Penguin 2.0 Rolls Out
Remember Penguin 2.0? The Penguin update to end all Penguin updates that Google’s Matt Cutts described as a “jarring and jolting†update that SEO‘s and webmasters “don’t wantâ€?
Well it launched last week. Oh, you didn’t hear about it? That’s because the update ended up being nothing more than a data update that only affected 0.3% of English search queries to a noticeable degree. To give some perspective, Google’s first Penguin update on April 24th affected 3.1% of search queries to a noticeable degree.
Was it the “jarring and jolting†update we were all expecting? Not even close. But interestingly, webmasters that have been scrubbing their sites clean of spammy backlinks since the first update in April have been reporting little to no change in their rankings. I guess all those link sellers that turned into link removers when Penguin dropped might want to get their resumes ready…
And just in case figuring out what your website’s rankings got hit for wasn’t confusing enough, Google also rolled out the EDM algorithm update and a Panda update in the same week. The EDM update hit roughly 0.6% of search queries, while the Panda update hit a massive 2.4% of search queries. If you did drop over the last week, make sure to read up on each of the changes and do your homework before you set out fixing the wrong issue!
But back to Penguin: are Google holding back on the “jarring and jolting†changes they promised? Or did they just overpromise and under-deliver? What do you think? Leave us a comment below!
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
