Everyone is asking me, did anyone see a recovery from the September 23, 2016 launch date of Penguin 4.0 and the truthful answer, at least as of what I've read through hundreds of forum posts in the past four/five days is that no - no one really saw any significant or even small impact from the Penguin 4.0 update.
Well, at least no one saw it on or immediately after September 23rd. People did see fluctuations on the 22nd but nothing major to the level of a brand new Penguin update. We also saw many reasons to believe that Penguin rolled out before the 23rd, although, Google won't say if it did or when it will stop fully rolling out.
Normally with Penguin updates/refreshes, the Black Hat World and other black hat forums go nuts with charts. This one did not, there is a thread with one black hat mocking and trolling everyone, but the charts are fake. No one here is saying they saw a hit on or after the 23rd.
Same in WebmasterWorld forums, at least, nothing since I scanned the dozens of posts here and in other threads. I did spot this:
I've not seen ANY change in my Penguin hit sites. It might as well not even be announced. Absolutely no change. I don't even see any changes in the niches that I am involved in. Competitor sites, my sites, everything is the same.I have a site that was hit by Penguin 2012, and I managed to improve its position after a number of disavows in the past. Whatever improvement was already limited to those disavows in the past, and no further improvement is being seen with this so called Penguin.
Those are echoing what I've seen throughout the forums I track.
Pete Meyers of Moz tracks the changes with machines and he said the same thing on Twitter:
My gut feeling is that we're not going to see a big Penguin 4.0 spike. A couple of points...
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) September 26, 2016
(1) Although it will take time to re-crawl, most of that is deep links. The impact is still front-loaded, in my experience.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) September 26, 2016
(2) We don't know that the Penguin algo changed much. We just know that it was integrated into the "core" algorithm. They will tweak later.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) September 26, 2016
(3) Now that it's real time, Google has much more freedom to make smaller, more frequent adjustments, and not huge changes.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) September 26, 2016
Glenn Gabe did comment for me on seeing Penguin fluctuations earlier in the month, before the 23rd:
@rustybrick Penguin victim seeing initial spike on 9/11, then drop, then sustained since 9/18. Big jump in rankings for KWs. @Marie_Haynes pic.twitter.com/IJSezrxaok
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 22, 2016
The only tracking tool that shows any shifts and hotter weather is Accuranker but the weather they are reporting is not Penguin level weather.
But as John Mueller of Google said, there is no way for any webmaster to confirm it was Penguin or not:
@512banque @methode Given the way these things roll out, I'd say "good luck" -- I don't think that's easily possible, lots of things overlap
— John Mueller (@JohnMu) September 25, 2016
I should add, since this is a granular release that is real time, it might take time, like the core Panda update to roll out. But again, we expected more with this Penguin 4.0 release.
There were some people who contacted me earlier this morning saying they saw some movement last night for a brief time. I asked Glenn Gabe and he said also, he saw some movement, but this is not the level you'd expect from Penguin.
Seeing *some* movement this morning on sites previously impacted by Penguin. Still checking my data, but interesting to see. Stay tuned #seo
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 27, 2016
Let me poll you guys. Only take this poll if you have or have worked on a site that was impacted by the Penguin 3.0 update about two years ago.
Forum discussion at Black Hat World and WebmasterWorld.
