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Penguin 3.0 Affects Less than 1% of Queries, Will Rollout for Weeks

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penguinrolloutGoogle has publicly posted the first comments about the Penguin update.  Pierre Far shared the following on Google+:

On Friday last week, we started rolling out a Penguin refresh affecting fewer than 1% of queries in US English search results. This refresh helps sites that have already cleaned up the webspam signals discovered in the previous Penguin iteration, and demotes sites with newly-discovered spam.

It’s a slow worldwide rollout, so you may notice it settling down over the next few weeks.

We noticed that it seemed to be rolling out slowly, and hit internationally first before it went to the US on Sunday morning.

Only less than 1% of US search query results were affected, which is much smaller than I would have anticipated after such a long wait for the update.  By comparison, Penguin 2.0 impacted 2.3% but the Penguin 2.1 refresh only impacted 1%.  The original Penguin impacted 3.1%

The slow rollout could last for a few weeks, despite John Mueller earlier saying that it had completed in a Google Webmaster Office Hours.  He later said that it looked like it was still ongoing.

Penguin 3.0 affects less than 1% of US English search results and will roll out for weeks… by…

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One thing worth noting is the confusion between whether it is an update (Penguin 3.0) or a refresh (which would be Penguin 2.2).  In the headline of Far’s post, it is called a Penguin update, but in the body, he calls it merely a “refresh” and not an “update”.  It does have all the signs and impact of a regular update – especially as Far states it helps sites that have cleaned up from previous Penguins and impacts sites that have now been caught.

For full details on what was impacted, read our full coverage: Penguin 3.0 Finally Updates – Google Hits Homepages, Affiliates & 301 Redirect Spam

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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Comments

  1. If a site in the U.S. hasn’t recovered yet, is there still hope for it to recover in this “refresh”?

    If a US site underwent a thorough link cleanup over the past year, and is showing now signs of recovery as of this moment, is there still a chance that it will recover as the algorithm continues to roll out? Or is it too late now?

    • There was a typo in my comment… it should read “no signs of recovery as of this moment”

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