It’s been over 9 months since Google rolled out the Penguin algorithm update (April, 24th) which was targeted at link spam. According to the Search Engine Roundtable poll 65% of web sites were hit by Penguin. The situation is still almost the same after the three Penguin updates have rolled out.
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As the latest Barry Schwartz’s poll has demonstrated 94% websites hurt by new anti-spam Google algorithm have not recovered. Though 13% of those who responded to the poll
and admitted they were affected by this change claim there was a partial recovery. But the majority admitted the futility of all attempts to recover from the Penguin, and this is 81% of the websites hurt.
However, it may be too early to panic. Firstly, because the results of the poll ran by Barry Schwartz were based on about 500 responses of web masters. This representative sample is not good enough if to take into account those who were impacted were probably more likely to take the poll. Secondly, there are 6% of those lucky who claim the managed to fully recover. And thirdly, not so long ago Google has released a disavow link tool for the Penguin victims.
According to Search Engine Roundtable data 43% of west webmasters already used the disavow tool and 8% of those who took the poll said they would use the disavow tool soon. But 43% of webmasters for some reason ignore this additional opportunity to get out of the Penguin. And this even after case studies that confirmed the disavow tool actually worked were announced.
But let’s not hurry with our conclusion about those 48% who didn’t use the tool and ignored the generous offer of the help from the Google. Probably they are confident in their own capabilities and are sure they can do without it. Probably those who didn’t use the disavow tool were not hit by the Penguin and that was the reason they disregarded the tool. We can also assume that among those webmasters were some who figured out to be more sagacious than their colleagues.
The main idea of the majority of the latest discussions on Webmaster World is the appeal to diversify the traffic sources. Those who solely depend on Google search traffic risk to lose their business. Every next Penguin, Panda, EMD, Page Layout (Baby Panda), DMCA or anything of the kind update can cause the decrease of the traffic and number of customers, as well as the influence capability to pay the hosting. Meanwhile, a lot of online resources still depend 95% on Google traffic. Not creating mobile external applications and not doing SMM the owners of websites most likely doom their business.
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