Search Engine Land is arguably the most regularly updated source of news for online marketing professionals.

Currently at the top of the bill is news of a new Google Penguin update.

The update is called Penguin 2.0, or Penguin 4.

2.0 or 4?

Which one is it?

Whilst I sit here with my morning coffee, trying to decipher the name of the update is hard, so what chance does anyone have of working out what the update actually means?

This is endemic of the current state of online marketing, where obfuscation is used as a tool to confuse clients to the point of compliance.

Look at this article from Search Engine Land about Penguin 2.0 / 4.

A full three quarters of the way down the page and words are still being used on working out what the update is called.

I (like many I suspect) scan these types of articles in the brief moments of down time I have throughout a day.

I like to think of myself as relatively able at understanding new ideas.

Yet I have no idea what this article is about.

“but if this next one is the “true” Penguin 2, are we going to make a mistake calling it Penguin 4? I’ll argue not as big a mistake as if we called it Penguin 2.”

What?!

After all of this name calling there is a video at the end of the article by Google’s alpha geek, Matt Cutts who explains what the ‘future holds’ for the search engine.

His headline message is this:

“Make a great site that users love…we try to make sure that if that is your goal we (Google) are aligned with that goal.”

That sounds pretty simple to me.

Don’t build a crappy website.

Don’t build a website people won’t care about.

Put hard work in and you will succeed.

That last one sounds familiar.

Oh, that’s right, that’s because it applies to absolutely everything else in the world.

Don’t overcomplicate things. Just work hard, moron.