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Google Algorithm Changes
Update September 23, 2016: Real Time Penguin is now live! Google just announced on their official Webmaster blog that after a period of development and testing, they are now rolling out an update to the Penguin algorithm in all languages. Aside from the fact that Penguin’s data is now refreshed in real time so that changes will be visible much faster, Penguin is now more granular. The Penguin algorithm will be able to devalue spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting the ranking of the whole site.
Is My Website Affected by the Real Time Penguin?
You might be familiar with the of concept Google Penguin. However, what you might not be familiar with is the concept of Real Time. What this means exactly:
Your site will be penalized in near real-time (if you get unnatural links) as well as recover from a penalty incredibly quickly.(if you disavow or remove the bad links)
If, however, you’re trying to get away with some tactics that are not to Google’s liking, the Penguin will catch up to you really fast and you will not be able to use those tactics for any significant amount of time. Yet, for both recovering and prevention you will need a tool that works fast, accurate and constantly upgraded to the market needs. With Penguin going real-time, the algorithm will now likely get a lot closer to fulfilling its ultimate goal: catch spam link profiles as quickly as possible and keep low-quality sites from ranking well in the search results. Therefore, if you want to stay ahead in the game (or in the SEO game at all), you will need to find a way to constantly and consistently audit your links and perform cleanups where necessary. The cognitiveSEO toolset might be the most reliable partner you can take in your quest of keeping your websites’ high ranks. Here is how the unnatural link detection tool can save your site:
- Know how your link profile looks like, as well as your competitors’
- Helps you get rid or Disavow your Unnatural links as they appear
- Regularly monitors your backlink profile
- Alerts you as soon as unnatural link activity is spotted within your website.
Update: A Google employee, Zineb Ait, confirmed on Twitter, today 12th Jan, that this is a Google core update of the algo and it is not Penguin. Gary Illyes also confirmed here. So much simpler where there is communication confusion from Google. Looking forward for the Google Penguin 4.0 to be released. 
Google Penguin 4.0 ( the real-time update) might have been started! During the last few days a very high SERP volatility was reported by most of the SERP monitoring tools. Lots of tools reported high volatility starting from the 6th of January. The highest spike was reported by Algoroo on the 10th of Jan. People also talk a lot on the SEO related forums about the volatility they see. A first report was done by Dejan on the 10th of Jan:
“Yesterday we reported a significant volatility level in Google’s results but it looks like that was only a warm-up. Today is like nothing we’ve seen in 2015. It’s bigger than Penguin 3. The only event with the greater impact on search results was PayDay Loan update back in May 2014.”
This was not yet officially confirmed by Google but:
Google’s John Mu posted a very fuzzy response on Twitter minutes ago neither confirming nor denying the release of the Google Penguin. This makes me think even more that the update is Google Penguin. Else why would he not confirm that it is not.
First UPDATE 11 Jan After this was posted we got a more straight answer from JohnMu saying that they do not have anything to announce yet. Still does not confirm positively or negatively this. 
More tools report this high level of volatility in the SERP worldwide.
SERP.watch
Accuranker
MozCast
Also lots of discussions on Webmasterworld during the weekend about the Penguin 4.0 update. The opinions seems to be mixed about Penguin there. 
Barry Schwartz reported on Seroundtable, on Sunday in a Special Report, about the SERP fluctuations. 
The real-time Penguin would allow webmasters to recover their sites much faster.At the same time it will penalize spammy link profiles on an ongoing basis. In the last couple of years we, at cognitiveSEO, have learned a lot about unnatural links and penalties by analyzing lots of Penguin penalized sites.
Using the Unnatural Link Detection in the Google Penguin Recovery Tool, cognitiveSEO can help you recover and protect your website from Google Penguin 4.0 or any other link related penalty.
As stated in the beginning this was not officially confirmed by Google. When we have an official answer I will update this post as we get more information from Google’s representatives and from the community. It may be that this is not Penguin, even though it is highly unlikely based on all the reports we see. It could be another Google update.
this update will take efect in spaish sites too
We have to wait for a while but for me, if this is real time update, then seos will know “in real time” if their linkbuilding way is good or not without waiting for next update;)
still not here yet. but this is a good time to start tracking the penalty risk. looking forward to see it go live.
Thanks for the info and updates. It’s always hard to tell how these updates will affect rankings and sites. Just keep practicing sound backlinking methods.
Very very interesting!
Google doesn’t want to say anything, but I think that this may be Google penguin and they don’t want to announce it yet.
We can’t be 100% until we get more feedback from Google, I guess we’ll find out what this is in the near future.
Thanks for the update Razvan!
Benjamin
That’s why, Because Penguin always burry million of websites on its update. And i found still many spammy sites are getting ranked in serp.
yes this is so true. My main competitor for web design is full with China and Russia forum and comments backlinks but he also got a lot of content
Hello …,
don’t panic, nothing’s happened — Google just played with its core 😉 !
Ciao, Sascha.
yap. saw that once they confirmed and updated the post. no panic here. just thinking that the Penguin is taking them too long of a time to implement … such a low priority …
This will cause serious problems!!!!! But this news is not confirmed yet.
I noticed the fluctuations including on our websites’ rankings but it never crossed my mind that another Penguin update was rolled out. Thank you for shedding the light on this matter.
Meh, no sense in getting worked up about “Penguin” all the time. Just assume that there’s always going to be a Penguin update tomorrow and act accordingly and you never have to worry about it.
“The Great Penguin is always watching…”
for sites in spanish language too was moving in the serp, but i don´t think the penguin attacks
Google updates are like a box of candies. But, instead of a sweet treat, you get new articles and information that you have to study.
Google Penguin always burying million of websites when it got any update. And i found still many spammy sites are getting ranked in serp. T
This will cause serious problems
Nice information shared here.
It will be much fluctuation in SERPs for spammers and bloggers who dont know about quality works. Let see what happens. SERP will do dance soon.
It may happen that penguin update will much beneficial for quality SEOs.
it should be as spammy sites will rank lower (or not at all) and quality link profiles will boost their own rankings. not to mention the possibility to recover your sites if they are penalized.
I just seen this article on my inbox and got to know about google new algo update on penguin..im amazed to see there will be real time penalty and thats a good news..its interesting..
Now onward only quality SEO are going to establish (rock) in Market !!!!
Those who though that SEO is Copy & Paste or Data entry work, now this is the time to upgrade them self or change there field !!!!
The positive information: something smells badly :/
The negative information: Googlers confirmed unconfirmed information :/
Yeah !
I have been noticing a significant increase over the last week in the UK Serp for some pretty competitive keywords but seeing some strange things also..an example is vastly different results with some keywords appearing on page 2 instead of page 3 but appear on page 3 when I use keyword check tools, perhaps nothing happened at all or perhaps I’m going mad, probably both 😉
rankings updates will be seen as Google re-indexes all your sites links.
I think as long as we optimize our website by Google rule, there’s only positive impact to our website 🙂
After a long time, Finally it comes let’s see new changes
I noticed the fluctuations including on our websites’ rankings but it never crossed my mind that another Penguin update was rolled out. Thank you for shedding the light on this matter.
Hello Cognitive team,
Thanks for your outstanding blog with statistical illustration.
To be honest, google was testing penguin 4.0 beginning of September. We were getting huge fluctuations on SERP. Google officially introduce on 23rd September.
Anyway, hope, this new update will bring quality outcome for search.
Regards
Ben William
indeed. there a lot of reports similar to yours. surely they’ve been testing it before making it public. it is a big update and they needed to carefully analyze the impact.
I was expecting this but not at this time 🙁
that’s the way Google launches updates … when people least expect them.
It means your linkbuilding strategy should be much more natural = hard work
Does each country different start date?
This will cause serious problems
After a long time we see an update. Unexpected but iam sure it would be worth
le’s see how this develops.
I am little confuse what should i do for recover my website ranking after real time penalty.
you should first check your penalty score/risk and the number of unnatural links. you can do it with cognitiveSEO automatically or you can do it by hand taking each and every link to manual investigation.
once you did this you can do a disavow if you did not already.
in the meantime if you did not do it yet you need to dilute your link profile and create strategies that will bring natural and organic links pointing to your site.
No more speculation it’s here… or is it?
Is this true this Google Penguin 4.0 doesn’t penalise for bad links but it ignores/devalues the spammy links adjusted its ranking.
as Gary Illyes says the algo is devaluing links but there is still need for a disavow to help them understand your unnatural links better. For manual actions is a must.
After a long time, Finally it comes let’s see what would be happen with new run time Algo…..
Apparently Penguin 4.0 is now operational for all pises and languages. They are noticing several fluctuations in the rankings.
He started the game ha ha ha ha
If someone else is having directed many fluctuations. regards
I wouldn’t say that all unnatural link profile sites were punished yet. I saw a lot of example of SPAM still ranking high in the SERPs.
I think this update has not started in Turkey yet
might be. I also have seen in Romania that a lot of junk is still ranking.
Seems like Penguin is rolling out in a pretty rapid manner now.
And it looks like there are two factors that need to be considered:
– Spammy Backlinks on first tier
– Anchor-Text-Diversification
Have a nice weekend everybody,
Philipp
There are serious fluctuations in the rankings.
can you share some examples?
One of our clients seemed to lose traffic, and simultaneously saw higher conversion rates. We are waiting to find out if overall online sales numbers are increasing over the baseline we are looking at, an initial glance shows that appears to be the case. Thought that was interesting food for thought.
keep an eye. they are still rolling it and my feeling is that there is a mix of updates. not only Penguin.
le’s see how this develops.
Penguin 4.0 is slowly rolling out and its real time that with effect the web pages of site. Each day the page is crawled or index the page get refreshed. Thanks for sharing about Penguin 4.0 update. Hope to get more interesting content from your side to read in future.
you will 😉 stay tuned for new articles on the subject. follow us on social media 😉
After a long time…
Massive SERPs changes this time. hoping for goo!
can you share some sites that had fluctuations?
Google has been changing algo’s on a frequent basis which is not just affecting site ranking but SEO business as well. It is quite obvious that Google want’s you to pay them instead of doing SEO/SEM
it’s a conspiracy theory 🙂
on the serious side. G wants to have full control on the rankings and they don’t want third parties to manipulate their rankings in an evil way.
Hi Razvan,
First I would like to appreciate you for this awesome information. I have a question that how much penguin will effect an exact match domain.
not sure if a difference was done on EMDs but I have seen an example of an EMD that was pushed down with this update.
Sir, Kindly let me know how to check whether my website affected by penguin penalties…
you should check starting with the date of 23rd of Sept 2016 and see if your rankings had a drop or increase. Penguin is still rolling so these can be seen also in the following days.
Only for SERPs changes this time.
For the moment, no client of mine was hit by Penguin 4.0.
It’s actually common sense and not go risky profile links.
Everything can take its toll over time !.
Interesting… Hope it doesn’t effect it to much.
Even I have seen so much fluctuation in many keywords. But I am not able to find whether the new penguin update has affected or Not.
Thank you for the post. All of the points in the post is very much useful ones though I have my doubts on disavow links. I think if we can understand the relation between panda,penguin and rankbrain half of our battle is won because I know this for sure that rankbrain has a huge significance when it comes to rankings.
The disavow tool is recommended by Google when you have a Manual Penalty or you want to tell Google to not take in consideration a special set of links (due to an algo penalty or maybe negative seo).
How many days will updates, because ranking is fluctuating every time. plz share the ending date of Penguin 4.0. suggest me what can i do to improve the better result.
check this newer article please on the Penguin Update
https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/12071/google-penguin-4-0-recoveries/
I have lost few of my organic traffic. I’m guessing that it might be due to the unnatural links. Wanna recover it.
So google.com.tr get update?
We sumbitted disavow links but nothing happen for yet for several websites. How long it takes the reconsideration?
I would recommend looking into this article where various experts share their opinion on this
https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/7282/8-renowned-experts-bust-common-google-disavow-tool-myths/
With every new Google Penguin version, spamming sites in abundance have been terminated. Sure there won’t be any other update of Penguin in the future considering the company has shifted it to the core algorithm, it is concerning for every trifling website to protect itself.
Interesting Google Penguin Penalty check tool. Will start my trial today!
My web site is fluctuating for 1 week. It looks like it was spinning normally today.
We noticed significant drops in some of the sites we tracking but not as they launched the penguin 4.0. Now its live so basically now you make bad links & get the instant punishment.. 🙂 Surely its nightmare for spammers .
Thanks For Sharing This Article to Keeping us Update on Panda!
Thanks for update my several sites are affected,which i have recovered keep eyes on penguin.
I don’t think penguin will affect the websites obey white hat operation.
After many times updates, I found Google tried to remind us the content is the king.
It is very useful information at my studies time, i really very impressed very well articles and worth information, i can remember more days that articles.
Now it is known to me that articles is nothing but inspiring is everything to do something great. This is a great article for the people who want to come in freelancing.
Totally Agreed, How can we follow these instructions to avoid the SERP fluctuation?
Can anyone tell me about next penguin update when it will come and roll out?
We have observed that Big Brands are following the SERP. For some of the clients, we have seen that some of the big brands are getting top positions in SERP.
Still having troubles with this beautiful Penguin… O.o What happened exactly with the link building rules? If having important backlinks, SERPS change in a bad way, if not doing anything, SERPS change anyway… :/
I have checked this update I was safe at all now waiting for the next Penguin update. But many spammers are still on no.1 I don’t know what’s happening.
Good article on the Penguin update. And thanks for using some good info graphics and pictures that help explain this. It makes it easier to understand.
I’m going to check out your unnatural link detection tool.
It’s correct. penguin update is effecting now.
Someone saw some changes in eastern europe?
When will the site authority access through the google link network to stop evaluating? 🙂
Good article on the Penguin update. Totally Agreed, Can anyone tell me about next penguin update
Anyone knows when google next update will come?
Penguin slightly shuffled websites in Poland and in the world. My site lost 25% on these changes.
Does anyone have any advice on how to plan seo strategies now, after “penguin” update? 😉
This is a very great blog, I started blogging way back 2013 and during those time I was able to rank high in search engines. However, after the several updates in the algorithm my website ranking fell down. Hopefully with this update, I will be able to fix my ranking again. Thanks!
Good article on the Penguin update keep it up. Totally Agreed, Can anyone tell me about the next Voice SEO update..?
Wow! I had no idea Penguin was this bad. It seems like Google changes things up all the time. Hopefully things calm down so businesses can actually do what they do best.
Google is updating its stuff very often and sometimes it does affects business really bad. But things seems to be normal in coming time.
Newcomers in the SEO business will try to persuade you with their flashy ads and all kinds of promises. But how long have they been in business? How many Google algorithmic changes have they survived? How many clients have they handled? Many of them are rookies with no real knowledge of what it takes to make a website dominate the SERPs.
Google is always bringing something new. We have to brace for new updates by Google. Thanks for sharing this, I agree with your points.
this is the first time I got to know about this penguin algorithm. We are just beginners and thanks for this informative post.
My website ranking on Google is fluctuating, I don’t know the reason for this.