You appear to be in an area affected by Penguin 4.0 – Mark yourself safe

Penguin update 4.0 is still rolling out, but its effects are at best at the moment; Not regarding SERPs but in SEO world. It makes me wonder if it is still rolling out or have already hit the floor? The evening of 23 September 2016 was shaken by the massive tremor when Google finally announced that they are rolling out the Penguin update 4.0. Google made itself clear about some significant tweaks in its official blog post “Penguin is now part of our core algorithm.” However, there are still some points which are confusing the webmasters across the globe.

Points that were made clear:

1. Penguin is a part of Google’s core algorithm now- It means, Google won’t be feeding any more update versions for Penguin from now. It also makes clear that Penguin will always be in constant action now. But, that does not mean that Penguin will not evolve now. Hopefully, being a part of Google’s core algorithm makes it more susceptible to frequent updates and evolution. The difference is, they won’t tag it with a version number now.
2. Penguin is real-time now- With the first point, Google also made it clear that Penguin update 4.0 is a real- time algorithm. Earlier, when a Penguin update was rolled out, it had to wait for the next update to be refreshed again. With becoming a core part of the main algorithm, Penguin 4.0 would now be refreshed frequently in real-time. So, the changes now reflect much faster with the new Penguin update.
3. Granularity in Penguin’s algorithm- There was a one liner from Google regarding this concept. It is something like “Penguin would now devalue spam by ranking on the basis of spam signals, instead of affecting the whole site.” According to what I perceived, the spamming signals would now be in a more strict surveillance. Spamming would affect your ranking in parts. The spamming signals combined with all the other 200 signals used by Google to ranking the pages, would together decide the new rank of your pages rather than affecting the whole site.

Things which seems to be unclear as of now –

• Google says, it has tested the Penguin Update 4.0. I wonder how much long it was tested.
• Is Penguin update 4.0 still in rolling put phase yet? What if It has already hit the floor?
• The sites which were affected by Penguin 3.0, have they recovered or will they recover anytime sooner or later?
• No major signs have been noticed yet. Just a battle to rank on the keyword, like every other day of the year, could be noticed until now.
• How frequently the Penguin 4.0 would refresh in real-time?
• If no more updates on Penguin in future, then how the major changes in its algorithm would be conveyed? Or, it will remain silent and do its job?

These are some question that strikes my mind when I think of this Google Penguin Update 4.0. Hopefully, my future researches would have answers to these questions.

You can get notified about my updated research and learn:

• Google Penguin 4.0 is live with real-time core algorithm.
• What the “real-time” aspect of Google Penguin 4.0 update means for your business?
• How will link penalties work in the future?
• How can you best adapt with the new Google Penguin 4.0 update?
• What new risks and threats to your business the Google Penguin 4.0 update brings?