At the beginning of March 2017 webmasters started to suspect Google had released a new update due to fluctuations in traffic and rankings. It is believed that on March 8th a new unconfirmed Google update was released called Fred.
We’ve heard of Pigeon and Penguin, but Fred? Webmasters have named this update Fred due to Gary Illyes from Google once joked that all updated should be named Fred.
What is Fred?
Google’s latest rumoured update is supposedly targeting websites which are ad heavy, have low value content and provide no benefit to the user. As Google tends to not confirm algorithmic changes as of late due to algorithms apparently changing every day, it is unlikely we will find out if Google really did make a big change on March 8th. Members of the ‘black hat’ SEO community have especially been talking about changes to their performance after this update, so the update may also be cracking down on websites will poor backlink profiles.
What Does Fred Mean For Your Website?
If the sole purpose of your website is to make money from the ads and you are not providing any additional value, you are likely to fall in the rankings after this update. To recover from Fred you should start identifying which areas of your website are low value and auditing your backlinks to weed out any poor quality links.
Is it your site not ranking? You may have been given a Google Penalty, get in touch about penalty recovery.