Google has confirmed that the recent SERPs volatility that got SEO’s and webmasters all talking over the last few days is not a Penguin Update. It was previously reported on the 6th January by major SERP Tracker AccuRanker that they thought it was Penguin, but even at that early stage, we had our doubts. It seems we were right.
The news was first confirmed by Zineb Ait, webmaster trends analyst at Google, who wrote in a tweet responding to a request for the name of the update, “pas de nom. Il s’agit simplement d’une de fréquentes quality updates.” This translates to “no name. It is simply frequent quality updates.”
Of course, this is a rough translation, and we equate the answer to meaning that it was a Core Algorithm Update.
@RaphSEO @korleon38 @abondance_com @seof1 pas de nom. Il s'agit simplement d'une de fréquentes quality updates.
— Zineb Ait (@Missiz_Z) January 12, 2016
The news was confirmed by Gary Illyes, and also John Mueller who tweeted the following:
@jenstar yes, the changes you saw are part of a core algo update. @Missiz_Z is right almost always, you shan't need my confirmation
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) January 12, 2016
@dawnieando It's not penguin; not "confirmed-ish" just "confirmed" :-).
— Hey John, Your profile caught my eye. Ouch. (@JohnMu) January 12, 2016
While Google does not usually confirm core algorithm updates, we suspect that due to the extensive nature of the changes, the level of chatter in the SEO community about the update, and several false reports that it was Penguin they have decided to make an exception.
That means we still have some time to wait before the Google Penguin Update hits, which is due to be changed to a real-time algorithm.