Google officially rolled out the Penguin 4.0 real-time algorithm on September 23, 2016. The first confirmed update since Penguin 3.0 was released back in October 2014, this latest roll-out will be the last of the Penguin releases to be confirmed in public by Google.
Google Penguin was first released in April 2016 with the purpose of tackling webspam created through the manipulation of backlinks.
What Does Penguin 4.0 Mean For SEOs?
- Penguin is real-time: Penguin’s data will now be refreshed in real time and changes will be visible much faster than before. Changes will take effect shortly after Google recrawls and reindexes a page.
- Penguin is more granular: Penguin will no longer affect the rankings of a whole site, it will instead, devalue spam by adjusting rankings based on spam signals.
Is It Now A Machine-Learning Algorithm?
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that it was not a machine learning algorithm and that Penguin does not use any type of supervised or unsupervised learning as part of the algorithm.