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Google: Our search leads won’t let us talk about the Fred update

Gary Illyes from Google said the techniques Fred went after specifically are mentioned in their webmaster guidelines.

Barry Schwartz on March 23, 2017 at 2:25 pm

Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst at Google, said at SMX West today that the Google search leads have decided not to talk about the Fred update that touched down on March 7, 2017. Google would not confirm this last algorithm update, but this statement about Google not talking about it may be a confirmation by itself.

Illyes went on to add that this update targets specific techniques that are well-documented within the Google webmaster guidelines. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t go on to explain which guidelines specifically were targeted by this Fred update.

In our own analysis, we said Fred targeted low-value content that focused on revenue generation techniques.

This is the closest we got to an official confirmation from a Google representative on the March 7, 2017, Google update named Fred.

Postscript: Gary Illyes responded to us on Twitter saying “obviously there was an update.” “Why would we deny that,” he added.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.