One of the biggest SEO events of this year was the official roll out of Penguin 4.0 on the 23rd of September 2016. The update came nearly 2 years after the last one (Penguin 3.0) in 2014.

A quick refresher: Penguin is the Google algorithm synonymous with unnatural or ‘spammy’ links. Basically, it’s aimed at punishing webmasters who use manipulative strategies to gain links for the purpose of increasing their rankings.

A major talking point has been that the new version of Penguin updates in real-time. This had a lot of webmasters excited about seeing recoveries if their sites had been hit by Penguin previously.

Well, last week Google’s Gary Illeys confirmed that Google Penguin recoveries have finished rolling out. This means that anyone who has been trying to recover from any version of Penguin (past or present) will now see where they stand.

If you want more background on Penguin, read this.

So, if you’ve been waiting to see your rankings change as a result of Penguin, Google says those changes are now live in the search results.

Who Does This Affect?

Anyone who has been previously impacted by Penguin (versions 1, 2, 3 and 4), or suspects that Penguin has been a problem for them and has been trying to recover.

Why Should You Care?

If your site had been previously impacted by Penguin you should have seen recoveries by now. If not, you now know that Penguin wasn’t the issue in the first place, or your site didn’t get enough links to compensate for the loss of the bad ones.

For more info, visit: https://www.thesempost.com/google-completed-penguin-recoveries/