Penguin is not constantly running so when is the next update?

It's been a month now and i haven't seen any posts on forums where someone has successfully recovered from penguin. When i say recovered, i mean significantly dropped in the rankings on or immediately after the 25/4, and that same site has recovered back to where they were, or at least more or less a few weeks later. I don't mean people that jumped straight back up within a day or 2 as this could have just been a dance or people who have started a new site and redirected other sites to it as this hasn't actually recovered the domain that had been slapped.

A lot of people and companies have lost a lot of money from the penguin update so I think it is reasonable to assume that as soon as someone does recover and posts evidence of a recovery on a forum, they could make a small fortune correcting other people websites that have been slapped. As this hasn't happened, I think it is most likely that people haven't recovered. (If people have recovered from penguin, please say!)

This post http://searchengineland.com/google-...012,+Issue+1&utm_campaign=Moz+Top+10+-+May+#1 that i read the other day makes a lot of sense and basically says that like panda, penguin is a filter that is not running all the time. Here Matt Cutts says that if you fix the problems with your site, it will recover. For those that have fixed all of the issues with penguin but their site is still down in the rankings and are wondering why, it could possibly be because the penguin filter hasn't been run again since the end of April (article talks about this just below the 2 videos).

My question is does anyone know anything on the contrary to this or heard when the next penguin filter is going to be/likely to be run?

I've heard it's refreshed every 4 weeks.

If it's based on percentages then every site will be different therefore it will be alot harder for people to get consistent results with the same techniques.

cloakndagger said:

If it's based on percentages then every site will be different therefore it will be alot harder for people to get consistent results with the same techniques.

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I don't follow what you mean?

harry911 said:

I've heard it's refreshed every 4 weeks.

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From who did you hear this and what evidence do they possibly have that this is true in anyway?

rugbyjack2005 said:

I don't follow what you mean?

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% of anchortext in relation to the anchortext keyword density onsite.

cloakndagger said:

% of anchortext in relation to the anchortext keyword density onsite.

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So why would it be different for every site? If say there was a threshold of 30% anchor text diversity, it would be consistent for all sites. Algorithms are set and there are no considerations. You are either within the parameters or you are not. I would find it hard to believe that the changes are not consistent across all sites. I am sure Google will have very strict fair play policies and it will be the same for everyone and no randomness.

yeah diversity of link types and anchors on page and off page seo.I think its updated contuniesly not every 4 weeks. 4 weeks you see major change in ranks i think thats what you are refering to.

rugbyjack2005 said:

So why would it be different for every site? If say there was a threshold of 30% anchor text diversity, it would be consistent for all sites. Algorithms are set and there are no considerations. You are either within the parameters or you are not. I would find it hard to believe that the changes are not consistent across all sites. I am sure Google will have very strict fair play policies and it will be the same for everyone and no randomness.

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I suppose you mean "besides in cases when Negative SEO is done", which works marvelously well right now... and I have tested it.

Because of the way penguin is applied there is terrific inconsistency in the results seen from it. It's a negative update, meaning backlinks can harm you depending on how google interacts with them. There are many sites with horrible link profiles, content, and user experience ranking highly for competitive terms... only because they have not received the penalty on their handful of links.

Even if it gets run, there is no guarantee sites that got hit will make a recovery. I guess sites that escaped it will get probably get hit.

mccullum said:

Even if it gets run, there is no guarantee sites that got hit will make a recovery. I guess sites that escaped it will get probably get hit.

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I think it's reasonable to assume that if you fix the problems, your rankings will come back. This is the sensible thing to happen and what Google have said. Also that's what happened with Panda so i can't see why Penguin would be different

rugbyjack2005 said:

I think it's reasonable to assume that if you fix the problems, your rankings will come back. This is the sensible thing to happen and what Google have said. Also that's what happened with Panda so i can't see why Penguin would be different

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How do you fix undefined problems exactly? many fully white hat sites were hit...
There's a lot more going on than an anchor text problem.

Expertpeon said:

Because of the way penguin is applied there is terrific inconsistency in the results seen from it. It's a negative update, meaning backlinks can harm you depending on how google interacts with them. There are many sites with horrible link profiles, content, and user experience ranking highly for competitive terms... only because they have not received the penalty on their handful of links.

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I think it's fairly well documented that one of the key factors is anchor text diversity. With this in mind, you can send a 10k xrumer or SB blast to a site without triggering link warnings but significantly altering anchor text diversity. The bigger the site though, the harder this will be to do. That doesn't mean it's inconsistent, quite the opposite. Google have also said it's a filter so of cause it's a negative update. If you are not within the parameters, you will get slapped

rugbyjack2005 said:

So why would it be different for every site? If say there was a threshold of 30% anchor text diversity, it would be consistent for all sites. Algorithms are set and there are no considerations. You are either within the parameters or you are not. I would find it hard to believe that the changes are not consistent across all sites. I am sure Google will have very strict fair play policies and it will be the same for everyone and no randomness.

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Different niches can have different thresholds for what is natural and what is not.

For instance it is probably ok/natural for an EMD to have a higher % of anchor text with their money keyword (since that is also the name of their domain name).

I can say with a very high degree of certainty that the algorithm is based around identifying what is normal for sites in that niche and that topic and basing it around that. An EMD law leadgen site might be allowed a different % of anchor text diversity than an informational site about losing weight.

rugbyjack2005 said:

I think it's reasonable to assume that if you fix the problems, your rankings will come back. This is the sensible thing to happen and what Google have said. Also that's what happened with Panda so i can't see why Penguin would be different

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But what you need to realize is penguin didnt just target 1 thing. You cant say that since your site got hit it was because of over optimization... There were many attributing factors in Penguin that sites were hit for. While you may have been hit for anchor diversity, someone else may have been hit for keyword densitys being to high. Point being you can fix things that you believe may have caused your google slap, but there is no guarentee you are even fixing the correct thing. I know that one of my sites had a good bit of crappy links, so i simply bought a new domain and moved my site over, thats alot easier than trying to fix backlink anchor text percentages, and trying to outweigh the crappy links that were already there

Expertpeon said:

How do you fix undefined problems exactly? many fully white hat sites were hit...
There's a lot more going on than an anchor text problem.

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Well you don't, you fix defined problems. You run tests and define the problems. Obviously we don't know what the changes are and it hasn't been long enough for test results to show.

As far as i can tell, this update doesn't look at the quality of links as that was what panda was meant to do. This one is about over optimisation. You can over optimise your site using white hat techniques pretty easily. I agree that there's more than just anchor text diversity but i think that is a big factor.

rugbyjack2005 said:

I think it's fairly well documented that one of the key factors is anchor text diversity. With this in mind, you can send a 10k xrumer or SB blast to a site without triggering link warnings but significantly altering anchor text diversity. The bigger the site though, the harder this will be to do. That doesn't mean it's inconsistent, quite the opposite. Google have also said it's a filter so of cause it's a negative update. If you are not within the parameters, you will get slapped

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I don't think this is "well documented" at all... I've watched thousands of sites over the last month... link anchors seem to have absolutely nothing to do with if a site keeps its gains or not.
People are just parroting what Matt Cutts has said, along with a bit of "fill in the blanks"

trizzypballr said:

But what you need to realize is penguin didnt just target 1 thing. You cant say that since your site got hit it was because of over optimization... There were many attributing factors in Penguin that sites were hit for. While you may have been hit for anchor diversity, someone else may have been hit for keyword densitys being to high. Point being you can fix things that you believe may have caused your google slap, but there is no guarentee you are even fixing the correct thing. I know that one of my sites had a good bit of crappy links, so i simply bought a new domain and moved my site over, thats alot easier than trying to fix backlink anchor text percentages, and trying to outweigh the crappy links that were already there

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I never said Penguin did target one thing! I think we all know that there are lots of factors. I think with all the stuff Google has released about the update, beforehand and afterwards it was specifically targeting over optimisation.

The SEO world spans beyond affiliates. Companies can't change URLs very easily without massive costs so fixing rankings with a 301 redirect isn't an option for a lot of people so they have to fix the problems!

Well, here is my example where anchor diversity seems to be the big difference.

Expertpeon said:

I don't think this is "well documented" at all... I've watched thousands of sites over the last month... link anchors seem to have absolutely nothing to do with if a site keeps its gains or not.
People are just parroting what Matt Cutts has said, along with a bit of "fill in the blanks"

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navimeister said:

Well, here is my example where anchor diversity seems to be the big difference.

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I have around 25 sites running... 1 was hit.
The sites that were not hit all had
1) Extremely high anchor similarities (usually only 2-3 keywords) and tons of spam links (usually d0follow blog comments)
2) Tons of spun paid blog posts

The site that was hit, had 200+ unique pages, tons of HQ links with 20-25 different anchors, and a PR of 5... major difference? That site was ranking really really well on a niche lionbridge probably manually checks for google.