Matt Cutts Sheds A Crack Of Light On Google Penguin 2.0 Update
Matt Cutts has launched a new video post which highlights changes that the Google team are calling Penguin 2.0. Much of the focus of these changes, according to Cutts in the video, will be refinements on existing technologies. As usual, no specific information on what will work and what will not was given – Google know that providing this information gives black hat marketers greater opportunity to game their system. Although, Matt also said that the reason they don’t pass on specifics is because things can change quickly in Google search engine ranking algorithms.
Quality
As ever, the onus is very much on quality. Specific indicators that were mentioned by Matt include providing a great site that offers a high quality user experience, a site that people talk about, bookmark, revisit, and share with their friends. These terms would indicate that Google will continue to use social ranking factors and may be giving them more weight in the near future.
Authority
Another area, although only briefly touched upon, that would point to a more social experience, is that of authority. Matt talks about giving greater weight to those site owners that have authority in a particular area. The important word there is “owners” and this would point to Author Ranking becoming an integral facet in search algorithms.
Communication
Communication should be a byword of a more social Internet and it is a word that is becoming increasingly common when Google refer to Webmasters. The relationship between the two parties has always been uneasy but Matt says that they are looking to communicate more freely and easily with Webmasters. Google will provide more information for hacked site owners and aim to provide a one-stop shop of information for website owners.
Advertorials
A special note was saved for advertorials, although they also came under the more generic banner of paid advertising. Matt reiterated the search engine’s point that paid advertising should not pass PageRank from one site to another. He said that the concept of paid advertising is certainly not an inherently bad concept but that paid ads, including advertorials, should be clearly labelled as such too.
Penguin 2.0
The updates that Cutts talks about in his video have been coined Penguin 2.0 but according to the video they will not only look to improve upon and refine the Penguin update but also the Panda update.
Those sites that found themselves perhaps harshly penalised in the Panda update may expect to enjoy potentially improved results in the near future as Google looks to identify those sites in the grey area and give greater benefit to sites with more positive ranking factors.
Clustered host results will also be refined in the near future and a more sophisticated link analysis tool is in development and ready to start testing. Spam heavy sectors, such as payday loans and porn, may experience harsher and harder penalties under the proposed and incoming changes too.
As a finale note, Matt said that those Webmasters that continue to offer quality should see stable results, or possibly improved results, while those that indulge in black hat marketing are likely to have to endure a more “eventful summer”.
