Penguin penalty how long

The fact that Google is updating its Penguin algorithm so rarely creates problems for site owners. Websites hit by the penalty often have to wait until the next update for their recovery, which may mean waiting up to a year. However, Google recently stated that it will shift the Penguin algorithm to continuous live updates.

This is confirmed to a certain extent by the recently reported spikes in search results following the latest update, which is unusual. Recovering from a Penguin penalty is crucial to regaining your rankings and organic traffic. But, as we mentioned above, you often need to wait for an update of the algorithm to see a full recovery.

However, if you follow through the necessary recovery actions, you should see an immediate increase in organic traffic. If you want to recover from the Google Penguin algorithm penalty you have to follow these 3 steps:.

In order to recover, you have to either remove or disavow all the spammy backlinks that you find. To do this, you first need to collect a list of all the links targeting your site and review them to find the bad ones. Minor weather report: We pushed 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. This meant when it came to ranking websites by these scores for search results pages, some low-quality websites and pieces of content appeared in more prominent positions of the organic search results than they should have.

Cutts, speaking at the SMX Advanced conference, said:. We look at it something designed to tackle low-quality content. It started out with Panda, and then we noticed that there was still a lot of spam and Penguin was designed to tackle that. By better understanding and process the types of links websites and webmasters were earning, Penguin worked toward ensuring that natural, authoritative and relevant links rewarded the websites they pointed to, while manipulative and spammy links were downgraded.

Google only looks at the links pointing to the site in question and does not look at the outgoing links at all from that site.

Penguin 2. There have been a number of updates and refreshes to the Penguin algorithm since it was launched in , and possibly a number of other tweaks that have gone down in history as unknown algorithm updates. This was another data refresh. It affected queries in the English language, as well as affected international queries. Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. This was a more technically advanced version of the Penguin algorithm and changed how the algorithm impacted search results.

This was also the first Penguin update to look deeper than the websites homepage and top-level category pages for evidence of link spam being directed to the website. The only refresh to Penguin 2. It affected about 1 percent of queries. While there was no official explanation from Google, data suggests that the 2. While this was named like a major update, it was, in fact, another data refresh; allowing those impacted by previous updates to emerge and recover, while many others who had continued to utilize spammy link practices, and had escaped the radar of the previous impacts saw an impact.

The biggest change with this iteration was that Penguin became a part of the core algorithm. Now running concurrently with the core, Penguin evaluates websites and links in real-time.

This meant that you can see reasonably instant impacts of your link building or remediation work. This is a contrast to the previous Penguin iterations, where the negative was punished. That being said, studies and, from personal experience, algorithmic penalties relating to backlinks still do exist.

Data released by SEO professionals e. Soon after the Penguin algorithm was introduced, webmasters and brands who had used manipulative link building techniques or filled their backlink profiles with copious amounts of low-quality links began to see decreases in their organic traffic and rankings.

Not all Penguin downgrades were site-wide — some were partial and only affected certain keyword groups that had been heavily spammed and over optimized, such as key products and in some cases even brand.

Once you have identified that it was a Penguin penalty that hit you, consider the several different steps you can take to recover:. Create a list of all your backlinks. Most of the tools have export features, so it should be simple to start your own excel sheet. Analyze all of your links for quality. There are several types of links Google tends to scrutinize more such as:. After all, there are several factors you can look at to make your decision.

You should definitely create a master spreadsheet of all the links you want to keep and which ones you want to remove. Also just as a side note, if you ever get hit with a manual action penalty, a list is also going to be important for you when it comes to recovery. Start talking with webmasters and disavowing links.

Once you know which links you need to remove, you have to actually remove them imagine that. The best way to do this is to reach out to webmasters and ask them to remove the link.

Asking to remove a link is a completely acceptable thing to ask. You would be surprised at just how many webmasters get back to you. This should always come after link removal requests. You use the Google Disavow Links tool to make this happen. Scott Langdon is an entrepreneur with over 13 years of internet marketing experience, and currently serves as a managing partner of the nationally-recognized SEO firm HigherVisibility.

The recovery process becomes faster, but so does the penalization process. Here is what you can do to protect your website from unexpected drops in rankings:. Constantly monitor your positions in SERPs. Set up regular email alerts to stay informed of any position changes. Tom Clark suggests " comparing keyword rankings and investigating which keywords have taken a sudden drop in their position.

Keep your backlink profile healthy and clean. Make a habit of regularly checking new and lost backlinks, their value and quality, and handling the suspicious ones. Conduct a deep backlink audit of your entire website. Because the new Penguin takes a granular approach, it is essential to audit backlinks for each important subdomain and subdivision of your website for example, conduct separate audit for each of different language version of your website.

Set up properties in Google Search Console for each important subdomain or subpath and update your disavow file as needed. The new update allows you to conduct various experiments with a reduced cost of error — as long as you are competent and careful. I suspect the real-time nature will make it hard for spammers to know if they got hit by Panda, Penguin, or something else.

So I am not sure if it will make it easier or harder. Time will tell. In short, no. In theory, it will only happen when Google crawls both your page and the page linking to your site. Some SEOs have theorized that the new Penguin algorithm might simply ignore spam links, rather than enforce a punitive measure.