70% Said Google's Penguin 2.1 Update Hurt them

About six-months ago, Google unleashed a major update to Penguin, the Penguin 2.1 update.

The earlier feedback from that update was that is was a big impact to webmasters and mostly SEOs who used links in an aggressive manner.

So I posted a poll asking you how you did with the update. Being that six-months later there has been no reports of a new Penguin refresh or update, I figured I post the poll results today.

We had over 2,800 responses to the poll, and 70% said they saw a drop in Google referrer traffic after the update. So 70% seemed to have been negatively impacted by it. While only 7%, or just about 200 people, reported their sites recovered from a previous Penguin update with Penguin 2.1. 6% said they saw an increase in traffic, where one site goes down, another benefits. And 17% said they saw no change at all before or after.

Here is the pie chart:

Again, we are still waiting for a Penguin refresh for over six-months. I think we are due one soon.

Google Penguin Updates:

• Google Penguin 2.1 on October 4, 2013
• Google Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013
• Google Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012
• Google Penguin 1.1 on May 24, 2012
• Google Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012

Disclaimer: Please see my poll disclaimer post before coming to any conclusions on these results.