{"id":38858,"date":"2015-11-12T11:30:08","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T19:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/?p=38858"},"modified":"2017-02-27T14:07:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T22:07:23","slug":"is-google-about-to-kill-penguin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/is-google-about-to-kill-penguin\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Google about to Unplug Its Penguin?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Editor’s note, Oct. 6, 2016: Google spokesperson Gary Illyes made it official. The\u00a0prediction posed in this post by Robert Ramirez<\/a> came to pass with the September 2016 Penguin 4.0 update<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n Inorganic links are not a negative ranking signal, but instead are ignored in Google’s\u00a0ranking calculation. Therefore,\u00a0this article’s theory\u00a0currently stands as\u00a0fact. <\/em><\/p>\n View\u00a0the conversation where Illyes clarifies “demote” vs. “devalue”<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n TL;DR \u2013 A theory: The next Google Penguin update will kill link spam outright <\/em>by eliminating the signals associated with\u00a0inorganic backlinks. Google will selectively pass link equity based on the\u00a0topical relevance of linked sites, made possible by semantic analysis. Google will reward organic links and perhaps even mentions from authoritative sites in any niche. As a side effect, link-based negative SEO and Penguin “penalization” will be eliminated.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Google\u2019s Gary Illyes has recently gone on record regarding Google\u2019s next Penguin update. What he\u2019s saying has many in the SEO industry taking note:<\/p>\n Many anticipate that once Penguin is rolled into the standard ranking algorithm, ranking decreases and increases will be doled out in near real-time as Google considers negative and positive backlink signals. Presumably, this would include a more immediate impact from disavow file submissions \u2014 a tool that has been the topic<\/a> of much debate<\/a> in the SEO industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n But what if Google\u2019s plan is to actually change the way Penguin works altogether? What if we lived in a world where inorganic backlinks didn\u2019t<\/em> penalize a site, but were instead simply ignored<\/em> by Google\u2019s algorithm and offered no value? What if the next iteration of Penguin, the one that is set to run as part of the algorithm, is actually Google\u2019s opportunity to kill the Penguin algorithm altogether and change the way they consider links by leveraging their knowledge of authority and semantic relationships on the web<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n We at Bruce Clay, Inc. have arrived at this theory after much discussion, supposition and, like any good SEO company, reverse engineering. Let\u2019s start with the main problems that the Penguin penalty was designed to address, leading to our hypothesis on how a newly designed algorithm would deal with them more effectively.<\/p>\n Of all of the algorithmic changes geared at addressing webspam, the Penguin penalty has been the most problematic for webmasters and Google alike.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been problematic for webmasters because of how difficult it is to get out from under. If some webmasters knew just how difficult it would be to recover from Penguin penalties starting in April of 2012, they may have decided to scrap their sites and start from scratch. Unlike manual webspam penalties, where (we’re told) a Google employee\u00a0reviews link pruning and disavow file work, algorithmic actions are reliant on Google refreshing their algorithm in order to see recovery. Refreshes have only happened four times since the original Penguin penalty was released, making opportunities for contrition few and far between.<\/p>\n Penguin has been problematic for Google because, at the end of the day, Penguin penalizations and the effects they have on businesses both large and small have been a PR nightmare for the search engine. Many would argue that Google could care less about negative sentiment among the digital marketing (specifically SEO) community, but the ire toward Google doesn\u2019t stop there; many major mainstream publications like The Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Forbes<\/a> and CNBC<\/a> have featured articles that highlight Penguin penalization and its negative effect on small businesses.<\/p>\n Because of the effectiveness that link building had before 2012 (and to a degree, since) Google has been dealing with a huge link spam problem. Let\u2019s be clear about this; Google created this monster when it rewarded inorganic links in the first place. For quite some time, link building worked like a charm. If I can borrow a quote\u00a0from my boss, Bruce Clay: \u201cThe old way of thinking was he who dies with the most links wins.\u201d<\/p>\n This tactic was so effective that it literally changed the face of the Internet. Blog spam, comment spam, scraper sites \u2013 none of them would exist if Google\u2019s algorithm didn\u2019t, for quite some time, reward the acquisition of links (regardless of source) with higher rankings.<\/p>\nIs the End of Link Spam Upon Us?<\/h2>\n
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Working Backwards: The Problems with Penguin<\/h2>\n
Dealing with Link Spam & Negative SEO Problems<\/h3>\n