Ladies and gentlemen, the latest Google Penguin update has arrived. Here’s an early report on how it’s affecting rankings.
Here at STAT Search Analytics, we focus on high-volume, real-time SERP tracking. That puts us — and our clients — in an excellent position to see algorithmic changes as they happen.
In the past 48 hours, we’ve been seeing major fluctuations in our clients Google SERPs across a variety of industries and verticals.
So, what exactly has changed?
Across the board, we’re seeing a big jump in the number of keywords ranking in the top 100 for larger brand-name websites. As a result of this increase in total ranking keywords, their average rankings have actually worsened.
We’ve been watching the number of keywords ranking on the first page remain relatively stable for most sites. Across 3,000+ websites that we’ve audited, the average number of first-page rankings has only improved by 3.06 percent. For many highly competitive SERPs, the top-20 results also seem to be relatively stable.
Instead, the majority of impact from this update seems to be concentrated deep in the SERP — third page and lower, to be precise.
Finally, while it may not be part of this latest Penguin update, we’ve also been noticing a steady increase in the number of blended universal search results. Part of this increase can be attributed to the emergence of expanded inline Google Maps results appearing for queries like [where is Oslo] or [New York City boroughs]. The rest is a result of the ongoing increase in the number of Images, Places, and News results that we’re seeing blended into the SERP.
Who wins and who loses?
- Loser: low-quality, spammy content
It appears that this update has mostly targeted lower-quality content deep in the SERP, making room for higher-quality content to enter into the top 100. - Winner: higher-quality content and big brands
Even though average rankings have fallen for brand-name sites, this is only a side effect of pulling more keywords into the top 100. Overall, their search visibility has increased. - Winner: Google
With the growth of blended universal results and other knowledge graph results, Google’s own products have claimed yet more real estate in the SERP.
Please keep in mind that while we do track a very diverse set of industries and verticals, our metrics are dependent on the data we have in our index. If you belong to a particular industry or vertical that is not well represented in our index, you may not be seeing exactly the same impact that we’re seeing.
Happy optimizing,
Rob and the STAT Team.
Nice summation, would love to see the raw data to support these claims. Very interesting.
The increase in universals is interesting. Do you have data specifically on the increase of local packs over time?
Yes ! Exactly what I was thinking when analysing my own results : this “penguin” as a taste of Panda. So what’s next ? Panguin ? Or maybe Penda ? ^^
Thaks for your report by the way 😉
Darren, the increase we saw was across an entire set of keywords, not on individual SERPs. We’re still seeing 7 packs, and in-line places results as well.
Granted we all know high quality content when we see/read it but how do you believe Google is targeting this content algorithmically? It just seems to me that social sharing would be used as a key indicator of quality content…is there any data pertaining to social media’s impact in Penguin 2.0?
Well Brian, the word “preference” is never the same for two people. However, that doesn’t stop Google to work with the website’s internal laws. First Google judges the website according to G’s own algorhytms, then it judges content compared to the best which that very same site can offer. Then those two results are combined to form the usefulness of the content. I believe that’s how it works atm. However, I could be gravely wrong. This is just a suggestion based on what I can see is happening.