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You are here: Home / Google / Google Confirms Penguin Refresh Needed to Recover

Google Confirms Penguin Refresh Needed to Recover

September 8, 2014 at 5:22 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

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penguin refresh requiredIt has long been debated whether a Penguin update is needed in order to recover from a true Penguin algo hit, or whether it is possible that you can recover despite the fact we haven’t seen a Penguin refresh for almost a year.  General consensus is that an update is needed, but there are those who argue and insist otherwise.

A user on the Webmaster Central Help forum asked specifically if a Penguin update is required to recover, to which John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, responded this morning with “Yes, assuming the issues are resolved in the meantime, with an update of our algorithm or its data, it will no longer be affecting your site.”

johnmupenguinOf course, it has been nearly a year since the last Penguin update refresh, a very long time for those who were hit by the algorithm, fixed the problems and are awaiting an update.

Marie Haynes, of HIS Web Marketing, a well known SEO specializing in penalty removal, can sympathize with those caught waiting for an update.  “So many people are desperately trying to recover from Penguin,” says Haynes. “I routinely get emails from people who are saying ‘I’ve done everything I can do and yet I’m not recovering. Why?’ My answer is always that they have to wait for a refresh.”

The last Penguin refresh occurred back on October 4, 2013, which impacted approximately 1% of all search queries.  But for those impacted, it’s been a very long wait.

“Given that we haven’t had a refresh in over 11 months now, I can understand why webmasters are frustrated,” says Haynes.

While there has been a lot of speculation about an upcoming Penguin update, including John Mueller commenting that the engineers were working on it, but a month and a half has passed since that comment was made.  So webmasters are stuck waiting for the update to recover – and hope that if they didn’t do quite enough, that the following update won’t take another year to come.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
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Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Google, SEO Tagged With: algo, penalty, Penguin

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Comments

  1. Bill Hartzer says

    September 8, 2014 at 2:22 pm

    It’s very frustrating that Google hasn’t updated the Penguin algorithm. I realize there’s a lot of work to do, but it shouldn’t take over 11 months, should it?

    I personally know of at least a dozen or so site owners who have had done a lot to clean up all the low quality, spammy links to their sites. And all those links are mostly gone now or have been disavowed. But still there’s no recovery. It’s very frustrating. 😉

Trackbacks

  1. Google's John Mueller With More Penguin & Algo Update Info - The SEM Post says:
    September 10, 2014 at 5:15 am

    […] post asking if a Penguin penalty would definitely require a Penguin refresh to be lifted, which he confirmed it would, so long as the issues were fixed.  The post got a bit more attention than Mueller likely […]

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