What You Need to Know About Google Penguin’s Latest Update: Penguin 4.0

Firstly, you may ask, what exactly is Google Penguin? Google Penguin is a codename used to describe an algorithm developed by Google to aptly punish websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. By decreasing the search engine ranking of the websites that violate Google’s guidelines, Google Penguin effectively punishes the aforementioned violators. This is enforced when websites use black hat SEO techniques to violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and these are manipulating deliberately the search engine indexes of their websites in order to make their search engine rankings go up. These techniques are also known as link schemes, and are done by tampering with the links that point to a specific page, and in the process increasing the rank of the webpage.

In other words, Google Penguin is a filter for sites that are spamming Google’s search results. Google already has a spam system checker in employ, but it needs Google Penguin as sometimes the former isn’t able to detect some methods in use. Google penguin’s filter is run periodically to catch sites that are deemed spammy, and will continue to be penalized until the filter ran again and the site improved.

Google Penguin being around for 2 years since its initial release in 2012, periodically releases update, and there have been 7 updates all in all, although the latest one has been released after a 2 year wait. The latest one, Google Penguin 7, otherwise known as Google Penguin 4.0 was released this September 23, 2016 and includes many major updates.

Google Penguin 4.0, being the latest release now includes the feature of being completely real time, gaining a far significant improvement from its previous versions. Google Penguin only used to run on a periodical basis, from a few weeks to a few months, but now Google Penguin 4.0 is already running constantly. Google Penguin 4.0 is now able to capture, free as well as recapture any site caught violating Google’s spam algorithm and guidelines. The changes that are implemented by Google Penguin are now visibly faster than before and will take effect shortly after they have visited a site. Google Penguin 4.0 is now closer to its goal, and that is to catch websites that use spam link and black hat SEO methods as quickly as possible and also to keep the ranking of low quality sites relatively low.

So in a way, Google Penguin’s latest update encourages you to improve your website constantly, and use fair and tested techniques so that you can rank your website well in its search engines. Moreover, you have to routinely check up your website’s content by auditing it constantly, and perform necessary and consistent cleanups on your website.

Source: http://cwahm.com/2016/articles/home-business-articles/be-a-website-winner-get-to-grips-with-linking/