Google Penguin 2.0 update – a month on

This blog post gives an example of how big the latest Google Algorithm update actually is. We explain what this update is targeting with a video from Google

Matt Horsup,

Digital Director

Penguin 2.0 Update – A Month On

On May 22^nd we saw Google add Penguin 2.0 to its long list of algorithm updates. Matt Cutts was quoted in saying “It will affect 2.3% of English-US queries”. Now this doesn’t sound a lot, but consider this, on average there are 25 billion searches a day on Google that means on average 575 million searches where affected. Now that’s starting to show the magnitude of this update. Does this mean we saw a massive shake up of the search results like the previous penguin update or panda update? Let’s look into this in a bit more detail.

The results are in.

When you work in SEO you get use to Google throwing in the occasional curve ball and a good SEO will prepare for this or as some people say, “future proof” your campaign. This is obviously not always possible but in this case it was pretty much common sense. The premise behind this update was to nail the black hat spammers out there ruining out internet experience, boy does it seemed to have worked.

Here is an example of a website I have been keeping an eye on for a while and their downfall since the penguin update.

Site 1

Keyword	Rank – April 15th	Rank – May 15th	Rank – June 15^th
Keyword 1	1	1	14
Keyword 2	1	4	37
Keyword 3	1	3	Not in top 50
Keyword 4	1	2	26
Keyword 5	1	5	Not in top 50
Backlink Count	120,882	68,906	62,427

To put the graph above into context the Site 1 had a massive amount of backlinks and authority which upon first site you think “wow going to take a while to get above them “in reality just over 50% where footer links which Keyword 1, Keyword 3 and Keyword 5.

In Conclusion

Penguin 2.0 was solely created to stop all the black hat spammers dominated the search results. It has been reported that the new algorithm is looking more at directories, comments, forums and any unnatural looking links. When link building always make sure that your links look as natural as possible if your writing some content and you are going to put a link into it make sure that you don’t try to jam in your keyword make sure the keyword looks as natural as possible.

Taking these precautions should help you make sure you don’t end up like site 1.

Below you will find a video from Matt Cutts the head of Googles webspam team on what you can expect over the coming months with the recent update.