Penguin 2.0 Goes Live!

The highly anticipated and equally dreaded Google Penguin update has gone live in the early hours of this morning. We explore its impact!

Written by Kaye Neylon

Google’s Matt Cutts told SEO’s last week that they should prepare for Penguin 2.0 over the forthcoming days. The update went live in the early hours of this morning, its effect yet to be fully felt.

A New Generation of Algorithm

Webmasters have been watching Google to launch Penguin 2.0 in a bid to predict its effects on Google’s search results which would undoubtedly be left affected as the new generation of algorithms are promised to tackle spam.

Speaking at last week’s Google I/O, Cutts said:

“It’s a brand new generation of algorithms. The previous iteration of Penguin would essentially only look at the home page of a site. The new generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas.”

A Big Impact on Certain Small Areas of Your Site

Cutts took to his Google blog to share more details on Penguin 2.0 and the stage of the roll out which will affect 2.3% of English-U.S. search queries as well as affecting non-English queries.

The following is an excerpt from Cutts blog:

“We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice.

The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.”

What Should You Expect from Penguin 2.0?

In a Google Webmaster Help video released May 10th, Cutts went into detail on what Penguin 2.0 would do, as well as what new changes webmasters can expect over the coming months with regards to Google search results.

Penguin is set to specifically target black hat spam, but would have a significantly bigger impact on spam than the first Penguin and subsequent updates have had.

Here’s some of the finer detail on the updates Cutts outlined in his video:

Google will now be chasing down websites using advertorials to artificially inflate their link profile

No more spam- Google will be targeting any queries spammy in nature (think adult rated content and money scams)

Link analysis will become more sophisticated and linking back to sites with more clout will continue to improve search

Helping those hurt by Panda- a lot of sites saw SEO crumble when Panda landed on the scene. Google’s acknowledged this and is looking to “soften” the damage

Sites with specific “authority” (electronics, cooking, auto, etc.) in a particular industry will be given a ranking boost- a good thing for users and those with strong content.

Have you seen any significant changes? Has the update helped or hurt your traffic and rankings?