Penguin 3.0 Impacts Less Than 1% Of English Search Queries

When gauging how large an update was and how much of the webmaster community felt it, Google sometimes tells us how significant it was by measuring the percentage of queries impacted.

Penguin 1.0 impacted ~3.1% of queries, 1.1 was 0.1% and 1.2 was 0.3% of queries. Then 2.0 was 2.3% of queries and 2.1 was about 1%. Penguin 3.0, which some may argue is 2.2 and not 3.0, impacted less than 1% of queries.

Now, it may be higher in other languages, but Google’s measurement was English queries.

Penguin 3.0 Launched Friday
Google confirmed that Penguin 3.0 launched Friday, October 17, 2014. Keep in mind, the rollout will continue for a few weeks as we said above.

Penguin 3.0 – A Refresh
Google’s Pierre Far called this update a “refresh,” he didn’t mention that any new signals were added or the algorithm was changed in any way. A refresh in Google’s terminology around algorithms means they just re-ran the algorithm to release sites that fixed their issues and demote sites that had issues they didn’t pick up on. They did not add any new signals to the algorithm to find Penguin related sites, it was just a refresh.

Just a refresh even after waiting over a year? Indeed and this is pretty shocking to most of those in the SEO industry. Many expected a refresh could have happened way earlier and that Google was laying the ground work for a new Penguin algorithm.

Again, this is why some want to rename this update to Penguin 2.2 versus 3.0.

Helps Some Sites & Hurts Other Sites
Like any algorithm refresh, some sites that were previously hit would see a ranking increase because they are no longer negatively impacted by the algorithm. While other sites may see a ranking drop in the search results because they were just picked up as sites that should be impacted by the Penguin algorithm.

Past Penguin Updates:
Here are dates of all Penguin releases:

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)

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