Penguin 2.0 (2013): the next generation of Google's link spam fix

What Google changed#

On 22 May 2013, Matt Cutts, then head of Google’s webspam team, wrote on his blog that Google had started rolling out “the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm.” Penguin, first launched in April 2012, was in Google’s words “a system designed to combat link spam.”

This was not a routine refresh. Cutts wrote that because it was “an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh),” Google had been calling it Penguin 2.0 internally. The name therefore came from Google. Search Engine Land, which numbered every Penguin release in order, called it Penguin 4.

When it rolled out#

Cutts announced the launch on the This Week in Google show, according to Search Engine Land, and then confirmed it on his blog. He wrote that the rollout started “this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete.” It also “finished rolling out for other languages world-wide.” Google stated no separate duration.

What is known about its impact#

Google’s figure, from Cutts: “About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice.” He added that the scope varied by language and that languages with more webspam would see more impact. Google gave no site-level figures.

What site owners should do#

Penguin no longer exists as a separate system. Google’s ranking systems guide lists it under retired systems and says it “was integrated into our core ranking systems in 2016.” Google’s spam policies now carry the rules it enforced:

• Do not buy or sell links for ranking purposes, including exchanging goods or services for links.
• Avoid excessive link exchanges and automated link building.
• Qualify paid or sponsored links with rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow”.
• Report sites that use link spam through Google’s spam report.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is historical. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so May 2013 can only be checked in archived analytics, by comparing Google organic traffic for the week before and the week after 22 May 2013. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every update with its dates.

Related updates#

• The Penguin update of April 2012 was the original launch.
• The payday loan update followed in June 2013 against spammy queries.
• Penguin 3.0 was the next Penguin update, in October 2014.