Penguin 2.0. Winners and losers.
It doesn’t seem that long ago we were blogging about the last big algorithm update from Google. And along comes their 4th update but because it’s an update that affects how they work out the rankings Google have been calling it Penguin 2.0. This went live on 22nd May.
Google obviously doesn’t tell you precisely what the changes are but they do say that about 2.5% of searches will be affected in way that a normal user may notice. They also say the update is focused on removing spam sites from their listings and there is a form you can fill out if you end up on a spam site and you think Google should be aware of it. Here is a link to that form. http://bit.ly/penguinspamreport
SeoMoz does an interesting piece of research on Google updates. It takes the top 20 or so domains and looks at what difference the Penguin update has had on their “overall share” of page #1 rankings.
Their analysis shows that these sites saw the biggest improvement in their share of page one listings –
- Facebook up 6.1%
- Twitter up 4.8%
- TripAdvisor up 4.6%
- YouTube up 3.1%
Pinterest’s share also rose 1.9%
Yelp and Yellowpages took a bit of a whack (or at least a mild slap) losing 8.11% and 4.37% share respectively.
Don’t forget these are for just the top domains – the spam sites would have taken a huge hit.
What can we read into this?
There is nothing ground breaking here but it does kind of indicate what sort of sites Google likes and what sites it doesn’t.
From that, it’s not a massive leap to assume that business need to take full advantage of sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest and include them in their digital marketing mix.
Obviously that’s something that Knife Box Digital can help with. So get in touch if you’d like a chat about it.
In our next blog we’re going to be talking about SEO, Content Marketing, why so many digital agencies have suddenly decided they can now do SEO and how content marketing is NOT SEO.
Happy surfing!