Googles Penguin Update Creates Havoc Amongst Many Webmasters

by Divya Fernando - 4/27/2012 14817 Views

As quoted verbatim from comments below Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan's blog this comes as an alarm to innumerous webmasters around the web world badly hit by the Penguin update.

Lake Garda says, 5 out of 11 of my sites have dropped into oblivion today. Funny thing is 3 of them have not been optimized since the last update. Just added some fresh content to the sites. I'm looking for a new job, fed up now!"

Annonymous says, I just had a website that ranked on the first page for numerous rankings.... completely tank. One of the only websites that didn't do comment spam in my SERPS. Didn't do link exchanges. Now it's gone. Funny thing is the top two websites have tons of blog comment spam."

Mike Chaleff has this huge and frustrated comment as long as Sullivan's blog itself that concludes saying, "...a business owner who was having trouble with his business, was also affected by this new google algorithm change..leaving him with zero business left. truly a sad day..". Do not know how genuine this comment is, but it really does show that you are not alone if you're website was badly hit by mistake.

While Danny empathizes with some and is curious to know more from others whose online business is adversely affected post-Penguin update says, "I would say that if it just disappeared today, that's a pretty good sign it's gone. It's not an over-SEO penalty, as a reminder. It's a new way of tackling existing search spam that Google has warned against. I'd check Google Webmaster Central and file a reinclusion request, which might get Google to take a second look and see if there's some false positive hitting your site."

The readers along with the author give some shocking search results for terms like the following (chances are if you have landed here a little late, the real time results might change):

Viagra - Two hacked sites or virus infected sites shows in Search Page #1

how many pills does it take to overdose - Yahoo answer pages are ranked at #1 and #2

make money online - this search on Google Malaysia gives a top result that contains nasty content.

While this site was one of the top search results for make money online, has been removed now from the search results, according to the comments in the blog.

Google better fix the issues risen from Penguin hit sites at once else a lot of genuine businesses out there are facing undeserved penalties for something they haven't done. Besides, from the user point of view, who apparently drove Google to bring on the update, are having to deal with poor search result output from the search engine Giant.

Do you have a story too?

28th April 2012 - Here is one more search goof up post-Penguin update

Search for the term "internet marketing statistics 2012" (without quotes) and it gives you a blank site with no content, in the top 4 slot of page 1. Here is the site. As the real time search results might change at a later stage, I have gone ahead and taken a screenshot as proof. See below.

What message do we give to those sites that have fantastic content? Do we ask them to give up on optimizing their website on Google? or Leave the business altogether?

Quotes Courtesy: SearchEngineLand

Category :

Google

Tags :

frustrated by google penguin update, Webspam update, negative seo effects, google news, Danny Sulliv

About Divya Fernando

I am Divi Fernando and I am an expert SEO author who is also into Business Development at Submitinme.com. I have loads of energy and I disperse it in varied tasks that involve writing, dancing, singing, strumming my guitar, drawing, photography, travel and adventure. I believe that 'You must take pleasure in what you do, or simply don't do it'. I take immense pleasure in my work as well as off-work activities and I'm always open to learn new things in life. My strengths are my positive attitude, confidence, innovative thinking and creativity. I also happen to talk too much about myself at times and never know where to stop. Thank goodness for the limited space, you must think .... more info about the author