Ever wondered how many searches are made on Google each day? It’s 3.5 billion, which in turn means that when they make a change to how they rank websites, businesses across the West Country need to stand up and take note.

Google’s ranking algorithm, just like Uncle Ben’s sauce recipe, is a closely kept secret but they do from time to time let us know when they’ve updated how it works and what they’re trying to do by initiating the change.

This week a change has been made to one of its core algorithms called Penguin, not the cute waddling kind I’m afraid, but a filter designed to target website spam.

So what is web spam? Well it would include sites crammed with keywords and link schemes that violate Google’s guidelines. Essentially people who have gone over the top with trying to rank to a point that it’s more about ranking than it is providing quality information for anyone guided there by the search engine.

Since Penguin was created in 2012, it has stopped thousands of spam sites from entering search results, which is great news for users, but not if your business was caught during the last update two years ago (and some across the South West were!). If it was, your website could have been penalised in search results for this entire time because Penguin found an element of web spam (harsh but remember, what on earth were you trying to do by gaming the system!).

Google’s latest Penguin update seeks to rectify this, by becoming real-time (it’s constantly reviewing sites for spammy looking features). This is great news for all businesses affected by the last Penguin update, because it means any improvements made to websites since and in the future, will be recognised instantly. You’ve done your time, so we hope you’ve learnt!

In a blog, Gary Illyes from Google Search Engine Ranking Team said: “With this change, Penguin’s data is refreshed in real time, so changes will be visible much faster, typically taking effect shortly after we recrawl and reindex a page.”

Penguin will also ‘devalue’ webspam by adjusting the way its ranked, which means the whole website may not be impacted by the update. We say ‘may’ because Google has yet to confirm more about this.

The latest Penguin update is currently being ‘rolled out’ by Google.

Where is your business appearing in search results? If you’d like us to run a Search Engine Optimisation audit for your website give us a call on 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk.