Is the penguin penalty still relevant at all or are less relevant/spammy/toxic backlinks more or less ignored by the ranking algorithm these days?"John replied saying that in most cases, Google will just ignore the links but in some cases, where there is a clear pattern of spammy and manipulative links by the site, Penguin may decide to simply distrust the whole site.John said "I'd say it's a mix of both" when he answered that question. Meaning, Google Penguin can both ignore links and demote sites, if necessary. John said "if our systems recognize that they can't isolate and ignore these links across a website." John added that if Google can see a "very strong pattern there" the Google "algorithms" can lose "trust with this website" and you may see a "drop in the visibility there."
"Penguin 4.0"
