When Google’s Penguin 4.0 update was announced on September 23rd, one of our clients had a number of key pages on its site get deindexed. Their site certainly had several technical SEO, usability and other issues, but I’d hardly classify it is “webspam” which is what Penguin purported to target. Of course as soon as the deindexation (and subsequent organic traffic drop) was identified, we jumped into action to determine the cause which we felt were mostly issues that we had previously identified.

That said, I think we missed one big issue so I am presenting it here for you to cut and paste into your SEO audit docs:

P0: Google Screwed Up Its Algorithm 

Here’s the supporting documentation:
Penguin IndexationAs you can see as of this weekend, it appears that Google has tweaked whatever it rolled out on the 23rd and as a result, many of the deindexed URLs are now back at something close to their pre-9/23 levels.

Whenever Google rolls out an algo update, particularly a big one like Penguin, it’s not uncommon for it to keep turning the dials for several weeks after the release.

Sometimes, the best SEO medicine is to just wait and see what happens.

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One Response Comment

  • Netref  November 12, 2016 at 3:04 pm

    You are right but sometimes, it can take a very long time before seing any improvement.
    In this case, i’m thinking google did many tests during september, that can explain the roller-coaster movements during this period.