Google announced in September that their most recent Penguin release will be their last. For the uninitiated, Penguin is a four-year-old initiative that Google introduced to directly reduce spammy websites in the search results. Penguin targets over-optimized websites that use techniques such as keyword stuffing (dumping dozens of keywords into pages just to get higher rankings) and cloaking (sending a different page to the search engine than to the user). So, does this final release mean that there is no more for Google to do to curb spamming?
Far from it.
In fact, the reason this is the final release of Penguin is because from now on the updates will be constant. Google explained that the newest algorithm will respond to updated data on a continuous basis. Where in the past, a site caught red-handed might wait months for it to be re-evaluated, now the site might regain its former rankings as soon as it changes what it is doing. This has implications far beyond Penguin.
What is likely going on here is that Google has ratcheted up its commitment to machine learning. Google’s Panda updates have been based on machine learning from the beginning, with its use of feature analysis to identify low quality sites. And Google has always tried to use data to improve its ranking algorithm, starting in the beginning with its PageRank link analysis approach.
This last release of Penguin makes spam detection responsive to the same real-time data as most of the rest of Google’s algorithm, but it also cements Google’s commitment to continual machine learning and data-driven ranking. Google has, the last few years, sped up every part of data collection, from continuous crawling to constant data updates. This last Penguin release is just the latest example of the always-on ranking algorithm update.
So if you are still listening to people describing how you fool Google with tricks and other chicanery, that’s so 2009. Now, the data changes every second, so there aren’t even any algorithm changes to stay ahead of, even if you want to foolishly chase those changes. Maybe it’s time to break down and create the content your audience wants.
