Google Update: Penguin Won’t Adjust Rankings Down

Stephen McCance October 21, 2016

Google’s Gary Illyes has revealed more information about Google’s latest algorithm update. While Google’s new Penguin 4.0 algorithm devalues spam links and ignores it – Panda actually demotes your websites (if it has spam links) by moving it down the rankings.

What is the Penguin Update?

So, the old Penguin Update penalised websites that have a lot of spammy links. The new Penguin algorithm however simply ignores these links, i.e. they have no value at all – positive or negative. Penguin 4.0 also looks at different things on the source site, not on the target site, and then makes decisions based on those signals. With the Penguin 4.0 it is becoming more about the quality of links built, rather than the quantity.

However, Google have also revealed that if the majority of your built links are spam, they will no longer hold any authority and will be dismissed, whether they are good or bad. So if Penguin sees mass manipulation, it can decide to discount all of the links, which you can imagine will be detrimental for a site, especially in terms of SEO. Having no links, no PageRank, and no link signals will feel as bad as a demotion.

What about Google Panda?

Google Panda is a search filter, which was introduced in February 2011. The Panda update has put a stop to sites with low or poor quality content from maneuvering their way up the search results. Panda is irregularly updated, but when of course this does happen, sites previously penalised by poor content could escape, should the right changes be made.

Panda measures the quality of a website by looking at the vast majority, taking a look at the website as a whole, rather than just individual, or single pages.

While Google revealed that the new Penguin update won’t directly adjust rankings through penalising them for spam but will instead devalue spam links that have been built. However, Google have confirmed that Panda can and will directly demote rank a site for poor quality content. For example, if Google checks a website to find that 80 percent of pages are poorly optimized and have spam links built to it, the Panda update could very well demote your website.

So the Google Panda algorithm demotes, or adjusts a site’s ranking in a negative manner – it does not just devalue or ignore spam like Penguin 4.0 does. Basically as we know, Google is on a mission to deliver the best answers to their users. That’s why they are constantly changing their algorithm to push the creation of better sites, user experiences and content.