In 2012, Google officially launched the “Spam Algorithm Update,” which Image Manipulation specifically targeted link spam and manipulative link building practices. The web spam algorithm later became known (officially) as the Penguin Algorithm Update via a tweet from Matt Cutts, who was head of the Google Webspam team at the time. While Google has officially named the algorithm Penguin, there is no official word on the origin of this Image Manipulation name. The name of the Panda algorithm comes from one of the main engineers involved, and it is more than likely that Penguin comes from a similar source.

One of my favorite theories about Penguin's naming Image Manipulation is that it pays homage to The Penguin, from DC's Batman. Minor Weather Report: We pushed the 1st Algo Penguin data refresh an hour ago. Affects <0.1% of searches in English. Background: http://t.co/ztJiMGMi — Matt Cutts mattcutts) May 26, 2012 Before the Penguin algorithm, link volume played a bigger role in determining a webpage's score when it was Image Manipulation crawled, indexed, and crawled by Google. This meant that when it came to ranking websites based on these scores for search results pages, some low-quality websites and pieces of content appeared at more prominent positions in organic search results than they did. they shouldn't have.

Advertising Continue reading below Why Google Image Manipulation Penguin was needed Google's war on poor quality started with the Panda algorithm, and Penguin was an extension and addition to the arsenal to fight that war. Penguin was Google's answer to the growing practice of manipulating search results (and rankings) through black hat link building techniques. Cutts, speaking at the SMX Advanced 2012 conference, said: We see it as something Image Manipulation designed to combat low-quality content. It started with Panda, then we noticed there was still a lot of spam, and Penguin was designed to address that.