Google most recent update, named “Penguin,” was launched in April 2012 has been penalizing overly sites with low quality links or too much same anchor text links or low ratio of good links as compared to poor links. It is expected to continue through the end of 2012.

It has really hit the SEO Industry worldwide. I got it touch with many SEO companies based in United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Europe and United States and found that around 20% to 30% customers of every SEO are hit by this update. SEO business has got down by around 30% as the customers are so much afraid of this update that they do not want to carry on SEO work further. Instead of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the jobs of pruning of links has increased substantially.

Indian SEO industry is working as back end office (SEO Outsourcing) of big SEO companies in United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Europe and United States. Majority of SEO companies based in India are working on off page SEO methods i.e link building and SEO submissions. Penguin update has directly affected the sites which have acquired poor quality links from link building sites, low quality web directories, article or content directories, low quality blog commenting and forum posting. Indian SEO industry is mostly dominated by freelancer (working from home) and small companies of 5 to 20 peoples. These freelancer and small companies were totally involved into creation of such links and have been now badly affected. We have contacted many freelancers and found 80% of them have no work as nobody is ready to buy poor quality links from them. Small companies are also firing their employee and on edge of closing business.

This has happened because SEO outsourcing companies in United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Europe and United States were looking for a low cost links and only freelancers or small companies could provide that. According to Gurpreet Singh a freelancer��� International customer wants PR2 links at 4 USD and directory submission at 0.06 cent how one can deliver the quality links with such price���. The unemployment in SEO industry is on rise because of low demand of SEO submissions and link building.

Few big SEO companies are in India they are also affected by this update but less as compared to freelancers. According to Kevin Kohl CTO of MegriSoft ��� Google Penguin updated has affected the whole SEO industry worldwide and we are also affected to the extent like other SEO agencies Worldwide. Our delivery of quality work still keeps us a head in Indian SEO outsourcing industry.���

In future only big SEO firms in India will survive if they can provide quality links which are meant for traffic not solely for linking juice.