Yesterday (January 19), a Google employee announced via Twitter that Google is weeks away from rolling out an update to its algorithm. Updates like these often mean changes to websites, SEO and content marketing. Here’s what you need to know about this upcoming update.
Google update quick facts:
- Sources have conflicting information about whether the update is to Google’s core algorithm, or to its Penguin algorithm.
- The last Penguin update, Penguin 3.0, came out about a year ago.
- Penguin 3.0 was referred to as the “link spam” refresh for its algorithm, affecting 1% of US English search queries. (source)
- Penguin 2.0 was released in May 2013 and implemented several changes to reduce spam and black-hat SEO, including spam links.
- Forbes.com, like the team here Legendary Social Media, believes this latest update will also help to curb black-hat SEO and spam linking.
Here’s what Forbes had to say about the Google update rumours:
Penguin 4.0 is rumored to be a real-time update to the algorithm. This means that the Penguin portion of the algorithm will always be “on” and updating. This is huge news for the digital marketing community since there’s still a prevalence of spammy tactics taking place. In fact, even though Google claims that black-hat tactics do not work, there’s lots of evidence that the contrary is true. But in Google’s defense, they are making it much more difficult for black-hat marketers to succeed.
We’re waiting to hear solid details
Little information has been released about this upcoming Google update, but several people commenting on Search Engine Journal‘s site have expressed hope that this update will reduce unwanted traffic and unwanted referrals to websites.
As SEO artists and Google PPC campaign managers, we at Legendary Social Media hope the same. In very few cases, ads as well as non-ad-related search traffic can come from unwanted referrals, including linking sites that send low-loyalty traffic to websites. It’s a minor nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless.
Legendary Social Media works on and promotes website that do SEO the proper way, with high-quality links, active blogs, social media links, strategic keywording. It’s all part of our content marketing service that we offer.