According to Gary Illyes of Google, the next version of Penguin (4.0) is due for release before the end of 2015. Penguin has been one of the most talked about algorithm changes within the SEO community since its first release in 2012.
The reason why Penguin has been such a hot topic among SEOs is because of its focus on links. The aim of Penguin is to discover unnatural and spammy link practices. This impacts Google’s perceived ‘trust’ of any site found to be using such practices to gain an advantage in the search engine’s results. Whilst there are more factors Penguin is concerned with, the main focus has always been on links.
Up until now, Penguin has been a manual roll-out. However, the SEO community believes this next iteration of Penguin to be a real-time version. This again causes quite a stir as previously, sites hit by Penguin would have to wait a long time before any penalties would be lifted.
We’re looking forward to the upcoming release of Penguin and interested to analyse the affects this new update has on rankings.