The Internet Marketing Driver

  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
    • Algorithm Update Recovery
    • Technical SEO Audits
    • Website Redesigns and Site Migrations
    • SEO Training
  • Blog
  • Contact GSQi

Penguin 1.0 Initial Findings – Unnatural Inbound Links Heavily Targeted, Other Webspam Tactics Await Penalty?

April 27, 2012 By Glenn Gabe 34 Comments

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
60 Shares

Penguin Update 1.0

The past few days have been fascinating for SEO’s.  Google’s latest algorithm update, now officially named Penguin, has been rolled out.  The update was originally called the Over Optimization Penalty, then the Webspam Algorithm Update, and now Penguin.  As you can imagine, there have been screams from webmasters far and wide about the update (from both webmasters who should have gotten hit by Penguin, and some who believe they were wrongly penalized.)  False positives are absolutely going to occur with Penguin, and Google knows this.  More about this later in the post.

I’ve already started helping some companies that have been hit by Penguin analyze their websites and prepare for a Post-Penguin world.  I’ve also been monitoring the various webmaster forums to see examples of websites getting hit, to see what they were doing wrong.  Based on my research and analysis so far, I wanted to write a post explaining what I’m seeing and document the common thread across sites that are being penalized.  Note, we are still very early in the game, and Google will undoubtedly be rolling out updates to Penguin over time.  Therefore, this is what I’m seeing now.  Since it’s a fluid situation, I will try and write follow-up posts about future Penguin releases.

Penguin and Exact Match Domains:
Before I get deeper into this post, I wanted to mention my first post about Penguin, which I published a few days ago.  I wrote about the potential impact of the Over Optimization Penalty on Exact Match Domains.  If you have been hit by Penguin, and you are using exact match domains, definitely check out that post.  There are several risks you might want to review.

Inbound Links – The Common Thread During Research and Analysis
Almost every penalized site that I’ve reviewed had issues with inbound links.  Specifically, their link profiles were littered were unnatural, spammy links.  And not all of those links were paid text links like some people would expect.  I saw a range of issues that could get a site pecked by Penguin.  Sorry, that’s my first Penguin joke.  :)  Below, I’m going to cover several inbound link issues that I’ve seen during my analysis.  That said, I first wanted to mention other spammy tactics and Penguin 1.0.

What About Over Optimization?
I’ve been searching for a site that got hit for spammy title tags, keyword stuffing, doorway pages, etc., but I’m not seeing that as a driving force right now with Penguin.  And believe me, I’ve come across a lot of sites violating Google’s Quality Guidelines over the years…  It doesn’t seem like those factors are getting caught right now, with the key phrase being “right now”.  My hope is that Google will roll out updates to Penguin that also catch those violations.  So, if you are a company that’s keyword stuffing, employing doorway pages, overly optimizing your title tags, etc., now is the time to change…  It wouldn’t shock me to see rolling updates to Penguin that include penalties targeting those violations as well.

Below, I’ll list some of the inbound link issues I’ve seen on websites hit by Penguin.  Again, we are early on, and things can change.  But for now, this is what I’m seeing:

1. Paid Text Links Using Exact Anchor Text
As you can imagine, this one is a clear violation of Google’s guidelines.  During my analysis, it was easy to pick up exact match, paid text links on sites that were rampant with sponsored links.  Many of the sites I analyzed had these types of links.  Similar to what I said in my first post on Penguin, if you want to check your own inbound links, read my post about finding paid text links using Open Site Explorer.

Checking inbound links via Open Site Explorer:
Using Open Site Explorer to check inbound links

2. Comment Spam
When analyzing websites hit by Penguin, I also saw a lot of comment spam.  This came in two forms.  The first form was using signatures in comments using exact match anchor text.  For example, instead of using your name (like you’re supposed to), people commenting were using the exact match anchor text for keywords they wanted to rank for.  For Google, this is pretty darn easy to pick up.

3. Guest Posts on Questionable Sites
I’ve also seen many guest posts on questionable sites that included exact match anchor text.  Note, I obviously don’t think all guest posts are bad.  Actually, I think they can be ultra-powerful on the right websites and blogs.  But, the guest posts I’m referring to were on sites set up simply to generate income from those guest posts (based on the links they would drive).  And the posts themselves weren’t strong… They were typically thin with a focus on the anchor text, and not the story.

4. Article Marketing Sites
Similar to the last bullet, I saw a lot of syndicated articles using exact match anchor text leading back to sites that got hammered by Penguin.  So yes, Penguins seem “cold” to article marketing tactics. Sorry, that’s my second Penguin joke. :)  Again, these articles were relatively thin, used several instances of exact match anchor text leading back to the site, etc.

Inbound Link Profiles Heavily Weighted by These Tactics Got Hit
One of the most important findings included the weighting of inbound links for each site.  For the sites I analyzed, a majority of the inbound links included the tactics listed above.  Actually, for some sites, I couldn’t find any natural links… most were unnatural.  As you can imagine, this is not a strong signal to Google that you’re a typical webmaster looking to gain traffic by earning it.  You look like you’re gaming the system to gain rankings.  And that’s when Penguin steps in, and hammers you.  A natural link profile will contain many types of links, including URL’s, brand names, image links, etc.  It won’t contain 99% exact match anchor text from article sites, comment spam, etc.

Dangerous Sites and Not Just Spammy
There’s another point I wanted to make before ending this post.  While analyzing inbound links across penalized sites, I found several linking websites that were flat out dangerous, and not just spammy.  I found sites flagged for malware, sites using numerous popups as I hit a page, etc.  So, when we know that Google doesn’t like sending users to dangerous websites, and they it doesn’t like spam, these dangerous sites could have been the kiss of death for downstream destinations.  If you have unnatural links on dangerous sites, then the Penguin outcome probably wasn’t pretty for you.

An example of a website flagged for malware:
Firefox flagging a website for malware

Next Steps for Penguin
Remember, this is just the beginning stages of Penguin and the situation can change quickly.  I’m going to keep analyzing websites that have been penalized, monitoring webmaster forums, and watching Google’s response closely.

Here are some closing points about Penguin that are important to understand:

  • Google said you cannot file a reinclusion request if you’ve been hit by Penguin.  Since the update is algorithmic, and not manual, reinclusion requests will not help you.
  • Google set up a Penguin form to fill out if you believe that you’ve been wrongly hit by the algo update.  If you think you’re a false positive, then fill out the form today.
  • Google also included a link to a form where you can report spam that you think should have been caught by Penguin, but hasn’t.  You can click the button labeled “Report Webspam” on that page.  This is obviously a little subjective, but I’m glad Google is looking to catch more webspam in future releases of Penguin.
  • It’s worth noting that both Panda and Penguin have been rolled out within a few days of one another.  Yesterday, Matt Cutts explained that the latest version of the Panda Update rolled out on 4/19, and then Penguin rolled out on 4/24.  You should check your reporting to make sure you know the date you were hit.  You don’t want to go down the wrong path when making changes to your website…  i.e. Mistaking Panda penalties with Penguin penalties. <- and by the way, how ridiculous does that sound? :)
  • If you’ve been hit by Penguin, take a hard look at your site, your inbound link profile, etc., and plan to make changes.  I know this is going to be a painful time for you and your website, but don’t just sit there. Analyze and take action.

Until the Next Version of Penguin rolls out…
That’s what I have for now.  I hope this post helped shed some light on the latest Google algorithm update.  If you have any questions, or need assistance, don’t hesitate to contact me.  Good luck.

GG

 

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
60 Shares

Filed Under: algorithm-updates, google, seo

Connect with Glenn Gabe today!

Latest Blog Posts

  • Smart Delta Reports – How To Automate Exporting, Filtering, and Comparing Google Search Data Across Timeframes Via The Search Console API and Analytics Edge
  • Filters and Pills in the Google SERPs – How the addition of filters, tabs, and dynamic organization in the search results can impact visibility and clicks
  • How To Use GSC’s Crawl Stats Reporting To Analyze and Troubleshoot Site Moves (Domain Name Changes and URL Migrations)
  • Google Search Console (GSC) reporting for Soft 404s is now more accurate. But where did those Soft 404s go?
  • Google’s December 2020 Broad Core Algorithm Update Part 2: Three Case Studies That Underscore The Complexity and Nuance of Broad Core Updates
  • Google’s December 2020 Broad Core Algorithm Update: Analysis, Observations, Tremors and Reversals, and More Key Points for Site Owners [Part 1 of 2]
  • Exit The Black Hole Of Web Story Tracking – How To Track User Progress In Web Stories Via Event Tracking In Google Analytics
  • Image Packs in Google Web Search – A reason you might be seeing high impressions and rankings in GSC but insanely low click-through rate (CTR)
  • Google’s “Found on the Web” Mobile SERP Feature – A Knowledge Graph and Carousel Frankenstein That’s Hard To Ignore
  • Image Migrations and Lost Signals – How long before images lose signals after a flawed url migration?

Web Stories

  • Google’s Disqus Indexing Bug
  • Google’s New Page Experience Signal

Archives

  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
  • Blog
  • Contact GSQi
Copyright © 2021 G-Squared Interactive LLC. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

The Internet Marketing Driver
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

3rd Party Cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

This site also uses pixels from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so we publish content that reaches you on those social networks.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!