Back in June, Google told us the Penguin update is months away at best. We also know Google is working on a real time update to the algorithm, so it runs immediately and would not require manual pushes.
This morning in a Google+ Hangout, John Mueller said at the 28:25 mark or so that he doesn't know for sure when the Penguin algorithm would launch but if he had to guess, it would be before the end of the year and it would be the real time version.
John said:
I don’t feel comfortable making that far of a future decision. So I would guess but... it is really hard to say.Sometimes we see things where we have all the internal information all lined up, we’re going to launch this in two or three days and everything is going to be awesome. And then something pops up and then we say we have to fix this problem first or there’s something with this data, and it gets delayed for a couple of days or maybe a couple of weeks. And these things always come up. And it’s something that I think it’s something that we need to make sure we respond to, and we don’t just roll out something that isn’t completely ready.
So from that point of view, if it’s more than a month out, then, we can’t really say anything.
Of course, Google was suppose to launch the real time version before and they didn't. I suspect the next time they announce anything Penguin related, it will be the real time announcement.
But obviously, only time will tell.
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at Google+.
