Is Google About to Unplug Its Penguin?

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Editor's note, October 6, 2016: Google spokesperson Gary Illyes made it official. The prediction made in this article by Robert Ramirez came true with the September 2016 Penguin 4.0 update. Inorganic links are not a negative ranking signal, but are rather ignored in Google's ranking calculation. Therefore, the theory in this article is currently a fact. Watch the conversation where Illyes clarifies "downgrade" vs. "devalue". TL; DR – A theory: The next Google Penguin update will kill link spam by eliminating signals associated with inorganic backlinks. Google will selectively pass on link equity based on the timeliness of linked sites, made possible by semantic analysis. Google will reward organic links and maybe even mentions of authoritative sites in any niche. As a side effect, negative link-based SEO and Penguin “penalization” will be eliminated.

Is Google about to kill Penguin? Is the end of link spam for us? Google's Gary Illyes recently took notice of Google's upcoming Penguin update. What he says has many in the SEO industry: The Penguin update will be released before the end of 2015. As it has been over a year since the last update, this would be a welcome release. (Editor's note December 7, 2015: Since publication, a Google spokesperson said, "With the holidays approaching, it looks like penguins won't be walking until next year.") The next Penguin will be a "real-time" version of the algorithm. Many predict that once Penguin becomes part of the standard ranking algorithm, rankings sms marketing service will decline and rise in near real time as Google considers both negative and positive backlink signals.

Presumably, this would include a more immediate impact of disavow file submissions – a tool that has been much debated in the SEO industry. But what if Google's plan is to completely change how Penguin works? What if we lived in a world where inorganic backlinks did n't penalize a site, but were simply ignored by Google's algorithm and offered no value? What if the next iteration of Penguin, the one that should be running as part of the algorithm, was actually Google's opportunity to completely kill the Penguin algorithm and change the way they view links by leveraging their knowledge of authority and semantic relations on the Web ?