There has been much discussion about Penguin 3.0 over the past several days, as site owners have reported fluctuations in rankings that are believed to be a result of Google’s recent algorithm update.
The majority of the discussion revolves around site owners reporting recoveries from previous Penguin updates, which is nice to see, but others may not be so fortunate.
These kinds of fluctuations are to be expected as Google’s John Mueller publicly stated last month that the Penguin 3.0 rollout was still ongoing, and did not give any indication as to when it might be completed.
With that being said, one could be left to assume Penguin 3.0 would still be rolling out for some time to come, and now we have confirmation that is indeed the case.
Mueller addressed questions about Penguin 3.0 in a Webmaster Central Hangout yesterday and revealed what could be taken as either good news or bad news — Penguin 3.0 may continue to roll out indefinitely.
Essentially, I think it’s still rolling out to some extent. They’re doing a slow and cautious roll out, but I don’t have anything new to add to those discussions.
Will there be a formal notification when this Penguin roll out is completed? Don’t count on it, as Mueller states “We’re hoping that these things will just keep on updating.”
Mueller also states in the Hangout that Google isn’t targeting any specific region or language with this continued roll out of Penguin, so fluctuations in rankings will likely continue to be seen worldwide.
Additional Penguin Notes
A takeaway from this news is that it may be easier to recover from Penguin penalties than it had been previously. If you were hit with a Penguin penalty in the past, and attempted to recover from it, you would have had to wait months until the next Penguin update came along to see any change in rankings.
Now that Penguin is going to “keep on updating”, you may see your site bounce back faster than before, provided you put the work in to correct the issues that led to getting hit by Penguin in the first place.
Having said that, the opposite may also be true. Meaning that if you engage in any kind of spammy link building, Google may catch on to it more quickly, so keep an eye on where your inbound links are coming from.
