Penguin Now Runs All the Time

What Google said on Friday

On Friday Google announced that Penguin, the part of its ranking that deals with link spam, is now part of its core algorithm.

Two things changed. Penguin now works in real time: its data is updated as Google recrawls and reindexes pages, rather than in occasional refreshes.

And it is more granular. Google says it now discounts spam by adjusting rankings based on spam signals, instead of lowering the ranking of an entire site.

Because it runs continuously, Google also said it will not be commenting on future refreshes. There is nothing left to announce.

What Penguin was

Penguin arrived in 2012 to catch sites whose links had been manufactured: bought links, networks of sites linking to each other, directories that existed only for links, and articles written to carry them.

When it caught a site, the whole site could rank lower. Cleaning up did not lift that until Google next refreshed Penguin, and refreshes were rare. The last was almost two years ago.

Many small businesses were caught by link packages bought years earlier from someone who promised the first page.

What changes now

• No more waiting for a refresh after a cleanup.
• Spammy links are discounted rather than sinking every page.
• Changes follow recrawling, as Google revisits the pages involved.
• Bought links are now likely to count for nothing.
• No announcements to watch for in future.

The fourth has a cost attached. A business still paying monthly for links is paying for something Google is now built to discount as it goes, and the risk of a manual penalty has not gone away.

Manual actions have not changed

Penguin is automatic. Separately, people at Google can still apply a manual action to a site for unnatural links, and Friday's news leaves that untouched.

A manual action appears in Search Console under Search Traffic, then Manual Actions, and a message is sent to the site's verified owners.

It stays until the links are cleaned up and a reconsideration request, a written account of what was done, is accepted.

So the first check is that page. If it says no manual webspam actions were found, the rest of this post applies.

Old paid and directory links

A common history runs like this: from around 2010 to 2013, a monthly package of directory submissions, article sites, blog comments and links in the footers of unrelated sites, nearly all using one keyword phrase.

If Penguin now discounts those links instead of punishing the site, they are probably doing nothing either way.

That makes a costly removal effort, with emails to hundreds of site owners who never answer, much harder to justify for Penguin's sake alone.

It does not make the links good. It makes them inert.

When cleaning up still matters

There are still good reasons to deal with bad links, just fewer urgent ones.

A manual action needs a cleanup, whatever Penguin does. Links you are still paying for should be stopped, and the sellers asked to remove them.

Links on sites you control, such as old microsites built to point at the main one, should come down.

And if you already filed a disavow file, the list telling Google which links to ignore, leave it in place. Removing it gains nothing.

A worked example

A clock repair shop in a small city repairs clocks brought over the counter and others shipped in from across the province, mostly by owners who found it by searching.

In 2011 and 2012 it paid an optimisation company monthly for directory listings, article sites and blog comments, nearly all linking with the words antique clock repair.

In 2012 its pages fell well down the results for that phrase and never fully came back.

In 2015 its web company asked the reachable sites to remove links, filed a disavow file for the rest, and told the shop that any recovery would wait for a Penguin refresh.

When Friday's news arrived, the owner asked what to do now. Search Console showed no manual action, so the disavow file stays and nothing new is being bought.

The effort goes into pages instead: one for each kind of clock repaired, a guide to shipping a clock safely, and photographs of finished restorations.

Whether the old rankings return will show as Google recrawls the pages involved.

Links worth having now

With bought links discounted, the links that count are the ones that would exist if search engines did not.

Suppliers' and manufacturers' lists of dealers and service centres. Trade associations you belong to. Local organisations you work with. A museum, a school or a newspaper writing about something you did.

They come slowly, and they come from doing things worth mentioning and making sure the website describes them.

Questions for anyone selling links

Offers of a set number of links a month have not stopped arriving, and Friday's change makes them a worse deal than before.

Ask where each link will come from, who owns those sites, and whether anything is paid for. Ask for a list of the links built last month.

A web professional worth hiring will explain what they intend to do to your pages and why. Vague answers about authority and placements are the warning.

What this does not change

Penguin is one signal among many. A page still has to answer the search better than the alternatives, work properly on a phone and come from a business people can find and trust.

Friday's news removes an old fear for many sites. It adds nothing to the pages themselves.

The counter-case

A site that never bought links has nothing to do this week.

A site with a manual action has a different job entirely: cleanup, documentation and a reconsideration request, exactly as before.

And a site whose links are almost all manufactured may still be wise to disavow the worst of them, as insurance, since Google can still act on obvious schemes by hand.

For most small business sites with old paid or directory links, check for a manual action, keep any disavow file, stop paying for links, and put the effort into pages.

After Friday's news

1. Open Manual Actions in Search Console.
2. Keep any existing disavow file in place.
3. Cancel any package that sells links.
4. Download your links from Search Console.
5. Remove links from sites you control.
6. Improve the pages those links pointed to.
7. Ask for links from real business relationships.

Step one decides everything else. With no manual action, Friday's change mostly lets you stop worrying; with one, the old work of cleanup and reconsideration still has to be done.

Google's other recent change to how it judges pages is covered in Google drops the mobile-friendly label.

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West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.