For much of last year, Google suggested that a new Penguin update would likely hit before the end of 2015. That never happened, and it became apparent that it was pretty much ready, but they wanted to put it off until after the holidays.
It has since become apparent that it was probably not ready after all. After they said they weren’t going to release the update in 2015, they hinted at a January launch. In mid-January, the message became that they were aiming for a launch this quarter.
Now, midway through February, it sounds like it’s possible that that isn’t even the case. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable highlights a tweet from Gary Illyes indicating that he has no idea if the Penguin update is still likely to come this quarter.
@mrjamiedodd I haven't talked to the engineers for some time, I don't know.
— Gary Illyes (@methode) February 12, 2016
It’s worth noting that Illyes isn’t actually on the team that works on Penguin even if he generally serves as one of the main messengers to webmasters.
As you probably know by now, this Penguin update is supposed to go real-time, so it will continuously update without webmasters having to wait forever for a refresh if they happen to be impacted by it and need to make changes to their site to recover visibility in search results.
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