Penguin 4.0 was announced on September 23, and I couldn’t be more excited. I believe Penguin 4 will be a boon for (legitimate) SEO companies everywhere.
We had to wait over 700 days for the newest iteration of Penguin; it was a long time coming, but now that it’s here, it’s more than I hoped. There a few reasons I welcome this new Penguin with open arms:
The algorithm now devalues links rather than punishing sites.
Penguin is baked into Google’s core algorithm, updating in real time.
The feasibility of negative SEO is greatly diminished.
The new Penguin is more granular.
Penguin 4.0 pushes SEO closer to real marketing.
Penguin 4.0 is the relief many sites have waited over two years for. As an SEO, I’ve never anticipated an algorithm update as much.
When Penguin first launched, it was punitive by nature. If your site was affected by Penguin, your entire site was demoted in search — without clear explanation or instruction as to how to recover. The harshness of Penguin, combined with the misinformation surrounding the algorithm, created a negative environment and contentious relationships between business owners and Google.
Penguin 4.0 — and its devalue vs. demotion approach — is a vast upgrade, and it should improve relations between site owners and Google.
Google will still be able to prevent spam from manipulating their results, but now site owners won’t have to live in fear of a crippling Google penalty, with questionable recovery. Manual actions still exist, but these are made by discerning humans who are much better at determining the intent behind links. Manual penalties are also much easier to identify, both in application and in recovery.
I’m optimistic this shift in Penguin will open the web for people to link more freely and openly. In fact, Penguin 4.0 should improve links as a ranking signal.
Courtesy of SearchEngineLand
