Google Penguin Update 3 Released, Impacts 0.3% of English-Language Queries
Google’s Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to broadcast that Google is launching the latest “data refresh” of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will change searches across multiple languages.
Including the original Penguin algorithm begin in late April, this is the third update, so we’re calling it Penguin 3 and avoiding the previous 1.1, 1.2, etc. naming scheme, just as we’ve done with the Panda updates.
Penguin release So Far
Following is the Penguin Update results so far with the percentage of English-Language Questions that were impacted on multiple languages. But, here we are considering English language as a consistent baseline.
- Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (3.1%)
- Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1%)
- Penguin 3: Oct. 5, 2012 (0.3%)
The impact of Penguin 3 which was released on Oct 5, 2012 has an impact of 0.3% of English Language questions that were notified. Cutts mention on Twitter that these updates will have an impact on other languages also like Spanish, French and Italian. Google Penguin Update 3 will roll out other languages too at the similar time. Impact on Spanish Language is ~0.3% of queries, on French language ~0.4% queries notified by the regular users.
Some Details on Penguin 3
Matt Cutts, chief of Google’s spam team, posted about the Penguin update in a series of tweets. The first said that a Penguin data refresh is on its way and that about 0.3 percent of English-language queries will be “noticeably affected.”
Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. 0.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Details: goo.gl/AF5kt
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012
He added more info via a few replies on Twitter, like these that mention the update will also impact a small percentage of queries in other languages such as Spanish, Italian and French. @gfiorelli1 it will roll out for other languages at same time. Spanish impact is ~0.4%. Italian impact is ~0.3% of queries. Hope that helps.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012
@glemarchand @gfiorelli1 0.4% of French queries affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012
How Google Determines Percent of Queries Impacted
For the first time that I’m aware of, we also learn a bit about what Google means when it cites how many queries are “noticeably affected.” In this conversation with UK SEO Rob Watts, Cutts suggests that “noticeable” means “above the fold,” at least to some degree.
@robwatts Basically. Swapping a #10 result for a different #10 result might not be noticeable. Swapping out in (say) top 5 ->more noticeable
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 5, 2012
Google first launched the Penguin update in late April, and even though the company talked about targeting web spam in general, the real impact seems to have been on websites with what Google considers (too many) low-quality inbound links. Prior to today, there was one previous update in late May and Google has promised further “jolts” related to the Penguin algorithm
