The imminent Google Penguin update has been anticipated by the SEO world for more than a year now. So what can we expect when it rolls out? As an SEO expert that has been pretty good at predicting the future trends at Google, I feel extremely confident about what is going to happen with this update. Unfortunately, if you’re reading this, it is already too late to prepare for it. If you haven’t taken appropriate safety measures by now, you may be in for a rocky ride.
So, what can we expect with this coming Google Penguin update? Here it goes…
A LOT Of People Will Be Disappointed With Their Lack Of Recovery
There’s no doubt this Google Penguin update will be a big one. Google has had more than a year of planning, testing, and more importantly, collecting a MASSIVE amount of data through the disavow tool and other means. Unfortunately, many people who were hit by Penguin more than a year ago are yet to see a recovery, even if they have spent weeks or months disavowing and removing poor quality links. Google has already admitted that if you were hit by Penguin, nothing but a refresh can save you. It’s been one very long year without a refresh for those folks.
Unfortunately, many of those same people are expecting this next Google Penguin update to be the lifeline they’ve been waiting for. The “thing” that will put them back in business.
While that may happen for some people, I do not expect it to be the norm. For most, they will see slight improvements. But, that doesn’t really equate to any additional earnings. Say someone jumps from page 10 to page 3 of a keyword. As big of a jump as that is, it won’t make anyone rich. And that’s what will happen – people will see an increase in rankings, but will still have a lack of page 1 rankings and thus, there will not be a large increase in traffic or sales.
Innocent Sites Will Get Caught In The Crossfire
Whether victims to negative SEO tactics or white hat sites being penalized for black hat techniques they aren’t performing, some innocent website owners are always hit during a big Google update. Google simply considers this collateral damage and doesn’t really seem to care that much.
My hope is that Google has spent so much time on this update to ensure innocent sites don’t get dinged. If that’s the holdup, I have no problem with it. Destroying someones business is a big deal and Google should treat it as a top priority. So while I do expect some innocent people to get penalized, my hope is that it will be on a very small scale.
Google Penguin Will Be Refreshed Monthly
Google made a huge mistake with the original Google Penguin releases in that they weren’t prepared to tweak the algorithm safely and efficiently. This is what they’ve been working on fixing. This next Google Penguin update will simply lay the foundation for constant changes, just like we are seeing with the Google Panda algorithm. The changes will happen so frequently that most of the time, the majority of webmasters will never be aware there was a tweak. Only the very large refreshes will get a label.
This is excellent news both for search quality and for website owners. Google should be able to stay ahead of the black hat linking trends and begin to really reward white hat sites. While Google is getting pretty good at checking on-page SEO, they have still struggled with unnatural link building. This Penguin update will be the beginning of the end to unnatural link building. It won’t squash the problem, but with monthly updates, it will be hard to stay ahead of the curve.
Private Blog Networks Will Be Hammered
Google has had a bullseye on private blog networks for several months now and have effectively destroyed many of them. This will continue and the Penguin update will be a heavy hitter for PBN’s.
Unfortunately, many people have been taught to use expired domains to build their blog networks. Many of these expired domains are from websites that were originally hit in the first Google Penguin update, but still have some good “link juice” that can be used to pass onto their money sites. These expired domains are going to get slammed…. hard. Many of those very same expired domains have been disavowed to death and they have already been mapped out by Google. Once this newest Google Penguin update is released, that will become abundantly obvious.
Search Quality Will Improve… Temporarily
Search results in Google will improve for a while. This won’t be the case for all search terms, obviously, but overall there will be improved search results. A lot of black hat private blog networks and other outdated linking schemes will be discovered and that will make room for more white hat and higher quality sites to rank.
Of course, this increase in search quality will be relatively short lived. Soon enough, someone will find another loophole in Google and exploit it. They will tell a friend, who will then tell 2 friends, and eventually so many people will know about it that Google will need to come out with another algorithm update.
…And the Google dance continues!
