Google Penguin 2.1, So Called as Penguin 5 is Rolling Out

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by Jenifer Renjini - 10/5/2013 8323 Views

Penguin 2.1 Targets More specifically on Purchased/Paid Links

Penguin 2.1 Launch It is confirmed that the next iteration of Penguin, the Penguin version 2.1 has rolled out on October 4, 2013, yesterday by Google. As per the numbering count this is the fifth Penguin update. Penguin 2.1 affects ~1% of queries to a noticeable degree, said Matt Cutts.

Matt Cutts Tweet on Penguin 2.1

Check out the Tweet of Matt Cutts, Google’s Webspam Team Head regarding the launch of Penguin 2.1 update and the percentage of queries it affects.

Matt Cutts on Penguin 2.1

What is Penguin Algorithm and the Purpose of its launch?

Google Penguin is the official name given to The Google Webspam Algorithm. The update of this penalization algorithm is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by following Black Hat SEO techniques and Web Spamming.

The Purpose of the algorithm is to reduce the spammy search results on Search Engine Results Page. Click here to know the different criteria’s of links that Google focused for penalization.

The Important factors that Penguin takes into consideration for penalization are,

Ratio of Exact Match Anchor Text in Poor Quality Articles
Ratio of Bad Links coming from autoapprove, non-moderated blogs
Ratio of No real On-site Activity by any visitors compared to inbound links

How Does Penguin Impact a Website?

Below are the updates of Penguin by Date and the Percentage of queries it affected

1. Penguin 1 - April 24, 2012 – 3.1% queries were affected

2. Penguin 2 – May 26, 2012 – less than 0.1% queries were affected

3. Penguin 3 – Oct 5, 2012 – 0.3 % queries were affected (English Language)

4. Penguin 4/Penguin 2.0 – May 22, 2013 2.3 % of queries were affected

5. Penguin 5/Penguin 2.1 – Oct 4, 2013 1% of queries gets affected

What does Penguin 2.1 do?

Though penguin algorithm was launched earlier for penalizing the sites that has bad backlinks, Google still produces spammy websites and webpages on search results in some areas. With this Penguin 2.1 update, Google pushes down those spammy sites that escaped from the previous update. Google has concentrated more on websites some specific areas this time particularly purchased or paid links

What Webmasters Should Do?

As the algorithm has been launched just hours back, it is good to watch out your traffic from now on. If you were hit by the update, you will see a drop in your traffic.

Do a Backlink Monitoring and make sure your website is free from bad backlinks.
If you see bad backlinks on your website, send a mail to the corresponding webmaster and ask them to remove your link from their site.
If that doesn’t work out, disavow those links by sending request to Google.

As stated in SearchEngineLand,

“Filing a reconsideration request doesn’t help, because Penguin is an automated process. Until it sees that what it considers to be bad has been removed, you don’t recover.”

Disavow Tips on Penguin 2.1

Link Audit for Penguin 2.1

Un-Natural Link Analysis

SPAM Network Link Audit

PAID Link Audit

BANNED Link Audit

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Hope the detailed information we provided, helped you in knowing more on the new update. For more future updates on algorithms, SEO news and tactics, subscribe to our news and follow me on my Google Plus Profile.

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SEO News

Tags :

Penguin 2.1, Penguin 2.1 Algorithm, Penguin update

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About Jenifer Renjini

Here at SubmitInMe, I write articles focusing on SEO trends and latest SEO updates, providing you the right information on the right time. My Life and Career both lie on the same graph, So Far So .... more info