slightly over a month after the big notorious Penguin algorithm update struck Google search results while leaving many site owners frustrated and anxious for a new refresh, the new refresh is now here. The first Penguin update 1.1 has been pushed couple of hours ago.
The anti-spam lord himself, Matt Cutts, has tweeted about the Penguin refresh, announcing that this is indeed the first Penguin data refresh (for those of you who thought otherwise) and that it will affect less than a 0.1 percent of English search queries.
Minor weather report: We pushed 1st Penguin algo data refresh an hour ago. Affects <0.1% of English searches. Context: goo.gl/4f7Pq
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 26, 2012
On the last 10 days or so, there were many rumors on the web for a Penguin refresh, reflecting the anticipation of many webmasters who sought for a recovery after they have tried to fix what triggered the Penguin wrath upon them on April 24th.
Especially on the last three-four days, when I saw at least 3 different reports on blogs which claimed for a Penguin update but as lord-Cutts just posted, the real data refresh of this algorithm has arrived at night on Friday May 25th.
Interestingly, Google seems to like making this small updates to its algorithm during the weekend. Many Panda updates took place on the weekends and now the first Penguin update is on a Friday night. I guess Google wants to refresh whenever there is less web traffic, things are a bit more calm and the changes will impact more subtly.
As for this Penguin 1.1 refresh, I have to admit that I don’t see too drastic changes on the few niches I follow at this point, however, it just began updating few hours ago so it would probably take few more hours until the update will be fully implemented (based on prior experiences with Google updates).
Also, on Google search forums I don’t see many new threads about lost rankings or new recoveries which characterizes algorithm updates. Anyway, on the upcoming week we would certainly learn more about the Penguin from recovery stories which will surface.
Just as the Panda, the Penguin is also a periodic update so if you have been hit and still haven’t recovered you’ll have to wait until the next refresh, which presumably happens every 4-6 weeks based on the Panda’s pattern.