These slides were presented during SMX Paris in June 2013 by an ex-Googler from the Search Quality team, Sebastien Monnier, now a SEO at Woptimo International. He gives a few insights on how Google engineers think penalties.

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Penguin and Panda:
What did they do?

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Sébastien Monnier
CEO, Woptimo

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AGENDA
1. Google Penalties : Where we are now
2. Google‘s Data
3. How to create a good algorithm
4. What about this new Penguin?

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AUTOMATIC PENALTIES
Automatic penalties are based on data and try to fix breaches in Google’s
algorithm.
Examples :
Fight against automatic gibberish text (charabia)
- Check every n-grams on a page. If less than n% of the n-grams can be
found anywhere else on the web.
 Apply a high probability of spam
- If a page has more than 10 highly competitive keywords separated by
comma
 Classify it as keyword stuffed page

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MANUAL PENALTIES
Manual penalties are specific fixes for one or several websites. They are
mostly applied by Search Quality team.
 Based on specific guidelines for issues usually too difficult to tackle with
algorithms
 Ability to semi-automate them with simple rules
Example:
This website is ranking for this query. However, it has 15 links with the same
anchor from blog articles that do not seem legitimate
 This website should not get benefits from these links and future links
with this anchor should be discounted until the webmaster removes bad
linking.

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PANDA
Suggestion for a Panda recipe:
Number of bounces back to serp in less than 30 sec
+
Number of visits that end up clicking on ads or useless websites
-
Number of people searching for your brand
-
Number of social shares
=
Panda adjustment notation

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PENGUIN
Main Penguin algorithm is about links
Example:
If 10 sites linking to you with the same anchor have already been
neutralized, the 5 others links with this anchor may be neutralized as
well + decrease in ranking on this keyword.
These 5 websites may also be automatically neutralized if there are many
suspicious links.
 This hurts a lot link-wheel, spam comments and other BH techniques

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Google’s data

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SIGNALS GOOGLE IS USING OR MAY USE
What are Google’s source of information:
• Your website: HTML code, images, videos…
• Other website: Backlinks, mention…
• Specific website: Social signals, interaction…
• The Serps: click-trough rate, bounce back to serp, number of search for a
given query…
• User’s behavior: based on
• Google Toolbar ??
• Chrome ??
• ISP data ??
• Web browser emulation ??…
• Quality Rater’s feedback

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What is Google’s approach for new algorithms?

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WHAT GOOGLE CARES ABOUT
• SPEED: Never slow down a query
• Serp quality: Are the provided changes actually making things better
• Collateral damage: Do I hurt something else?
• Cost: Is this algorithm too expensive?
• Communication: Will spammers change their behavior in a good way?
It seems that communication is now more important than collateral damage

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CREATING A GOOD ALGORITHM…
• Isolate a quality issue
• Divide between good and bad user experience
• Check data associated to good experience and to bad experience
• Find a good mix of data and set up a threshold
• Launch an A/B serp testing
• If quality is increasing, launch it…

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What about this new Penguin

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WHAT WE KNOW
• Penguin 4 goes much deeper into the websites
• It also hit adult websites
• It is global
 Penguin can’t be too specific (ex : fight against advertorials…)
 Mostly about bad linking

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NEW APPROACH
Manual battle against bad links is expensive and not that efficient…
Google may want to change its approach regarding backlinks.
What could by this new approach?
 Discount any backlinks that is not white-listed
By default, 1 new backlink is suspicious unless considered otherwise.
All backlinks that have just a small amount of suspicion should be
neutralized.

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DANGER
Danger of this method: Serp quality can decrease…
As linkspammers can be very good sites too.
Webmasters need to be educated and the serp should still be relevant.
How to solve this problem?
 Google Penguin !!!

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STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO PENGUIN
Step By Step :
1st – communicate (a lot) about bad links
2nd – go gradually. Do not penalize all the backlinks in 1 shot
3rd – hold the changes and assess the post-penguin Serp quality
4th – If everything’s ok, release the beast
5th – Reiterate with other backlinks / sites

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Thank you
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