Google has finally updated Penguin, the algorithm responsible for penalizing sites using spammy or black hat techniques in an attempt to game the system. The new update, deemed Penguin 4.0, brings with it a series of important changes. The most prominent one being that Penguin is now a real-time algorithm – meaning you no longer have to wait for Penguin to recrawl your page when improving it.
Once a webmaster considerably improved their site and its presence on the internet, many of Google’s algorithms would take that into consideration very fast, but others, like Penguin, needed to be refreshed. With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page.
The second major change is that Penguin is now “more granular” – as it won’t necessarily affect the ranking of an entire website anymore. Instead Penguin can affect the ranking of a specific page or an entire section.
Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.
Finally – since the Penguin algorithm is now running in real-time, Google will no longer announce any future updates and refreshes. As it sits, Penguin 4.0 is officially rolling out – so keep your eye out for ranking changes over the course of the next week or two. Read the full post from Google here.