Webmasters and SEOs need to have a bit more patience, as Google is not releasing the updated Penguin algorithm this year.

Although everyone, including us, was expecting the Google Penguin update to happen by the end of this year, Google just informed Search Engine Land that because of the holidays, the update won’t be released until next year.

A Google spokesperson told us today, “With the holidays upon us, it looks like the penguins won’t march until next year.”

The next Penguin update is expected to be real-time, meaning as soon as Google discovers the links to your site, be they bad or good links, the Penguin algorithm will analyze those links in real time, and ranking changes should happen in almost real time.

Penguin will continuously update, as opposed to SEOs and webmasters having to wait months or even years for Google to update it. The last official Penguin update, Penguin 3.0 happened on October 17, 2014, more than 13 months ago.

So webmasters will need to wait and be a bit more patient, as it won’t be released this year.