Matt Cutts Warns of ‘Jarring’ Penguin Update
I think we're going to need a bigger boat.
Matt Cutts is warning that the next Google Penguin update will be, “jarring and jolting,” for SEOs. Given his normally cryptic choice of words, this statement is setting off alarm bells throughout the SEO world. Cutts made his statements at the SES San Francisco show last week and has since clarified, but not backed away from, his original choice of words.
Cutts’ original comments in response to a question about the next Penguin update which prompted him to say, “you don’t want the next Penguin update,” and that, Google engineers have been, “have been working very hard,” on it.
What’s in the Update?
So what exactly do Cutts and his Webspam team have in store for the unsuspecting SEO world? No one knows for certain but one important clue is his use of the word update rather than refresh. An update normally involves new signals and usually causes widespread chaos in the SEO circles.
Is your site getting penalized or it actually an update? Check out What’s the Difference Between an Update and a Penalty?
Cutts clarified his comments in a message to SEORoundtable’s Barry Schwartz (which you can read in its entirety here) goes on at length about the differences between refreshes and updates before getting to the really juicy stuff, specifically:
Likewise, we’re still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals, and as a result will have more noticeable impact. It’s not the case that people should just expect data refreshes for Penguin quite yet.
In short, he’s reiterating the fact that the next Penguin update will be significant and will involve new signals. Whether those new signals tighten the previous focus on inorganic links or something else entirely is not known.
Preparing for the Next Penguin Update
Whatever the next update is bringing it will almost certainly reinforce what we already know about Penguin. Anyone who isn’t interested in being “jarred” or “jolted” by this latest update needs to their site Penguin-proofed as quickly as possible.
We’ll be following this story closely and will provide updates as they become available.
What are you doing to prepare for the next Penguin update? Share your strategies in the comments section below.
Tags: Google, Google Penguin, Matt Cutts
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Google is changing so much and so quickly, it’s almost ridiculous! This next update sounds very scary, and i’m not looking forward to it. I believe all of these updates are centred around one thing – trying to push affiliates and webmasters down, and trying to push companies and brands up higher. I guess if I owned a search engine, I’d be trying to do the same thing. This strategy will no doubt improve the search results for visitors, but it will destroy affiliate marketing in general.
Unfortunately, I agree with you. Regardless of all the blather about quality content I believe google is slanting toward the big enterprises with large budgets for ‘advertising’. They have ‘winked’ in the past at link buyers as long as they had good sites and quality content. Pushing down smaller sites in general does not improve search results.
I sure hope this update does not include any google+ impact. That would be a total farce and a real signal that google has ‘totally lost credibility’.
It’s definitely scary to hear Cutts talking so openly about how bad it’s going to be. I agree that end users will benefit and that’s who really matters to them.
My personal view is that it has not improved searches, while I have been getting away from using google for search, when I do search using Google I find myself digging deeper and deeper in to the second and third pages to find what I am looking for.
I am not a big fan of youtube videos and it seems this is what shows up first these days. While Google is still dominant, I do see more and more people using other search alternatives.
I’m not sure the Google is going down the right path with this one. Social signals are people’s opinions and everyone has one which is all junk content because it is “hearsay.” If we get big brands covering the first page in a category, it will put the mom and pop’s on main street America out of business and if the big brands cover the organic, the’ll have no reason to buy adwords from Google. I hope they settle down and get it figured out quick.