Google has recently announced and revised their Webmaster Guidelines.
According to Webmaster Support
"Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines."
It
means if you are intentionally trying to raise your websites PageRank
by smartly using tailored anchor texts in the content on article or
content posting websites, blog comments, guest blog posts, press
releases, paid linking schemes etc. then definitely it is going to be
considered violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines and have a negative
impact on your website's position in Google SERPs.
Two weeks ago, Google announced Penguin 2.0 and according to that approximately 2.3% English queries are having its effect. Matt Cutts was absolutely right, this new Penguin
rollout is more aggressive and expected to go deeper and have greater impact on search results as
compare to previous ones. We can say future Penguin breed will be more sharper and tougher. Obviously it is a challange for the SEOs arround the world to cope with the impact what Mr. Cutts' Penguin are having :)
Were you hit by Penguin 1.0?
If your site was hit by Penguin 1.0 and you are still struggling to recover from its impact, then there is a bad news for you :( Penguin 2.0 is more crazier, deeper and worse than ever before.
Matt Cutts explains:
I personally have noticed that UK websites have more impact as compare to any other part of the world.
Previous Penguins:
Before Penguin 2.0 Google has released 3 penguin updates with different level of impact on search queries around the world. Obviously the main focus of Google is to fight against spam and provide searchers with best possible relevant results.
Penguin 1st release - on April 24, 2012 (impact level upto 3.1% of queries)
Penguin 2nd release - on May 26, 2012 (impact: less than 0.1%)
Penguin 3rd release - on October 5, 2012 (impact: upto ~0.3% of queries)
Penguin 4th release - on May 22, 2013 (impact: 2.3% of queries)
Penguin 2.0 Top 10 Losers
According to SearchMetrics penguin 2.0 has hit mostly porn sites, game sites, low quality blogs and spam sites. But there are few big Big Brands like "The Salvation Army", "CheapOair" and unexpectedly sites like ETS (Educational Testing Service) who also have very bad impact of this update. According to an initial study of SearchMetrics about Penguin 2.0 followings were the top 10 loser of Penguin 2.0
January 22nd 2013, according to an official tweet Google announced its first algorithm update of 2013. It is sequel of Panda update, an algorithm launched in February 2011 ( http://goo.gl/Og8sF ). This current episode is 24th refresh to the Panda update.
Panda #24 is supposed to affect 1.2% of search queries. Many websites have already got this effect and others might be getting in next few days.
