One of the bigger questions folks are asking since Google launched Penguin 4.0 on Friday was if it was fully rolled out. Google was clear when they said it is rolling out but they didn't say how long it will take to roll out.
Google told us it is really never done rolling out because it is real-time, meaning, the signals are constantly being updated. As Google crawls and recrawls and indexes and reindexes the URLs across the web, Penguin scores are being pushed in real time. Thus, it is never ever really fully rolled out.
But many are asking, if the first iteration fully rolled out? Is this new real-time version fully rolled out?
The most direct response we had thus far is "I don't know," from Gary Illyes from Google. He posted this on Twitter in response to the question from Pete Meyers:
@dr_pete I don't know off the top of my head, I'd need to check how many datacenters have the new code, but it's not trivial without coffee
— Gary Illyes (@methode) September 23, 2016
Why would it take a long time to roll out? Well, as I said above, Google might not crawl every URL they are using for calculating a specific Penguin signal for a specific URL so soon. There are many URLs out there that aren't crawled daily or weekly, because (a) the content isn't refreshed ever and (b) the PageRank or importance of the URL is low in Google's mind.
He summed that up also in response to how Dawn Anderson answered that on Twitter as well:
@dawnieando @rustybrick @Marie_Haynes @dr_pete @JohnMu yup, that one
— Gary Illyes (@methode) September 23, 2016
John Mueller also hinted at it on Twitter when he basically said it is almost impossible now to associate a ranking increase or decrease to Penguin these days because of the real time nature and the way it rolls out.
@512banque @methode Given the way these things roll out, I'd say "good luck" -- I don't think that's easily possible, lots of things overlap
— John Mueller (@JohnMu) September 25, 2016
So when will it be fully rolled out? I think for most sites by now, at least the ones that do rank now, you'd see it by now - that is my gut feeling. Of course, it can take weeks to months for 90% of the URLs in Google's index to get it.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
