It’s been a decade since Google introduced its Penguin algorithm and took a tougher stance against manipulative link building practices.
The algorithm has been updated several times and has thailand whatsapp number become a living component of Google’s core algorithm, so penalties have become less common but still exist in partial and site-wide forms.
In most cases, Google claims to ignore the large number of low-quality links on the web, but it still remains vigilant and monitors for unnatural patterns, such as link schemes, PBNs, link exchanges, and unnatural outbound linking patterns.
What is Google Penguin Algorithm
In 2012, Google officially launched the “Webspam Algorithm Update” which specifically targeted link spam and manipulative link building practices.
Later, the webspam algorithm was officially called the Penguin algorithm update through a tweet from Matt Cutts, who was the head of Google's webspam team at the time.
Although Google officially named the algorithm "Penguin", the official did not disclose the origin of the name.
The Panda algorithm was named after a key engineer involved in it, and Penguin probably came from a similar source.
Maybe it's a nod to the Penguin from DC's Batman.
Before the Penguin algorithm, link volume played a much greater role in determining how well a web page was scored when it was crawled, indexed, and analyzed by Google.
This means that when sites are ranked in search results pages based on these scores, some low-quality sites and content can appear more prominently in organic search results than they should.
Why Google Penguin is needed
Google’s war on low quality began with the Panda algorithm, and the Penguin algorithm is an extension and addition to this war’s arsenal.
Penguin was Google’s response to the growing number of attempts to manipulate search results (and rankings) through black hat link building techniques.
"We see it as a piece of software designed to address low-quality content," Cutts said at the SMX Advanced 2012 conference. "We started with Panda, and then we noticed there was still a lot of spam, so Penguin was designed to address that."
The goal of this algorithm is to better control and reduce the effectiveness of multiple black hat spam link techniques.
By better understanding and processing the types of links that websites and webmasters earn, the Penguin algorithm works to ensure that natural, authoritative, and relevant links reward the sites they point to, while reducing levels of manipulative and spammy links.
Penguin only processes inbound links to a website. Google only looks at links pointing to a website, not outbound links from that website.