Search Engine Roundtable reported on Monday that weekend search ranking shifts spared rumors of the release of the latest Penguin iteration. Although a Google representative claimed there was no Penguin (or Panda) update, there seems to have been an anomalous shift in traffic or – perhaps the result of vastly different web activity given Sunday’s Mother’s Day holiday.
Regardless, websites that were initially struck by the Penguin roll out on April 24 are seeing improvements. Many of these sites made adjustments to their content and webpages after the Penguin release. According to Search Engine Roundtable, some saw traffic recover over the weekend.
Although Google claims there was no Penguin refresh, the changes some saw in SERP standing led to Penguin talks on a Webmaster World forum where marketers discussed keyword stuffing’s potential as a Penguin target. The main focus of the Penguin update was punishing websites with webspam in favor of those with high-quality content for SEO.
Brafton reported that sites with keyword stuffing and linking schemes were those most likely to be impacted by the Penguin update.
