The goal of SEO is to make websites more crawlable and faster. When SEO becomes an issue is when spam comes into play, such as if you go overboard buying links, doing comment spam links, or keyword stuffing.
Watch out if you have been trying to outsmart Google to get better rankings and get found on Google using ‘spammy’ methods – the “anti-spam” Penguin Update will produce some more surprises in the coming months as Google continues to fine-tune its search algorithm to deliver better quality results.
Last week at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francisco, Matt Cutts told First One On that Google is still adjusting the Penguin Update algorithm that was designed to penalise websites that try to spam Google.
The Penguin Update was designed to decrease search engine ranking results for sites that Google believed were violating their quality guidelines and to reduce webspam by promoting high quality content.
Technically, Google is saying that Penguin isn’t a penalty but rather an “adjustment” that simply doesn’t let sites get rewarded for spam as much as in the past. In particular, some linking activities that generated credit in the past seem to have been taken out.
When Google rolled out its Panda Update last year, it was designed to adjust or in some cases penalise website pages that had poor quality content. Subsequent updates have produced changes in the search results, creating both winners and loosers that have impacted upon a wide range of websites.
Matt Cutts went on to say “monthly updates to Panda produce very minor changes that are so subtle that most people don’t even notice the changes”. “Indeed, Google itself hasn’t announced any major changes to get us from Panda 3.0 to Panda 4.0 and beyond. The latest, in late July 2012, we dubbed Panda 3.9. It seems likely we’re going to have Panda 3.91 follow, rather than going to Panda 4.0” he said.
“Penguin on the other hand is different”, Cutts said “because the Penguin algorithm is newer, it will face bigger adjustments and thus be more “jolting” for people it hits, until it smooth’s out over time similar to Panda”. He also just added more to his statement in a comment at Search Engine Roundtable:
“I was giving context on the fact that lots of people were asking me when the next Penguin update would happen, as if they expected Penguin updates to happen on a monthly basis and as if Penguin would only involve data refreshes”.
“If you remember, in the early days of Panda, it took several months for us to iterate on the algorithm, and the Panda impact tended to be somewhat larger (e.g. the April 2011 update incorporated new signals like sites that users block). Later on, the Panda updates had less impact over time as we stabilized the signals/algorithm and Panda moved closer to near-monthly updates”.
“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”.
Is there any plan to release “the father of all Penguins”. Cutts says long term Google wants as close to ideal rankings and best quality search results possible. He could see social becoming a bigger signal in the long term. In the short term, Google won’t leave links behind.
Cutts noted Penguin is still in an early stage, whereas Panda is now monthly and they understand it very well. Google is still iterating Penguin, so the changes will be jolting for a while.
Ultimately, Google doesn’t want people to worry about Pandas or Penguins. Google wants to reward sites that have good signals, said Cutts.
After recounting Sergey Brin’s claim Google is spam proof from a past SES, Cutts discussed Google’s new found transparency. He began by referencing a tweet that said it’s cheaper to do everything legit than to go under the radar.
Cutts recounted how Google started out slow only giving messages in Webmaster Tools for hidden text and parked domains. Then earlier this year Google sent out messages for everything but egregious black hat spam.
While Google decided to be more transparent, they won’t go so far as to publish the algorithm. Cutts said Google wants to debunk the idea that it gives itself an unfair advantage to its own properties.
As he has in the past, Cutts pointed out that Google doesn’t hate SEO.
Source: Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch
Google is cracking down on artificial schemes like “link building,” where you talk the owners of a host of unrelated websites to include links to your site, giving the illusion that your site is more popular than it really is.