This week we reported that Google’s Penguin algorithm doesn’t use machine learning. This was based on what Gary Illyes told us on Twitter. But then someone asked John Mueller of Google answered the question differently.

Here is Gary’s tweet:

Here is John’s tweet:

So based on Gary, the answer is no. Based on John, we should “assume” yes.

So then Gary came in to defend John and Google saying John didn’t say Penguin outright uses machine learning:

Then John came in to explain more:

So then I asked the ranking boss at Google, Paul Haahr, and he said on Twitter “it’s complicated.”

Well, it is complicated to say if most of Google ranking is based on machine learning or not. Maybe I will try to get a better answer from Google in the near future on this topic.

Forum discussion at Twitter.