It’s official – the Penguin is back

Over the weekend the SEO grapevine has been buzzing with rumours that an update was underway and late on Sunday we received official confirmation that Google has indeed released the new Penguin update. As you may recall this was last refreshed in October 2013 so we have been waiting over a year for this particular update. The last Penguin update, which specifically affects sites with poor or spammy backlinks, hit a lot of websites quite hard. The problem from this has been that even if you have managed to remove the poorer links then the sites affected have often gone nowhere as Google confirmed that it would take another Penguin update or refresh to put them back into the index where they should naturally rank. So far there is a mixed reaction to the update. A Google spokesperson has said that they feel that small website owners should be happy but many are hopping mad having seen their sites disappear. As with all of these updates the real position will only become clear as it flushes through the system and that may take a week or so. Within the agency we have seen little change this morning although one or two clients appear to have lost a couple of positions. In truth however this is no more than a normal days fluctuation and they could regain them tomorrow. The summary so far therefore is that despite the change, nothing has changed. Naturally we are watching it carefully and will report changes here as they become apparent.