Google Penguin Update and Link Spam
In the world of SEO, Google Penguin update is proving to be the most severe after upgrading the algorithm Florida released in 2003 .
What is a Google update?
Google engineers are constantly working to optimize their search software in order to provide (hopefully) more accurate and relevant results. Most of these “little setup” are quite small and occurs unnoticed to anyone who is not in the field of the search engines optimization. These updates are not disclosed by the company, and do not have a name that classify them.
Occasionally, however, Google , implements and announces changes “online” that throw the research world in a state of anxiety, so you can’t make guesses if those updates will affect your website ranking. This is the case of the Panda and Penguin update.
Google launches the Pinguin update on April 24, 2012. At first glance, it seems that this implementation points to hit sites that have worked through acquisition of links, artificial link building, and, more generally, have worked with techniques of “link spam”.
What is link spam?
Link Spam is defined as any attempt to acquire a large number of links by purchase, trade, or the construction of an artificial “link farm”. There are many services where you can acquire from one to thousands of links with one click. An alternative is to begin 100 blog, fill them with stolen content or nonsense, and then add links that point to your main website.
Link Spam has always been a long- term disadvantage. Google and Bing have fought for years with this technique, and the penguin seems to be the right way to fight against spam and link spam.
What does Penguin do?
It’s difficult to know exactly where the upgrade acts, since Google does not reveal details. But some things are clear:
- Penguin penalizes sites that Google considers as using link spam techniques.
- Sites penalized, generally, out of the top ten for the key primary research and for all significant terms.
- If a huge percentage of your links use the same anchor text, you’re in trouble. So, if you are selling wine, and 75% of the links pointing to your site are “wines” in the link text, Google may get suspicious.
- If a huge percentage of your links are from blog comments, forum or footer of the site (this is a suspicious link spam), once again, Google gets suspicious.
- Google has sent notices to some sites, but not all, affected by the Penguin Update.
- Penguin, unlike the Panda Update, focused its attention on the off-page factors.
