Friday morning we reported more fluctuations around Penguin hit sites. Well, those changes seemed to have reverted themselves 24-hours later.
Let me give you the timeline I am working on and yes, I know some of you are sick of this, but I track this stuff with reason.
(1) Penguin 3.0 rolled out mid-October, we got confirmation after the fact.
(2) We reported lots of fluctuations around that for a few weeks and then it died out a bit.
(3) On Thanksgiving day, we saw massive changes around this and Google actually confirmed it was part of 3.0.
(4) The following Thursday, those changes seemed to have reversed themselves
(5) Then this past Friday morning, we saw things change again, making webmaster hit by Penguin happy again.
But as of Saturday, many reported those Friday morning changes reverted back again!
Here are some quotes from both WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World:
Checked a keyword seems like Google may have reverted back to before the last Penguin update again.
This morning im seeing the serps return to normal and my sites are back where they were prior to Dec 5th. Not happy as iv lost those rankings again.
Yup, I've just seen the same thing.There's no way this is an update or even a rollback - its literally Google just f'ing with everyone.
I've asked Google for comments on this but have not heard back.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.