Understanding Google Penguin and Search

Let’s talk search and Google. We know that ever since its inception, search has become a big deal. Yahoo and Alta Vista may have initiated this veritable industry but Google has become the Godfather of them all. From being an excellent tool that has created an opportunity for business owners to leverage in order to drive traffic to your site, Google is, in essence, a huge part of your content strategy. There have been a myriad of updates and Google Penguin is the most current, and it refers to a set of algorithm updates and data refreshes for the Google search engine that the company periodically initiates to help enhance the value of its search query results for users. While Google Penguin shares similarities with two other algorithmic enhancement projects from Google, Google Panda and Google Hummingbird, Penguin’s specific focus is on penalizing companies and web developers that deliberately try to “boost” their search engine rankings via manipulative SEO tactics.

At this juncture, it makes sense to talk a bit about the previous algorithm updates ever so briefly just to understand how far Google as a search engine has come. Google Panda, on the other hand, specifically targeted low quality or “thin” content web sites by downgrading them in the search results so that higher quality sites can receive more prominent results. The third project, Google Hummingbird, focused on introducing a completely new search algorithm as opposed to Google Penguin and Panda, which both serve as updates for Google’s existing search algorithm engine. Today, Penguin is part of the core Google algorithm and runs in real time. We know that content management systems like WordPress are a big deal in this ecosystem created by Google. While many would swear by systems like Wix or Squarespace, it certainly makes sense to consider the ideal CMS for your purpose. Consider the differences between wordpress vs ghost if you are looking at having a business blog. 

To put everything into perspective: Penguin is a new effort to reward high-quality websites and diminish the search engine results page (SERP) presence of websites that engaged in manipulative link schemes and keyword stuffing. At the end of the day, content is king, and this latest update by Google is an opportunity to give a great deal of value to those who are searching for specific things online. So things like content credibility and having a web presence built by white hat SEO tricks and tips as opposed to black hat ones is what’s in. Hence, it certainly needs consideration in having a great wordpress comments plugin (if you are going with a CMS like WordPress) to help your site rank better on Google. Having an intuitive and forward-thinking commenting system is certainly going to be a huge part of your content marketing efforts, and can be considered as a strategy to earn benefits from community participation. Additionally remember that comments at the end of the day is content, and the enabling of comments only serves to create more content.