Over the past few years, Google has caused panic to website owners via its hard-hitting search algorithm updates. There was the Google Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird updates. All these had significant results that resulted in some websites diminishing in to the oblivion, while others rose in the rankings significantly.
It is for this reason that businesses and website owners remain very keen when they hear of a new update by Google. Recently, this year 2014 to be precise, Google came up with a new update dubbed Penguin 3.0 (what’s with Google and animals?). This has rattled the WWW world again as businesses try to find out the exact details and changes expected to result from this update.
Learning this will ensure that you safeguard your website from possible penalties that may lead to loss of business. For your peace of mind, below are two very important things you should know about this most recent Google update.
What is Google’s Penguin 3.0 Update All About?
1. The Main Target is Spammy Links
This update, just like its predecessors, is mainly geared towards penalizing websites that have inbound links that are spammy. Should you notice a drop in your rankings within the next few weeks, you should work hard to identify your links that are spammy in nature and then clean up your house.
2. The Update is Global
This Penguin 3.0 update will affect all Google users across the globe. The expectation is that it will roll out over the next few weeks and will mainly target English queries. However, to some extent, it will also affect queries in other languages. The people at Google are actually referring to this new update as a refresh and not a full update like its predecessors. This means that sites with spammy links that might have cleverly escaped notice by earlier updates, and still remained ranked high in the SERPs, will most likely not escape this ‘refresh’.
Here is the bottom line; although details of the actual changes are still scanty, this Penguin 3.0 update has the design to demote those websites that still have poor link profiles while promoting and rewarding those sites that took an effort to clean up their link profiles. As a result, there is certain likelihood that some websites will notice abrupt drops in ranking while others will have a pleasant surprise in the form of sharp rises in their ranking.
So, instead of fearing this new update, simply work hard to clean up your bad links and add more informative, educative, interesting and engaging content to your website.
