Matt Cutts, head of Google webspam, recently announced an update to its Penguin algorithm. It is the 4th major update, which the company has rolled out and is believed to affect 2.3% of English searches.
With what has been seen till date is that theGoogle Penguin 2.0 (name of the recent update) is targeting web spamming strongly. With the intention of giving the user best possible results in the search engines, which do not redirect them to a "no use" webpage or blog, Google is downgrading the rankings of websites that are using Black-Hat SEO techniques to generate traffic and ranking.
Impact has been massive also equal to the first time Penguin came for the first time. Many big websites have seen major fall in the search engine ranking after this update. And at the same time many small websites surprisingly saw an upgrade in ranking.
Keyword stuffing, though it has been in check since first Penguin rolled out, has been further stern. It has been done so that the user can have results with knowledge-rich content and not pages stuffed with keywords with no insight on the topic.
Anchor text and back links that have been major source of traffic and ranking for websites have been affected as well. Google Penguin is checking every back link thoroughly so that it can find one that are genuine and other that are fake.
Natural back links and mixed anchor text are being rewarded byGoogle Penguin 2.0 . Websites that have been carrying out White-Hat SEO have been benefited while those involved in Black-Hat SEO are being penalized.
Websites having duplicate content has also been affected. Content linked by multiple URL also comes under this. Original and genuine content that gives actual insight to users will be promoted, others will be demoted as simple as that.
Keyword stuffing is another method that can bring your website ranking down. What SEO used to do is stuff various keywords in one content as to generate traffic but the content was not good enough. Google made sure that the content is not stuffed with keywords and it provides knowledge-rich content to users.
When a user types something on search engine, it is considered as keyword. All websites play around them but there is a correct method and then there is a wrong method. Google is promoting the former one.