The Famed “Penguin” Google Algorithm Update
Recently, in-between two Google “Panda” updates (19th April and 27th April) Google decided to make a major change in their algorithm for ranking pages. Backlinks can now outright hurt your rankings in various ways (the details are still being discussed) possibly opening up for negative SEO in a big way.
Two things appear to be the culprit of penalized websites:
- Backlink anchor text not being diversified. While that may seem problematic for domains/brands spelled out as a key phrase, it seems to non-the-less be the truth. This also means many EMD (exact match domains) with just a little SEO’ed link building (either by yourself, hired company or at worst, by a competitor doing negative SEO) were hit hard. You might want to check your website logs if you haven’t already
- Backlinks from pages/sites not containing on-topic content. If a link contains anchor text “blue widgets” the surrounding page and maybe even the whole site has to fit that topic as well.
Here’s an article about in-depth backlink analysis of penalized domains and one about how a no-content site with a suspicious backlink profile is now able to rank #1 in Google.
Our support forum (I will still use relevant anchor text, Google or no Google, thank you very much, just call me a rebel) has some active threads running about this topic, among others this where I will also be posting future analysis if I ever make heads and tails out of this mess
Suffice to say, I think the change is here to stay. Maybe some sites will make a small recovery, but I personally feel one has to accept what has happened and look into possible solutions. One thing you will always hear iterated over and over: You should always get more streams of income. While not depending Google for relevant traffic may be harder done than said, it is probably the only long-term strategy forward from here.
