Penguin 2.0

On May 22, Google rolled out the second generation of the Penguin updates.  If you can’t remember the differences between Penguin and Panda, here’s a refresher. The first release, you may hauntingly remember, came out April of 2012. There have been some data refreshes, but no real algorithm changes since that fateful day in April, until May 22. This update was anticipated by the SEO world, and some more scared than others. Yeah, I’m talking to you, black-hatters. So what did Penguin 2.0 attack? Remember, Penguin updates are targeted specifically at webspam, so websites that were using black hat tactics, like keyword stuffing and buying hundreds of spammy links were obviously hit. There were a couple of sites like salvationarmy.org and dish.com that were also largely impacted. Some small business websites were also hit, most likely from no real investments in SEO. Here’s a list from the newly rebranded Moz.com of bigger sites and their traffic differences: This was  not the update a lot of us were expecting.  Especially after Matt Cutts, Head of Google Webspam, offered this not long before 2.0 went live: “So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper in have a little bit more of an impact.” We were all a bit worrisome after that. But again, proving it wasn’t as big of a deal as we though, the MozCast (www.mozcast.com) showed slightly higher temperatures, but nothing crazy like we thought. After the first Penguin update, I was thinking something huge was going to happen, but some of our rankings actually increased.  Not that of our clients here at TargetClick had anything to worry about; all safe and sound here, as always. Did anyone take a hit from the Penguin 2.0 update? Leave a comment below and share your story with us.