Google’s 2012 update targeting webspam and manipulative link schemes was called Penguin.
Google announced Penguin on April 24, 2012, as an effort to reduce the rankings of websites that violated its Webmaster Guidelines. Its main focus was artificial link manipulation: buying links, participating in link farms, creating automated links, or using other schemes to make a site appear more authoritative than it was.
The first Penguin rollout affected roughly 3.1% of English-language queries, according to Google’s estimates. Google released additional versions during 2012 and later expanded the system. Penguin 4.0, released in 2016, became part of Google’s core algorithm and generally discounted or ignored problematic links rather than applying the older sitewide-style demotion.
Penguin is often confused with Panda. Panda primarily addressed low-quality or thin content, while Penguin concentrated on unnatural linking and related search-engine spam. Pigeon, by contrast, was associated with local search results.