Google Penguin Update 3 Released, Impacts 0.3% Of English-Language Queries

Google’s Matt Cutts used Twitter this afternoon to announce that Google is launching the latest “data refresh” of its Penguin spam-fighting algorithm today and that it will affect searches across multiple languages.
Including the original Penguin algorithm launch in late April, this is the third update, so we’re calling it Penguin 3 and avoiding the previous 1.1, 1.2, etc. naming scheme, just as we’ve done with the Panda updates.

Penguin Releases So Far

Here’s the list so far, showing when each Penguin update came out, the percentage of English-languages queries it was said to impact (other languages are also impacted, but we’re using English as a consistent baseline):

• Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (3.1%)
• Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (less than 0.1%)
• Penguin 3: Oct. 5, 2012 (0.3%)

Some Details On Penguin 3

Cutts, chief of Google’s spam team, posted about the Penguin update in a series of tweets. The first said that a Penguin data refresh is on its way and that about 0.3 percent of English-language queries will be “noticeably affected.”


Weather report: Penguin data refresh coming today. 0.3% of English queries noticeably affected. Details: http://goo.gl/AF5kt