Late last week, Google posted a warning against using articles for link building and many thought we were going to see mass link penalties shortly after. I even asked Gary Illyes from Google about that and he didn't reply to me about it.
But later on, a few days later, he replied to someone else saying that this blog post was just a general reminder. He said on Twitter that no, this is not about a Penguin update, "this is just a general reminder," he added.
@akuchaaaan007 No, this is just a general reminder
— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) May 29, 2017
He even added that the ranking fluctuations we have been seeing over the past couple weeks starting on May 16th is unrelated to this general reminder.
@akuchaaaan007 Nope :)
— Gary Illyes ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ (@methode) May 29, 2017
So there you have it - I wouldn't expect a new wave of manual actions or algorithmic penalties around this "general reminder." So you all can calm down a bit and get back to your normal business of not building articles for link generation.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
