Google’s Penguin update was first announced in April 2012 and has been rolled out in stages ever since. The main aim of the Penguin update is to Target and penalize sites that are engaged in what Google calls “black hat” SEO practices, such as keyword stuffing, link buying, and other manipulative techniques designed to artificially inflate a site’s search engine rankings.
Since its inception, the Penguin update has had a major impact on the SEO landscape, with many sites seeing their traffic and rankings plummet as a result of being hit by the algorithm. While some webmasters have been able to recover from a Penguin penalty by cleaning up their act and making appropriate changes to their site, others have not been so lucky and have had to start from scratch.
The most recent Penguin update, Penguin 4.0, was launched in September 2016 after more than two years of development. This latest version of the algorithm is much more granular than previous versions, meaning that it is now possible for individual pages on a site to be penalized rather than the whole site being affected.
This makes it even more important for webmasters to make sure they are not engaging in any black hat SEO practices if they want to avoid being hit by Penguin.
What did the Google Penguin update Target?
The Google Penguin Update Targeted sites that were using black hat SEO practices to artificially inflate their search engine rankings. These practices included keyword stuffing, link buying, and other manipulative techniques. As a result of the update, many sites saw their traffic and rankings plummet.
