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Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, Google released their latest Penguin update. This is the algorithm update that is supposed to clear out spammy web search results by penalising poor quality links from poor quality web pages.<\/p>\n
So, has it been a success? The update was rolled out on October 17th<\/sup> so it\u2019s really still too early to work out who the winners and losers are. Furthermore, Google has not released any figures to demonstrate the scale of the outcome, so we currently don\u2019t know what percentage of search queries have been affected yet. In the past, Penguin updates have affected around 1-3% of all search queries.<\/p>\n What we do know is that, if you have been affected by dodgy link building activity and you have actively tried to disavow or remove links, you should be able to see the fruits of your labour much more quickly than before. Feedback from the \u2018white hat\u2019 SEO community is that Google hasn\u2019t gone far enough to penalise poor quality websites that are happy to use dodgy links from dodgy sites. In other words, you can still get away with using dodgy links to get great search engine results … until you get caught.<\/p>\n Another point of note is the unfortunate downside of an algorithmic update, which is that there are still websites having to deal with \u2018negative SEO\u2019. This is where good quality websites are being attacked with dodgy links to make them rank badly for keywords that are actually of real benefit to their business outcomes. This was something that Google was desperately trying to avoid; it\u2019s probably why it took as long as it did to release the latest update.<\/p>\n