What did the Google update in 2012 change about link building strategy?

The 2012 Google update, known as Penguin, specifically targeted webspam and manipulative link-building practices. Before Penguin, many websites engaged in acquiring large quantities of low-quality, irrelevant links to artificially boost their rankings. Penguin penalized sites with unnatural link profiles, emphasizing that links should come from authoritative, relevant, and high-quality sources. This shifted the focus from link quantity to link quality and relevance, making it crucial for SEOs to pursue editorial links from reputable sites. The update did not solely affect mobile search, nor did it eliminate backlinks as a ranking factor; instead, it refined how Google evaluated them. It also did not make link quantity the only factor, but rather diminished its importance relative to quality.