Just about six weeks ago, October 17th, Google began the implementation of Penguin 3.0. There has been multiple releases over the years so here is a quick refresher.
- Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)
- Penguin 1.1 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
- Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)
- Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
- Penguin 2.1 on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
- Penguin 3.0 on October 17, 2014 (impacting around 1% of queries)
When updates occur SEO specialists pay close attention to their analytic for shifts and changes in traffic. However, six weeks after the update around Thanksgiving people were beginning to see more changes to their traffic. It has recently been confirmed that the update is on-going and we are still seeing the effects of Penguin.
Usually when we hear of an update everyone prepares for the worst for their sites, however around Thanksgiving people began to see a recovery affect from the update six weeks ago.
If you were impacted by Penguin 3.0, share what you saw either positive or negative changes on or after Thanksgiving Day!