Google has
powered the Penguin Update in April 2012 to capture websites that publish
Google search results. The main purpose of this update is to reduce the search
rankings of websites that violate the Google Webmaster Guidelines and use Black
Hat SEO techniques to artificially increase their ranking of websites by
obtaining links or buying through bad practices. The main reason for this
update was to punish websites that use manipulation techniques to get high
rankings. According to Google's estimates, Penguin affects about 3.1% of
English searches and about 3% of searches in languages like German, Arabic
and Chinese, and a much higher percentage of English proficient language
categories. Pre-Penguin sites usually use negative external link building tactics
to rank ownership in SERPs and stimulate their human trafficking. However, as
soon as Penguin was introduced, it meant that the content was vital and would
be recognized with incredible content and punished with small content or spam.
Some confirmed Google Penguin SEO
updates are
·
Penguin
1 – on April 24, 2012
(impacting around 3.1% of queries)
·
Penguin
2 – on May 26, 2012
(impacting less than 0.1%)
·
Penguin
3 – on October 5, 2012
(impacting around 0.3% of queries)
·
Penguin
4 (a.k.a. Penguin 2.0)-
on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
·
Penguin
5 (a.k.a. Penguin 2.1)-
on October 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
·
Penguin
6 (a.k.a. Penguin 3.0-)
on October 17, 2014 (impacting less than 1% English queries). On December
1, 2014, Google confirmed that the update was still rolling out with webmasters
continuing to report significant fluctuations during Google SEO updates
2014.
·
Penguin
7 (a.k.a. Penguin 4.0)-
on September 23, 2016
