Many SEOs have been curious about what is going to change when it comes to the Google Penguin. In a Hangout with Eric Enge and Mark Traphagen, Illyes was asked about Google Penguin and what would be different from an SEO perspective.
He stressed that they haven't talked about how to communicate the changes, however, so he's "doing things as we go."
Gary Illyes – Google Analyst
“The first thing will be that if your pages are affected by Penguin, then generally you will be able to notice that effect much faster.
So you would be able to see if your rankings are dropping, you can easily think about what you last did, what you changed, anything on or off site, like SEO to your site or link building or whatever, and then roll back. the changes and see if the problem is solved.”
He was asked for clarification, if that meant more real-time feedback.
“Of course, we will have to re-crawl the pages, and sometimes it can take a long time.”
Eric Enge – CEO of Stone Temple Consulting
Eric Enge summed it up as “real time with the data available, but you don't have all the data available until you re-track some things and discover the new data.
So there is a natural latency,” Illyes agreed. Illyes went so far as to say that bad SEOs are causing Penguin's problems.
“They are not innocent people making mistakes, but rather they are SEOs – this is going to be shocking – there are bad SEOs out there.”
He also commented about when he looked at a bunch of sites affected by penguin and what he saw.
Mark Traphagen – Senior Director of Online Marketing
The limited sites I looked at that were affected by Penguin were small businesses, not really that many small businesses, generally businesses that have hired an SEO who has done something nasty.
So while Penguin is real-time, there will still be latency while the sites hosting these links get crawled.
But it's a good thing, it means Google Penguin moves in real time, it might be a little easier to identify new links as a possible reason for a loss in ranking.
Here is the link to the Hangout if you want to know more: Hangout Real Time Penguin
