It’s a cryptonym for a Google Algorithm Upgrade that was first revealed on April 24, 2012. Google’s modification is targeted at lowering the search engine rankings of pages that breach Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now-declared black-hat SEO tactics used in falsely raising the website ranking by seeking to influence the amount of connections that point to the article. These strategies are generally referred to as connection schemes. Google has confirmed all Penguin filter updates to the public, according to Google staff John Mueller.
Google Penguin 4.0
On 23 September 2016, Google revealed that Google Penguin has been part of Google’s core algorithm: this means that it is upgrading in real-time. Google will now no longer make updates about future refreshes. In comparison, real-time ensures that pages are analyzed in real-time, plus rankings are also affected in real-time.
In previous years, Google’s webmasters have instead still had to wait for the next roll-out upgrade to avoid the Penguin penalty. Google Penguin 4.0 is even more granular than previous changes, since it may impact the site as a whole on the basis of the URL rather than the site as a whole.
Also, Penguin 4.0 is different from the previous versions of Penguin because it doesn’t delete the site if it detects the incorrect links: instead, it discounts the links. This means that they are overlooked and the websites no longer count for ranking.
As a consequence, there is less need to use the disavow file, since Google uses both human reviewers and algorithms to recognise artificial (unnatural) connections, misleading or manipulative. This are contained in the Manual Actions Documentation of the websites. While links are still highly significant as a ranking factor, not all links are handled in the same way and the consistency of the links has now become more critical as a result of this change.
