Google’s New Possum & Penguin Updates

Google Releases Possum In Penguin’s Clothing

September 1^st Update – “Possum”

Although there is little the industry knows about his update, many believe it heavily impacted local businesses.

Here is what we know:

• The update occurred over a series of 3 days as opposed to a single day. It started on the 1^st and ended on the 3^rd.
• Over the 3 day period our customers saw a positive impact which heavily outweighed any negative impact.
• Unlike Penguin or Panda this update is not spam related as it was a core algorithm change that increases the quality of search results for local intent searches.

Penguin – September 9^th to 23^rd

On Sep 9^th we noticed some more ranking fluctuation. These fluctuations continued day after day until the 23^rd which is when Google announced the release of Penguin.

Here is what we know:

• This Penguin release marks the end of the Penguin updates as the update logic is now part of the core algorithm. Like many updates before this one, it is now able to react in real time rather than by manual updates.
• We believe that although Penguin was announced on the 23^rd of September it actually began rolling out on the 9^th and ending on the 23^rd.
• Initial results show that clients had a neutral impact from penguin. Although we saw more ranking fluctuation than normal, it was neither overly positive nor overly negative. We are continuing to monitor these results.
• Penguin is less about penalty and more about devaluation. The Penguin part of the algorithm devalues spammy links rather than penalizing an entire site. Keywords that drop in ranking because of spammy links can easily regain that ranking by having high quality onsite copy or valuable non-spammy links. Or in other words, Boostability SEO.