Lookback: Google launched the Penguin algorithm update 11 years ago

It’s been 11 years since Google launched one of its most significant algorithm updates, Penguin. Here, we’re looking back over more than a decade of Penguin.

Find everything you want to know about Google’s Penguin algorithm update – what it is, why it was launched and its impact – plus Search Engine Land’s coverage of Penguin from 2012 to 2021.

What was the Google Penguin update?

The Google Penguin update was an algorithm update launched on April 24, 2012, to combat webspam techniques. Penguin’s primary focus was link building, keyword stuffing and general webspam.

The war against webspam wasn’t new as Penguin followed the Panda and Page Layout algorithm updates.

All of these updates had a common goal – to reward high-quality content and sites in search that provided a great user experience and fulfilled search intent. Penguin was an extension of these efforts.

It was thought that Penguin affected 3.1% of queries in English and around 3% of queries in German, Chinese and Arabic. To contextualize its significance, it was expected that a regular user would see the impact of Penguin in SERPs.

Penguin was a pretty big deal, and it impacted a lot of sites. What made this change frustrating for web owners and SEOs is that an algorithm change isn’t something a site owner can appeal to.

There was no quick fix to recover from Penguin. If hit, it was made clear that website administrators needed to reduce spam on their sites.

As a result, sites suffered, and some didn’t recover. Naturally, there was a question about whether or not the algorithm improved or worsened the SERPs.

Considering that Penguin is still highly influential in the algorithm today, it’s safe to say that it improved the SERPs, web owners, and SEOs have collectively learned what constitutes spam.

Most conscious site owners wouldn’t even need to think about the Penguin update since the webspam tactics that felt the wrath of Penguin – like keyword stuffing and link schemes – are an industry no-no.

Why was Google Penguin launched?

Before Penguin, the quantity of links was weighted in the algorithm. As a result, poor quality or spammy pages were ranking when they didn’t really deserve to.

Their rank was influenced by the quantity of links pointing to the site rather than the quality of the site or the content itself.

If quantity is the only factor, then it’s easy to manipulate. You just need links and lots of them.

To help us understand what constituted spam, Google shared examples of spammy pages with keyword stuffing and poor uses of links.

*Google shared this image at the launch of Penguin showing unnatural links. A blog on exercise links unnaturally to pages about payday loans.*

If link quantity mattered, then links like the above were useful to websites.

But it’s clear that the linked text has nothing to do with the article’s content. Plus, the link text reads very unnaturally within the context of the article.

If it’s not an engaging and helpful read, the content shouldn’t be ranking at all.

The link tactic demonstrated above is a black-hat SEO tactic executed solely to manipulate SERPs.

Penguin was designed to identify and demote websites that were engaging in these spammy link building tactics, while rewarding websites that had natural and high-quality links pointing to their well-researched and well-written content.

Why did Google name it Penguin?

Despite being named Penguin by Google, there doesn’t seem to be a known story about why it’s called Penguin, unlike the Panda algorithm, which was named after a key engineer. But it was the second major new Google algorithm named after a black and white animal.

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Google Penguin algorithm explained: How it worked

If you want to recover from Penguin or understand how Penguin fits into the wider guidelines and algorithms it helps to understand how it worked.

Penguin was a webspam algorithm

There’s a bit to unpack here.

Penguin was a webspam algorithm, meaning it impacted all sites across the web at around the same time.

Sites were crawled and new algorithm factors were taken into account. The intention of this algorithm was for high-quality sites following Google guidelines to be prioritized.

The Penguin algorithm was launched to combat spammy sites. To do this, the algorithm needs to consider many factors, including spam links and content.

Perhaps it was the timing of the Penguin update – after Panda and before the Disavow Tool – that has Penguin heavily associated with spam links and link farms, but truthfully, Penguin was more than that.

As Google’s John Mueller put it:

Penguin ignores spam links and considers individual pages and entire sites

When Penguin launched, one of its purposes was to devalue links, taking spam links weighting out of the algorithm. However, it’s thought that the Penguin algorithm can do more than just that.

In the video, Mueller says:

Recovering from Penguin

Recovering from Penguin was no easy feat for SEOs. There were long delays between updates which were incredibly frustrating.

As an algorithm update, the only way out was a lot of hard work, cleaning a site of its spam, which for many was no easy feat.

Google forms

For sites that had previously been flagged as spam by Google, there used to be a reconsideration request where webmasters could request a second view of their site.

This was useful in the case of a manual action, meaning a person had spotted an issue and manually marked it as spam.

But, Penguin was an algorithm change. Google announced that reconsideration requests wouldn’t work if a site has suffered since the Penguin update.

Instead, webmasters had to reduce the spam on their sites. Once done, they’d eventually recover from Penguin and appear in SERPs again.

That said, there seemed to be some acknowledgment that sites were impacted by Penguin unfairly.

Google released a form where webmasters could flag this issue to Google. This same form could also be used to report sites that should’ve been penalized.

Clean spammy backlinks

Since Penguin was launched to fight spam with a primary focus on link spam, one strategy to recover from Penguin was the disavow tool launched on October 16, 2012.

In 2012, Matt Cutts explained how and when to use the tool.

It’s important to note that this tool was not designed for most websites but for that 3% of sites using spammy links, manipulating SERPs and using link farms.

If you follow the guidelines and create content consciously, you won’t need the disavow tool.

Remove on-page spam

Earlier, I shared an image of a spammy article linking to payday loans unnaturally from an article about exercising. This is the sort of spam that webmasters needed to remove from their sites.

Other on-page spam might include keyword stuffing. The thing to remember is that Google wants to prioritize content that is useful to readers.

So, before publishing content, ask yourself: is this informative? Do I meet search intent? Is this content helpful?

Although some of these guidelines were set or improved upon more than 10 years ago with the Penguin algorithm update, you might note that these items are still prevalent today.

Does Google still use Penguin?

Yes, Google still uses Penguin as part of the core algorithm.

Mueller shares tips and insights on what a site owner should do if their site is flagged as spam.

As you can see, this video is very similar to the video published by Cutts 10 years ago.

Mueller recommends the webmaster forums and advises you not to hide anything about your website.

A complete timeline of the Google Panda Updates

Here’s Search Engine Land’s coverage of Penguin, from 2012 to 2021:

Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.

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