Search engine Google have released a new update to their search algorithm.
The new update – which has been called Penguin 2.1 – was confirmed by the search engine’s renowned engineer Matt Cutts, who Tweeted the news to his substantial number of followers.
Mr Cutts stated that the update to the algorithm was expected to affect around 1% of searches to a very noticeable degree.
As with the original version of the Penguin algorithm, Penguin 2.1 is focused heavily on targeting web spam on site, and on punishing those pages that don’t have sufficient, high quality original content.
The original Google Penguin update first went live back on May 22, and had a noticeable effect on around 2.3% of English and U.S queries. At the time, Cutts explained that whilst it was officially the fourth Penguin-related launch, Google had referred to the change as Penguin 2.0 simply because it represented a substantial update to the algorithm rather than just a data refresh.
Speaking about Penguin, Cutts said:
“It’s a brand new generation of algorithms,”
“The previous iteration of Penguin would essentially only look at the home page of a site. The newer generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas.”
The news, as with all Google algorithm updates, will doubtless have website owners frantically checking their SERPs in order to establish whether or not they’ve been punished. As always, though, those sites that take the time to generate good, original content will receive their just rewards.
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