Q: What exactly is Google Penguin 4.0 and how does it affect my current SEO?
The Penguin update isn’t something new. It happened in 2012, 2013, 2014 and now 2016 we have Penguin 4.0. The goal of this update is to combat web spam and keyword stuffing used by some websites to manipulate the search results.
How it affects your SEO-strategy heavily depends on what your SEO-strategy is.
The fact that Google Penguin is now more granular means that your website could get into a partial penalty, while before that was not possible. Parts of your website, like folders or pages, even one single page could drop in rankings, while the rankings of your other pages remain stable.
You need to pay special attention to subfolders and subpages on your website. We expect to see a lot of negative SEO attacks directed to single directories now. Penguin 4.0 makes link risk management - the practice of proactive link audits and disavows - more important than ever. Doing a thorough competitor analysis for every main topic a site covers is also very important if you want to understand different risk level standards in your niche. Competitive Link Detox (CDTOX) can help you understand the risk levels in your industry and find strong links that your competitors have.

Q: What are the most important parts about the Google Penguin 4.0 update?
The two biggest changes are: the update is real-time, and Google Penguin is now more granular. Real-time means, that changes in your backlink profile will affect search engine results as your links are re-crawled. Granularity means that now single directories, pages, and keywords could be penalized or go up in rankings instead of the whole domain.

Q: Did Google confirm this update?
Yes, Google confirmed in an official statement published on the Google Webmaster Central Blog (September 23, 2016) that they rolled out the Penguin 4.0 update as part of their Core Algorithm.

Q: When do you expect Google Penguin to roll out completely?
The roll out will never be „complete”. As Google crawls the web ongoing and it will change on an ongoing basis. The question probably refers to “when will I see all the effects for my website” and that happens when all your links and all their links and all their links, etc. were crawled across the web, so I would give this a couple of weeks. Until then, we will still see fluctuations.

Q: Penguin is not on my radar. Never has been on my radar. Why should I care?
When you work in SEO and depend on organic traffic, you need to have the mindset, that you want to understand how a search engine works. That’s why you do things that help you improve your organic traffic. Google Penguin was always an on-top-filter built to fight web spam. Now it’s part of Google’s Core Algorithm and it works in real time. If your backlink profile has a high DTOXRISK, your website, a page or a directory on your website will drop in rankings.

Q: Is Penguin more aggressive/sensitive now that it’s included into the algorithm?
We think that Penguin is more sensitive. It can now filter and penalize single pages and folders. Webmasters will not be able to see huge ranking drops like it happened with the previous Penguin updates.


The Real-Time Google Penguin 4.0

Q: What does "Real-Time" mean in relation to Google's Penguin update?
Real-time means, that changes in your backlink profile and Disavows will affect search engine results as your links are re-crawled. Read more about how the Real Time Penguin works.

Q: Google says that the new update will not have any impact until sites get recrawled. Do they mean your site or all the sites that link to yours?
Google needs to crawl all the sites linking to yours. Yes, Google refers to crawling the websites linking to yours. The more backlinks you have in your disavow file, the longer it takes until all your links get re-crawled. This also means that if you have many spammy links on some old forums, those links do not get crawled very often. We built Link Detox Boost in 2013, to speed up the crawling and solve this issue.
The "granularity" feature of Penguin 4.0

Q: What does it mean when Google Penguin now works “more granular”?
Granularity means that now single directories, pages, and keywords could be penalized or go up in rankings instead of the whole domain.

Q: Will Penguin 4.0 affect the entire website or only the page that has spam links?
Penguin is now more granular. This means that a single page or a folder can trigger a penalty. You could also get a penalty on two subfolders or your whole subdomain. Everything is possible.
This is not only about URLs, but also about keywords. Your top money-keyword that brings you the most traffic could also drop. This is also what we understand by granularity.

Other changes that came with Penguin 4.0

Q: What’s your opinion about Gary’s (Gary Illyes) statement, that now the bad links no longer hurt you, but will simply be ignored?
Some links may be ignored, but Gary also said, that we should continue using the Disavow tool.

Q: Does the Penguin 4.0 only affect Money-Keyword-Links or are Brand Keywords also important?
That depends on the standards in your niche. Money-Keywords are not automatically bad, but you need to consider the money-keyword ratio of your competitors, too.

Q: How important is Artificial Intelligence in the new Penguin update?
Google uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) or machine learning in their RankBrain algorithm. RankBrain calculates different rules for each country, market, keyword, etc. for their search results AI was always important.

Q: If a link is disavowed by many webmasters but not by me, does Penguin start to ignore that link eventually?
Actually, the data quality of most disavow files is really poor in many industries. Google can’t use disavow files alone because they are not covering the whole world. Many webmasters don’t use disavow at all. Of course, it is helpful to find patterns and train the Artificial Intelligence, but using it that way would be just too simple.

Q: Does the fact that Penguin 4.0 is now part of Google’s Core Algorithm mean we have to focus more on On-Page-SEO?
On-Page and Off-Page SEO always went hand in hand. Content and links go together. Google said that they want webmasters to focus more on amazing and unique content. While this is true, John Mueller also confirmed that Links are really important to Google. You should care about On-Page just as much as you need to care about Off-Page.

Q: What about links from foreign websites? Do we already know if these links will be more important with Penguin 4.0?
Not really. You can check how many backlinks from foreign websites your competitors have with the Competitive Landscape Analyzer (CLA) to be on the safe side. Also, make sure that these links are from countries connected to your business. Otherwise you may be dealing with a Negative SEO attack.

Q: What about the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) effect? Isn’t it only available for sites with news and partner dash?
No, this has changed with the new update.

Q: In the future: what would you say could change with a Google “Penguin 5” update?
There will be no further Penguin Update. Google announced that this update is now part of the Core Algorithm. They will still change things in the future, but won’t announce it any longer.
EasyMoney Reviewed by EasyMoney on . Penguin 4.0 Questions & Answers What we found out about the Penguin 4.0 https://i.imgur.com/6lAgXsU.png Times just got really exciting with the Penguin 4.0 update, as it is now integrated into Google's Core Algorithm. This is not going to be a Penguin update like the previous ones, where Google will announce a specific number of affected queries after a complete roll out. This update is ongoing and it will affect rankings in real time. Therefore, there will not be a complete roll out like before. Also, this is the Rating: 5