On October 4, 2013, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team officially announced their fifth Penguin update, Penguin 2.1 on Twitter. Following close on the heels of its brand new algorithm Hummingbird with improved semantics, Google’s Penguin 2.1 update affects ~1% of search queries to a “noticeable degree”. Penguin 2.0 was announced on 22 May 2013 and it affected 2.3% of English-US search queries.
What is the Penguin Algorithm?
Penguin is a part of Google’s overall algorithm that was first announced on April 24, 2012 to penalize websites that follow black-hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, link farms, hidden content, copied content, and so on. Matt Cutts said that the first Penguin update affected 3.1% of English search queries. Up to now, there have been five modifications to the algorithm. Here’s a look at Penguin release info:
- Penguin 1, April 24th 2012 (impacting around 3.1% of queries)
- Penguin 1.1, May 26th 2012 (impacting less than 0.1% queries)
- Penguin 1.2, October 5th 2012 (impacting around 0.3% of queries)
- Penguin 2.0, May 22nd, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
- Penguin 2.1, October 4, 2013 (impacting ~1% of search queries)
Who Will Penguin 2.1 Affect?
According to the webmasters, Penguin 2.1 is targeting the following issues:
- Low quality links
- Paid links
- Spammy links
- Keyword rich links
- Over optimized anchor text links
- Duplicate and low quality content
- Overuse of exact-match domains (EMD)
Professional SEO companies can help you optimize your website and ensure high search engine rankings with white-hat SEO services. Reputable SEO companies strive to see that your website can bear the brunt of Google’s algorithmic updates.