Google Penguin and Panda Updates

What Is The Google Penguin Update?

Google launched the Penguin Update in April 2012 to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings. When a new Penguin Update is released, sites that have taken action to remove bad links (such as through the Google disavow links tool or to remove spam may regain rankings. New sites not previously caught might get trapped by Penguin. “False positives,” sites that were caught by mistake, may escape.

Previous Penguin Updates:

Penguin 4? Penguin 2.0? We name each release of Penguin in sequential order, so it’s easy to know when one happened. The list so far:

·         Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)

·         Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)

·         Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)

·         Penguin 4 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)

But after the first release, the second and third still were data refreshes of the same basic Penguin algorithm with only minor changes. This fourth release is a major change, so big that Google has referred to it as Penguin 2.0 internally.

What Is The Google Panda Update?

Google’s Panda Update is a filter introduced in February 2011 meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda is updated from time-to-time. When this happens, sites previously hit may escape, if they’ve made the right changes. Panda may also catch sites that escaped before. A refresh also means “false positives” might get released.