It has been exactly 297 days since the last official Penguin update, Penguin 2.1, which was on October 4th. That means it has almost been 10 months since the last update.
10 months of waiting for those hit hard by the Penguin algorithm. 10 months of having a fraction of their normal traffic and hoping Google pushes out an update for 10 months, waiting to see if their spam removal efforts have worked and to see if they can start paying their payroll and families.
Let's look at the history of the Penguin updates:
Google Penguin Updates:
- Google Penguin 2.1 on October 4, 2013
- Google Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013
- Google Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012
- Google Penguin 1.1 on May 24, 2012
- Google Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012
We had breaks of:
- 4.5 months between Penguin 2.1 and 2.0
- 7.5 months between Penguin 2.0 and 1.2
- 4.5 months between Penguin 1.2 and 1.1
- 1 month between Penguin 1.1 and 1.0
So this is by far the longest anyone has had to wait for a Penguin refresh or update from Google.
Would Google release the update in the summer? Penguins are not really summer animals and Google is often less likely to release major updates in the summer, I guess with the exception of the Google Pigeon update?
I cannot imagine Google wait until October to push out their next update.
When do you think Google will push out a Penguin refresh? If I had to guess, we'd see one before the end of August.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Image credit to BigStockPhoto for summer penguin
