Finally, the wait is over! The world is buzzing with a new level of excitement on the release of Google Penguin 4.0. It took two years for Google to come up with this fourth and the last update. Google Penguin 4.0 is part of Google’s core algorithm and this final update works on a real-time basis.

What’s Google Penguin?

Penguin is a filter designed to catch hold of spammy websites which infect Google search results and are not usually detected under Google’s traditional spamming system. The websites will be blacklisted and penalized by Google if caught by Penguin. Even if they change or improve their websites, they would be on the blacklist until the filter runs next time which can take months. It is very critical now to be vigilant and work in sync with Penguin guidelines to avoid any troubles.

Penguin is real-time now. What does it mean?

Penguin becomes real-time with the launch of the latest update. The web pages would be monitored by Penguin as and when Google re-crawls and re-indexes web pages – which is a constant process. As Google said, “With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we’re-crawl-and- re-index a page.”

Penguin 4.0 penalizes over optimized websites. Any web page which contains excessive keywords that are placed unnaturally or has too many external links for the same keyword on the page will be detected as a spam. One thing is for sure that businesses will have to use keywords for the audience and not for search engines from now on.

What would change?

You would notice a lot of fluctuations in your Google rankings following this update. That’s because real-time updates will take place whenever you update your websites. Penguin 4.0 is highly detailed and thus the penalty is page specific as against the domain-wide penalty in the earlier version.

What’s Good?

• Bye bye time lag! Google Penguin 4.0 is real-time and performs a check as soon as the webmaster updates the website. The changes are recognized at the very moment and the rankings are changed accordingly.
• No more short cuts to boost up page ranking. Google Penguin 4.0 penalizes spammy websites which are not following its rules. So you can anticipate a jump in your page rankings if you have been following a genuine approach towards building your presence online.
• Penguin 4.0 is a granular filter. Instead of penalizing the whole website it only penalizes the spam web pages.

Challenges

• With Penguin 4.0 being real time, Google will now be able to check your pages faster than ever. That means you need to be very alert and need to constantly update your website which is an uphill task.
• SEO has evolved over the time and has become complex and sophisticated. The latest Penguin update has added a new dimension of real-time monitoring to detect the unnatural use of keywords and improper back-links. You need to constantly monitor the back-links on your websites.

Many websites will notice a change in their Google rankings especially those which don’t pay attention to the natural usage of keywords and quality back-links. If you are one of them then do clean your risky back-links, review the entire site for natural keyword usage, check keyword density across the site, and create a few branded links. This will help you a lot. Google Penguin 4.0 has just arrived and definitely there would be a lot more to learn in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to our blog section for all the latest updates related to Penguin 4.0.

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