Search Engine Marketing

Google’s Penguin Update Goes Mainstream

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The Penguin

I love The Penguin, the super villain and one of Batman’s greatest enemy, known for his trademark high tech umbrella tricks and under ground black hat dealings. Well it seems that Google has now taken a similar role on being The Penguin, with the recent Google Penguin update to tackle black-hat webspam.

And…I don’t love The Penguin anymore:) and it’s not just me.

SEO experts and webmasters have been slapped hard by the recent Google Penguin update, the damage on search rankings seems worse than the Google Panda series of changes that happened all of last year.

Google’s clamp down on webspam and black hat link building methods have had the SEO industry in a tizzy. If you’ve seen a drastic drop in traffic and sales blame it on the Penguin update.

The Wall Street Journal covered a feature story – As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web .

It features online businesses that have been slapped by the Penguin update, one online pet store owner saw his sales drop from $68,000 a month to $25,000 a month after the change.

Another online business owner reported a drop of 30% in his overall traffic from Google. While these are just a few cases, I am sure you’ll read a lot more in the coming days as the impact of the update is felt.

Did you see a drop in traffic for your websites? Have your online sales been impacted by the Penguin update?

Image Credit: Batman Wiki

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8 comments

Nick Stamoulis May 21, 2012 - 10:09 am
The Panda and Penguin updates are reminders that quality is more important than quantity. You need to focus on your end users, not the search engines. Build links from relevant sites that can actually generate traffic to the site.
Jasmine May 22, 2012 - 2:51 am
No need to scare if you are not wearing any black hat! :) ZK, have your traffic increased?
Goa trip May 22, 2012 - 3:11 am
Hi, If you are doing work with right options which are search engine friendly then i don't think so you need to think too much about this updation.
Aasma May 22, 2012 - 5:13 am
Hey ZK, I haven't noticed any drop in traffic and ranking for my website. It proves I'm not using any bad ways for building links. ;)
Andrew Stenning May 26, 2012 - 5:38 am
Don't loose hope. Just try. And also doing some other activities like blog commenting, article posting, forum posting, you will surely get traffic..
Celia McKelvy May 23, 2012 - 9:55 pm
A lot of people and sites were affected by the new Google update, spammy sites or sites that has a cloudy backlinks has been removed which is more favorable to everyone.
Nanvy @ CRM Software Solutions May 24, 2012 - 2:08 am
It's all about using the proper way (ethical way) in order to gain traffic. Less but quality work from niche sites can be really useful.
learn to trade forex June 4, 2012 - 2:06 am
Many honest link builder and WHITE HAT SEO has been given more respect by the Google after this update and this is will sure improve quality of SERP.
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