A Better Understanding On Google Penguin Algorithm Update
Hmmm. Let me guess? You're looking for answers on what is really the purpose of Google Penguin. And, that's not all, I'm guessing that you've been hit by the algorithm update and looking for some help on how to recover from it. Well, you've come to the right place as for some time now, I've been relentlessly looking for answers too for these questions and, with the help of extensive research and experimentation, I've learned some useful tips to solve your Penguin problem . So, let's cut to the chase and on to the solution.
First thing you need to know is.....
What is Google Penguin Algorithm Update and Its Purpose
Back on April 24th, the Google webspam team led by Matt Cutts has officially released another algorithm update dubbed as the Google Penguin update. For SEO experts who rely solely on search engine optimization and, had implemented some or even uses a lot of "black hat seo" on their website, I can say that this update is their worst nightmare. However, for those people who exert as much effort as possible in writing quality content and always thinking about how will their content be beneficial to their reader, well, Google Penguin might be the best thing that ever happen.
On the Official Google Webmaster Blog, the team wrote a post entitled "Another Step to Reward High-quality Sites" which partially describe what Google Penguin is. In the post, you can read that the update will target those website who practices web spam method.
Well, this is probably old news. For those who own either small or large business on the internet, you probably know what are these spamming techniques. But, what Google is trying to imply here is that, they have found a better way of not just preventing, but stopping the web spamming that is happening for a very long time. The big question now is, how did Google improved their spam filters? Well, it's obvious that they won't reveal it because they don't want someone to formulate another web spam tactics to manipulate the Google search engine rankings.
According to the team, this algorithm will affect about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice. The change affects roughly 3% of queries in languages such as German, Chinese, and Arabic, but the impact is higher in more heavily-spammed languages. For example, 5% of Polish queries change to a degree that a regular user might notice.
"Google Penguin: A Big Success", Matt Cutts Says; "We've Been Wrongfully Hit", Some SMB Owners Says
The Google Team said that Penguin was a big success. It did a great job in cleaning up the search engine. In fact, when asked about the performance of the update, Cutts answered back that "It's been a success from our standpoint".
"Google Penguin: A Big Success", Matt Cutts Says; "We've Been Wrongfully Hit", Some SMB Owners Says
The Google Team said that Penguin was a big success. It did a great job in cleaning up the search engine. In fact, when asked about the performance of the update, Cutts answered back that "It's been a success from our standpoint".
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| Taken from lighthousewebdesigns.com |
Cutts further explained that this update is designed to be quite precise, to act against pages when there was an extremely high-confidence of spam being involved. The downside is that some spam might get through, but the upside is that you have fewer false positives.“We’ve seen a few cases where we might want to investigate more, but this change hasn’t had the same impact as Panda or Florida,”
“No algorithm is perfect. While we’d like to achieve perfection, our litmus test is, ‘Do things get better than before?’”
How Can You Recover From Google Penguin?
From what I have heard, Google specifically said that sending a reconsideration requests won't do any good for you. The only way to solve your Penguin problem is to clean up everything that is considered spam in your website and wait for the day that you can see your website back to its original rankings. Yup, you heard me, you have to "wait" for your site to recover as I've been told that they’ll recover naturally, if you clean the spam up.
The question now is, how long will it take for the site to recover?
According to Matt Cutts, Penguin, like Panda, is a filter that gets refreshed from time-to-time. Penguin is not constantly running but rather is used to tag things as spam above-and-beyond Google’s regular spam filtering on a periodic basis. So basically, you'll have to wait for the next Penguin Update to happen and pray for the better (I strongly suggest that you check out their official webmaster blog as most of the time, the team are posting stuffs concerning their latest updates to their search engines).
So, we know that your site will recover naturally if you clean up the spam. The next big question now is, what are exactly those things (spams) that you need to clean up to recover from Google's Update?
Before reading it below, I just want to say that all of the things you will see below were based on my own research and experimentation I have done with one of my website (handheldarcade.com). However, the description of the following webspam were taken from webconfs.com.
1. Keyword Spams
a. Stuffed Keywords/Keyword Stuffing
Any artificially inflated keyword density (10% and over) is keyword stuffing and you risk getting banned from search engines. I highly advice that you check your keyword density here and remove all artificially inflated keywords as soon as possible.
Any artificially inflated keyword density (10% and over) is keyword stuffing and you risk getting banned from search engines. I highly advice that you check your keyword density here and remove all artificially inflated keywords as soon as possible.
b. Diluted Keywords
Keyword stuffing is where you put in as much related or your main keywords to your content, while keyword dilution is optimizing for an excessive amount of keywords, especially unrelated ones to your content. People use this sometimes in purpose to attract high paid-ads on their website and it can help sometimes. The downside is it will affect the performance of all your keywords and even the major ones will be lost (diluted) in the text.
2. Link Spams/Schemes
a. Too Many Outgoing Links
This is really a bad idea, especially that Google's Penguin is just around the corner watching. Google doesn't like pages that consists mainly of links. So, I suggest that you keep them under 100 per page. Having many outgoing links does not get you any benefits in terms of rankings (especially nowadays) and could even make your situation worse.
Keyword stuffing is where you put in as much related or your main keywords to your content, while keyword dilution is optimizing for an excessive amount of keywords, especially unrelated ones to your content. People use this sometimes in purpose to attract high paid-ads on their website and it can help sometimes. The downside is it will affect the performance of all your keywords and even the major ones will be lost (diluted) in the text.
2. Link Spams/Schemes
a. Too Many Outgoing Links
This is really a bad idea, especially that Google's Penguin is just around the corner watching. Google doesn't like pages that consists mainly of links. So, I suggest that you keep them under 100 per page. Having many outgoing links does not get you any benefits in terms of rankings (especially nowadays) and could even make your situation worse.
b. Excessive linking
No doubt about this one. I consider this as a top priority and must be gone as quick as possible. When you have many links to/from the same sites (if it's not a cross-linking scheme or links to bad neighbors), this is still considered as a bad SEO practice because it suggest link buying or at least spamming. In the best case, only some of the links are taken into accounts for SEO rankings.
c. Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious sites
Unlike inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites, outbound links to bad neighbors can drag you down from first page in Google to nowhere. I suggest that you periodically check the status of the sites you link to because sometimes good sites become bad neighbors and vice versa.
d. Cross-linking
Cross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to site A. This is the simplest example but more complex schemes are possible. Cross-linking looks like disguised reciprocal link trading and is penalized.
Content Spam
a. Content separation
From a marketing point of view content separation (based on IP, browser type, etc.) might be great but for SEO it is bad because when you have one URL and differing content, search engines get confused what the actual content of the page is.
b. Illegal Content
Using other people's copyrighted content without their permission or using content that promotes legal violations can get you kicked out of search engines.
c. Invisible text
This is a black hat SEO practice and when spiders discover that you have text specially for them but not for humans, don't be surprised by the penalty.
d. Cloaking
Cloaking is another illegal technique, which partially involves content separation because spiders see one page (highly-optimized, of course), and everybody else is presented with another version of the same page.
e. Doorway pages
Creating pages that aim to trick spiders that your site is a highly-relevant one when it is not, is another way to get the kick from search engines.
f. Duplicate content
When you have the same content on several pages on the site, this will not make your site look larger because the duplicate content penalty kicks in. To a lesser degree duplicate content applies to pages that reside on other sites but obviously these cases are not always banned – i.e. article directories or mirror sites do exist and prosper. Just take for example digg.com. If you had submitted a story to their website (which has the same content to your post), your post will appear on the search engine (sometimes on first page) but, the viewer will be redirected on digg.com, not in your website. No matter what, the practices of duplicate content is bad and the new spam filters that Google has nowadays, content duplication will not work for long.
Conclusion
Overall, the Penguin Algorithm Update is just a reminder of what Google is: a search engine who wants to give quality search results to their users. We just cant simply argue with this fact, nor go against it. All we can do is to create a quality website which abides with all the rules that Google has issued and hope for a stable online business.
Unlike inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites, outbound links to bad neighbors can drag you down from first page in Google to nowhere. I suggest that you periodically check the status of the sites you link to because sometimes good sites become bad neighbors and vice versa.
d. Cross-linking
Cross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to site A. This is the simplest example but more complex schemes are possible. Cross-linking looks like disguised reciprocal link trading and is penalized.
Content Spam
a. Content separation
From a marketing point of view content separation (based on IP, browser type, etc.) might be great but for SEO it is bad because when you have one URL and differing content, search engines get confused what the actual content of the page is.
b. Illegal Content
Using other people's copyrighted content without their permission or using content that promotes legal violations can get you kicked out of search engines.
c. Invisible text
This is a black hat SEO practice and when spiders discover that you have text specially for them but not for humans, don't be surprised by the penalty.
d. Cloaking
Cloaking is another illegal technique, which partially involves content separation because spiders see one page (highly-optimized, of course), and everybody else is presented with another version of the same page.
e. Doorway pages
Creating pages that aim to trick spiders that your site is a highly-relevant one when it is not, is another way to get the kick from search engines.
f. Duplicate content
When you have the same content on several pages on the site, this will not make your site look larger because the duplicate content penalty kicks in. To a lesser degree duplicate content applies to pages that reside on other sites but obviously these cases are not always banned – i.e. article directories or mirror sites do exist and prosper. Just take for example digg.com. If you had submitted a story to their website (which has the same content to your post), your post will appear on the search engine (sometimes on first page) but, the viewer will be redirected on digg.com, not in your website. No matter what, the practices of duplicate content is bad and the new spam filters that Google has nowadays, content duplication will not work for long.
Conclusion
Overall, the Penguin Algorithm Update is just a reminder of what Google is: a search engine who wants to give quality search results to their users. We just cant simply argue with this fact, nor go against it. All we can do is to create a quality website which abides with all the rules that Google has issued and hope for a stable online business.
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