[UPDATED] Google Penguin 3.0 Update Still Rolling Out Slowly to Eat Your Keywords

2.5 weeks ago, Google pushed out the Penguin 3.0 update after waiting over a year to update Penguin 2.1.

Last update later was confirmed and told it would roll out worldwide over the next few weeks. It has been 2 weeks and 4 days and yesterday, Google's John Mueller said as far as he knows, "the whole data is still rolling out slowly."

John said this in a video webmaster hangout on Google+ at 35 seconds into the video. The question was:


Question asked by Baruch, the short version: Is the rollout of Penguin from two weeks ago complete?
John Mueller answered: As far as I know, the whole data is still rolling out slowly. So you might just be seeing fluctuations from that.

[UPDATED]

What is Google Penguin Update?

Google Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black-hat SEO techniques involved in increasing artificially the ranking of a webpage by manipulating the number of links pointing to the page. Such tactics are commonly described as link schemes. According to Google's John Mueller, Google has announced all updates to the Penguin filter to the public.

Effect of Penguin Update

By Google’s estimates,Penguin affects approximately 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in languages like German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of them in "highly spammed" languages. On May 25, 2012, Google unveiled another Penguin update, called Penguin 1.1. This update, according to Matt Cutts, was supposed to affect less than one-tenth of a percent of English searches. The guiding principle for the update was to penalize websites using manipulative techniques to achieve high rankings. The purpose per Google was to catch excessive spammers. Allegedly, few websites lost search rankings on Google for specific keywords during the Panda and Penguin rollouts.[according to whom? Google specifically mentions that doorway pages, which are only built to attract search engine traffic, are against their webmaster guidelines.

Penguin 3 was released October 5, 2012 and affected 0.3% of queries.Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0) was released on May 22, 2013 and affected 2.3% of queries. Penguin 5 (AKA Penguin 2.1) was released on October 4, 2013, affected around 1% of queries, and has been the most recent of the Google Penguin algorithm updates.

Here are some of the reasons why your site might be affected with Penguin update:

• Anchor text over optimization
• Low quality backlinks
• Link relevance
• Outbound link quality
• Link pyramid
• Serving duplicate content from sub-domain (Fixing WordPress duplicate content)
• Keyword stuffing (High Keyword density, repeating Keywords)
• Sending automated queries to Google. Ex software: WebPosition Gold
• Websites with virus or spam warning (Trojans, website distributing malware)
• Affiliate Websites with thin content and no value
• Hidden links and Hidden texts (Black hat SEO practice)
• SEO over optimization
• Any other black hat SEO techniques used