Google rolls out Penguin 2.0 update (2.3% of queries affected)

The SEO world has been on its toes ever since Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted about Penguin 2.0, the next generation Penguin update.

Well, the wait is over. Cutts, in This Week in Google, yesterday announced that the update is being rolled out and will affect 2.3% of English-US queries. After the rollout, he blogged about it, adding on that “languages with more webspam will see more impact”.

Though it’s officially named Penguin 2.0, note that it’s the fourth Penguin update.

• Penguin 1: April 24, 2012
• Penguin 2: May 26, 2012
• Penguin 3: October 5, 2012

The MozCast weather report on the rollout day was 81%, which is not that jarring. And SERPmetrics showed 49% fluctuation.

On May 13, Cutts claimed that Penguin 2.0 would go after advertorials, hacked sites and spammy search engine results. That it’d give authority sites a good advantage and get better at link analysis to filter spammers.

It’s too early in the day to tell what all has been impacted. But we’re at it. Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

In our SEMrush post, namely Did Google Penguin 2.0 Hit You Hard?, we’ve discussed the impact of Penguin 2.0 (probably the most ravishing Google algorithm update) and how to recover from it.