has been penalised, stop what you’re doing and go fix whatever it is that has caused your site to get hit.

What can you do to recover?

If you’ve been penalised by a previous Google update, we’ve got you covered with an in-depth guide on why your site may have been hit and what you can do to recover. This guide walks you through 11 reasons that might have caused your site to get penalised as well as specific steps to follow to help you recover after you’ve been hit.

Penalised by Google?

Check out our comprehensive guide on reasons why you got penalised and ways to recover. Make sure you bookmark it and use it in the event your site gets hit by a future Google penalty.

Meanwhile, keep in mind that there are over 200 factors that influence rankings for a site. It’s not enough to focus on one algorithm and fix those specific issues but instead look at the bigger picture. Search engines reward sites that provide searchers with the most informative, interesting and relevant content for their search queries and with the best user experience.

So while it’s ok to prioritise site optimisation and quickly fix certain issues that may arise, it’s even more important to put your users first and provide them with the best information and website experience they can ask for.

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