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It seems like Google Penguin has been on some sort of vacation, since it has now been over 10 months since the last refresh.
The sad part is, those who have spent the past 10 months trying to "fix" their sites, are in a penalty box just waiting. They are suffering, many businesses cannot sustain paying payroll with such a hit, and small mom and pop shop are closing up shop.
So why can't Google refresh the algorithm to let those who paid their dues and made the fixes necessary come back in Google's good graces?
Josh Bachynski, the one who questioned Matt Cutts on ethics asked Google's John Mueller that question 40 minutes and 44 seconds into the Google Webmaster Hangout on Google+ this past Monday.
John responded that Penguin can't be a simple refresh, it needs a "complete data refresh" and that it is not just a basic "tweak." It needs a "complete rerun" of the algorithm and that is something they do not simply do "randomly." John added that this specific algorithm is taking longer because they want to "make sure it is the right type of data" and they do it right. To do it right, they need to test it and tweak it and then run the update with new data completely.
Google is working on it but 10 months later, is a long long time for many webmasters.
Here is the video:
Forum discussion at Google+.
