Google Penguin Update Is Live

After Google Panda now it’s time for Google Penguin to changing changing the search rankings around the web. This update to Google’s algorithm was rolled out a couple of days ago, and it’s main purpose is to make Google be able to recognize and punishes web spam more effectively.

More specifically this algorithm update will target:

• link schemes designed to increase rankings of certain pages or websites
• keyword stuffing used to increase the rankings of a certain page
• duplicate content used with the purpose of increasing the size of a website and thus its rankings
• redirects and cloaks used to show one things for users and another for search engines

Here’s a quote from an article on Search Engine Land:

The web spam techniques above aren’t new. Some of them are more than 10 years old and date back to before Google even operated as a search engine. So why is Google only now going after such methods?
It’s not, even though the blog post might give some newcomers that impression. Google’s warned about and fought against such techniques for ages. Rather, what’s really happening is that Google is rolling out better ways that it hopes to detect such abuses.
Despite warning against such spam techniques, it’s easy to find cases where they still work. It’s enough to make some long-time “white hat” SEOs feel foolish arguing that people should avoid spamming Google when it seems to pay-off, as I wrote about recently.
“We’ve heard a lot of solid feedback from SEOs who are trying to do the right thing and who don’t want to see webspam techniques rewarded, and we feel the same way,” said Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team.

Google said this update will affect only 3% of queries. While not much, it certainly is a signal that Google wants to tighten the grip on web spam, so make sure your SEO strategies are aligned with that.