Google finally updates Penguin – now part of ‘real time’ core search algorithm and affects sites on more ‘granular’ level

After over 700 long days, Google has finally refreshed it's Penguin algorithm update - and with it announced some very welcome news for webmasters.

Penguin was last updated on 17 October 2014, and websites that were penalised by it then have had to wait for the next update for the penalty to be lifted.

Those long, painful waits will now be a thing of the past as Google confirmed that Penguin 4.0 is now part of their 'core algorithm' - read Google's announcement here.

This means that Penguin will now work in 'real-time', with Google saying changes will be made as fast as they can recrawl and reindex a page. So if you get hit by Penguin you can quickly recover. It also means Google will no longer report or announce any future updates to Penguin, so it will be up to the SEO community at large to identify any changes to the way it classifies and reacts to certain spam signals moving forward.

Another big change to the way Penguin works is that it can now choose to penalise websites on a more granular level, rather than just doling out site-wide penalties whenever any spammy links are detected.

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