Were you affected by penguin 4.0?

After years of engineering at Google Towers, the latest Google Penguin update has finally arrived. One of the most significant new developments from this update means that, moving forwards, Penguin 4.0 now operates in real time.
Google released a statement saying that the impact of the new update may take time to materialise as it needed to re-crawl the whole web. We are now a few weeks into operations under the new algorithm, so it should be becoming clear if you have been affected by the update.
The real-time capabilities mean that your actions, both positive and negative, will be reflected in your ranking much faster than before. If your site is penalised, a good webmaster will now be able to correct the issues very quickly indeed.

Keeping on top of the data available to you is now more important than ever. You may be able to recover quickly, but you will also be penalised quickly should any issues arise. Aside from ensuring that you stick to white-hat techniques at all times, there are a number of things you can do to protect your site.

How to protect your site

1.Keep an eye on your SERPs positions. Monitoring your homepage keyword rankings as well as keywords for your other pages will help to identify any issues, should they arise

2.Your backlinks should be checked regularly, with any new suspicious looking links dealt with as quickly as possible. Google has made a point of emphasising that Penguin 4.0 will now take a very granular approach to its operations. A thorough backlink audit is therefore particularly important.

3.Results from disavowing any links you feel have been holding your website back will be visible fairly quickly.

Ultimately, you will be able to identify the causes of issues far more efficiently with this new Google penguin update. But with great power, comes great responsibility!