Google Penguin Refresh Widely Reported: Finally

Google Has Updated Google Penguin after a Year

According to many SEOs in the industry, who are trusted sources, the Google Penguin algorithm is being updated as I write this post. There are reports that some are seeing organic ranking increases as high as 30 to 40 places from previous rankings. As you might recall, John Mueller from Google reportedly said that there would be a Penguin refresh by the end of the year.

From 59 (July ’13) to 5,569 (Oct ’14 to today) organic visitors for a tradesman. My kind of results 🙂 pic.twitter.com/M9hUkA5H7O

— Tony Dimmock (@Tony_DWM) October 19, 2014

I have, for example, one search engine optimization client, who sent me the following email today:

From: “client”
Date: Saturday, October 18, 2014 at 7:14 PM
To: Bill Hartzer
Subject: All Key Words Jumped 30 to 40 Spots UP!

Thanks,
(client name removed)

As you can see, it’s a very short email. But, this particular client was “hit hard” last October, and over the past year I’ve spent countless hours cleaning up the website’s link profile. We’ve removed the low quality links to the site, and even gotten some really good, high quality new links and mentions in major publications in his industry. It seems as though this work has paid off (finally) and we’re seeing really good traffic as a result.

As you might recall, I have written a lot about Google Penguin Recovery in the past year, and even back about a year ago it was all about whether or not your site suffered from Google Penguin.

I have a lot of experience cleaning up websites’ link profiles, especially sites who have been hit by the Google Penguin algorithm. In fact, what was even interesting was that I found that some site owners didn’t even know that they had resource pages on their website.

Right now, it’s been less than 24 hours since we have reports of this new Google Penguin update. So, it’s really so preliminary in the process that we don’t know how to deal with this latest update. I’ve even heard reports that it’s still being rolled out. So, if you were affected by Google Penguin in the past, then you’ll need to wait a few days until this all is updated on Google’s side of things and the rankings calm down a bit.

In the meantime, feel free to contact me and I’ll take a look at your website (at no charge) and tell you whether or not you’ve been hit by Google Penguin or not.

Update: Monday, October 20, 2014 – 11:30am
From what I’m seeing here in Dallas, after reviewing *a lot* of clients’ analytics whose links I cleaned up, I don’t believe we’re seeing a full rollout of Penguin yet. I am seeing some rankings changes, but not what I expect to see in terms of traffic when Google Penguin is fully rolled out. So now, we just play the waiting game… and hope for the best. No news is good news, right?

Update: Monday, October 20, 2014 – 11:50am
Now we have confirmation from John Mueller via SE Roundtable that the Google Penguin update is complete. I’m sure that Barry will update us as soon as he has more details.