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John Mueller mentioned in a Google hangout recently that Penguin is refreshing quite often. Here is the video. Start listening at about 3:52 and then pay close attention to what he says at 4:11.
He says that Penguin is rerun regularly...not quite weekly or daily. But according to what Google has announced, the only refreshes have been April 24 (original rollout), May 25 and October 5.
That brings up all sorts of questions in my mind. I'd love to hear what fathom thinks of this. I remember him saying that his testing showed that sites could be hit by Penguin on a non-announced Penguin day. Perhaps it is these silent reruns that is causing that.
Thoughts?
Last edited by Dr.Marie; Feb 19th, 2013 at 04:16 PM.
fathom, fathom, fathom....is he buying you flowers or something....JK
I keep getting an error..try again later on the video.
It does seem to be happening quite often and wasn't Google constantly running updates a few years ago...back around 07, 08. or is my memory stuck in a clog.
Given that these updates don't apply across the board I think that they are rolled out more progressively than hitting a switch. I am currently working on a very competitive term with high commercial value and the site in position 3 should be hit by penguin but appears not to be.
I think these are rolled out progressively but with major tweaks to them being called updates.
JohnMu says that Penguin is running more frequently that Google originally suggested.
Perhaps they are running the Penguin algorithm every week or less but they are making changes to the algorithm itself at the times that they have publicly announced.
So version 1. of Penguin was running/refreshing weekly, but then once they announced an update Penguin 2. would be running/refreshing weekly.
A site may have the same link profile, but version 1. thought it was OK but now version 2. doesn't.
But also a site may change its link profile through link building/deletion and trigger something when Penguin is run weekly.
Not sure if that makes any sense whatsoever but from what JohnMu says there must be a difference between the regular refreshes and the updates that Google announces publicly.
John says: "I was probably a bit too fast there . While we do rerun link analysis regularly, the "Penguin" algorithm is in the stage we don't do regular pushes of all of the data in the same way that we update Panda once a month or so, for example. We're always working on improving that, of course. "
So what does that mean?
I asked him whether it was possible for a Penguin hit site to recover from its Penguin issues on a day other than an actual refresh. We'll see if he responds.
John says: "I was probably a bit too fast there . While we do rerun link analysis regularly, the "Penguin" algorithm is in the stage we don't do regular pushes of all of the data in the same way that we update Panda once a month or so, for example. We're always working on improving that, of course. "
So what does that mean?
I asked him whether it was possible for a Penguin hit site to recover from its Penguin issues on a day other than an actual refresh. We'll see if he responds.
Here's my take. It's like working on a car. Again, MY OPINION. You can tune your car, Dyno it, adjust computer settings, etc. But you really won't go balls to the wall until you're on the drag strip.
This is how I see his explanation. We're constantly 'fine tuning it' - perhaps controlled testing? Perhaps internal testing, etc. But I think the modifications and adjustments to the update is what is regularly addressed or in question - then, when they're happy with A/B testing, they release it globally.
John says: "I was probably a bit too fast there . While we do rerun link analysis regularly, the "Penguin" algorithm is in the stage we don't do regular pushes of all of the data in the same way that we update Panda once a month or so, for example. We're always working on improving that, of course. "
So what does that mean?
I think it means They have webmasters doing it for them through the disavow tool.
I asked him whether it was possible for a Penguin hit site to recover from its Penguin issues on a day other than an actual refresh. We'll see if he responds.
He did respond, kinda skirts around the answer to a degree. I think what he's saying is new data will always change the serps. But that's true with additional/changed data in any computer.
Last edited by Test-ok; Feb 21st, 2013 at 01:53 AM.
This article on SEL may be relevant No, Google Hasn't Released Unannounced Penguin Updates Barry mentions that "Google said John was referring to general “link analysis” refreshes but not the Penguin algorithm." (see just below the video).
So it sounds like google are constantly analysing links and refreshing the data they have for those, but not pushing penguin refreshes link with panda.
So what exactly is the difference between a link analysis refresh and Penguin?
Fathom has said that he has recovered tens of sites from Penguin so there must be something else going on here.
Personally I would read the two as being:
1. link analysis refresh - when google updates the links it has stored as being bad links.
2. penguin refresh - google refreshing sites which have bad links etc.
That would make sense to me from what John said, but if that's what google is doing or not is another story! I guess we just have to take their word for it and play smart lol, but hay, as long as people aren't playing bad when building links all should be well
Originally Posted by giggity
. While we do rerun link analysis regularly, the "Penguin" algorithm is in the stage we don't do regular pushes of all of the data in the same way that we update Panda once a month or so, for example. We're always working on improving that, of course. "
