Fred Update or Panda Update?
Another unconfirmed update is now (sort of) confirmed for Google’s Fred Update that was pushed out around March 7-8 2017. Gary Illyes responded to questions about the Google Fred Update at SMX West indirectly confirming that the update targeted low quality content.
Here’s what you need to look for:
- Ad Heavy
- Low Value Content
Reading the SEO message boards, various users are calling a spade a spade, which would basically be another Panda update. Google is turning up the dial on forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior on websites. Make sure you check your website’s analytic reports and look for any strong dips in the past two weeks. If you are running heavy ads on the site or pushing ads to earn revenue, you might want to rethink your strategy.
Below is confirmation from SerpMetrics with a 30 day flux chart showing the heavy SERP changes in Google at around March 7-8, 2017.
Many of the sites negatively impacted are content sites that write about anything, with no real expert authority and no sound categorization of the site. Some of these sites included blogs that took a 50%-90% hit in traffic. Google’s unconfirmed Fred Update hit sites with low value content hard and will continue to do so for those sites forcing ads and poor content to users.
Here’s a brief video:
