In August it was rumored the new Penguin update would make you ruin your favorite pair of shorts.

From SEOs to webmasters, if you didn’t ruin your shorts over the news, your head was in the sand.

Google’s all-powerful Matt Cutts all but said as much at a SES talk in San Francisco. Will we have to kiss his ring now that we poked the bear?

Of course, he back-tracked his comments when he told http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-warning-15577.html “I wasn’t saying that people needed to overly stress out about the new Penguin update …” That’s easy for him to say since it isn’t his job on the line because of the new update.

So as people anticipated the release of the new Penguin update, they’re told they need to ruin their shorts -but not really. Who doesn’t love mixed signals with news so huge?

Yet when the update was finally unleashed in October, it affected just .3 percent of results. That was it.

Really? After all that was said and anticipated, that’s all that happened?

That was the result of the new Penguin update. Most are still waiting, as is our SEO manager, Chase Anderson. And he’s getting antsy.

As he said, “I want the new Penguin update, and I want it now.”

Google does show mercy around the holidays, and, at least for a few weeks, won’t ruin peoples’ lives. Through November and December, the company loosens its whip cracking. But as soon as the calendar turns to January, the mercy is over.

But here we are in the middle of January and still no new, impactful Penguin update. Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm that was first released in April 2012. The update aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO techniques that artificially increase the ranking of a webpage through manipulating the number of links pointing to a page.

Most believe Google is still actively engaged with this algorithm update, working out all the kinks and doing all it can to increase the potency of it. One can imagine the Google people huddled around a table, running constant updates. Picture a scene from “The Sopranos” when Tony and his minions met in the back room of the Bada Bing club.

Aside from the obvious, SEO and the mafia are similar. Most people don’t know how it works. It’s an exclusive club that takes a while to get an invitation to join. If you do your job right, you move up and gain more power and money. And everyone answers to the SEO patriarch, Google. You try your best to make sure a horsehead doesn’t appear in your bed. When Google does that, you know it’s over.

Back on topic. Most expect the release of the Penguin update to come sooner than later. At this point, it’s fair to wonder if it will at all.

Chase thinks the new update could be released, and soon.

Aside from when, the question is: Just how powerful is this Penguin update?

Will this version make you ruin your shorts?

Time will tell, just don’t expect a straight answer from Cutts or Google.

If you find a horsehead in your bed, you’ll know the answer.