Google Fred Update Targets Ad Heavy, Low Value Content Sites

[reseller]

The Google Fred Update which we first spotted rolling out early morning on March 8th seems to be fairly big. After reviewing well over 70 sites that were hit by this update, 95% of them share two things in common. The sites all seem content driven, either blog formats or other content like sites and they all are pretty heavy on their ad placement. In fact, if I dare say, it looks like many (not all but many) of them were created with the sole purpose of generating AdSense or other ad income without necessarily benefiting the user.

[seroundtable.com...]

[30K_a_month]

this thread is trash, no valid information at all.

[spunkle]

i thought panda was supposed to be part of the everyday algo now.
i didn't think they ran it periodically anymore -- it just runs every day, like everything else.

Parts of panda updates are still manual, the updates are still manual i believe, the data gathering for panda is auto: [seroundtable.com...]

[aristotle]

this thread is trash, no valid information at all

How did you reach that conclusion? Did you do a more thorough and complete analysis of the effects of the update than anyone else did?

[reseller]

I'm looking forward for the next Panda Refresh followed by recovery of some/many WebmasterWorld friends websites which were hit by Mar 8th 2017 update. Lets hope so :)

[petehall]

The more I read Barry Schwartz great post mentioned at top of this thread, the more I think that Google Fred update of Mar 8th, 2017 is a fresh version of the good old Panda Update.

Hi reseller... long time.

And I'm here because I smell Panda.

[reseller]

Hi petehall

Yes, Panda is in the air :)

[rustybrick]

Fred might be similar to Panda, but Fred is its own animal. :)

[petehall]

Granted, but is the activity I've been seeing over the last couple of days Fred? Because it looks very familiar to me and has only just started this week.

[reseller]

Fred might be similar to Panda, but Fred is its own animal.

Hi rustybrick

Accordingly we gonna have two Panda related updates:

1- The original Panda update which is supposed to run in Real-Time and being integrated in the core algorithm

2- Fred Update which might be similar to Panda and supposed to be run manually

Here is some food for the thought :) :

- Whats the wisdom in having the two above mentioned Panda related updates?

- Could it be that Fred Update has substituted the original Panda Update?

[reseller]

A relevant post from Search Engine Roundtable of Mar 24, 2017 :
Google Has Now Confirmed The Fred Algorithm Update [seroundtable.com...]

[guggi2000]

Can anyone share some data of the drop/increase?

We saw a drop on February 8 and March 8, each time by 10%. It is not a site-wide hit. International pages were hit with a delay of a few days.

Ads above the fold: Rectangle and half of the Skyscraper. Bounce rate on pages that were hit below 50%. No affiliate. Never did link building.

[EditorialGuy]

Can anyone share some data of the drop/increase?

We saw a rise of 8+ percent in early February and 9+ percent in early March.

Site characteristics:

- Information site, at its current domain since 2001.

- In-depth editorial content (no UGC).

- One ad space per page in the right margin of desktop/laptop/tablet pages. (No ads on smartphone pages except for small house ads.)

- Affiliate links when they're relevant to the content, but not an "affiliate site."

[Martin Ice Web]

Google Has Now Confirmed The Fred Algorithm Update

They say:

answers can be found in webmaster guidelines

This is complete nonsense.

[reseller]

I guess that those webmasters whom websites have been hit by Google Algorithm Update of Mar 8th 2017 (the so called Fred Update) might be interested to know whether there would be a Fred Refresh which might enable their affected websites to recover.

I think that such refresh might be rolled out between now and 8th April 2017 :)

[Jez123]

What is the general consensus on this update? Is it Links or Content? Looking around I am hearing some say it's like Panda and related to content and ads and others (such as semrush) saying possibly links related.

[rt0015]

Basically, it is related with the Panda. using the low quality it may effect on the google search engine rank. in Digital Marketing , content is the soul so always attached with the google update algorithm.

[guggi2000]

@reseller Do you mean because the previous ones where on the 8th?

[Martin Ice Web]

@reseller, from what i can see, this update seems to be still in progress. Yesterday was another big shake up.
I see site ( 100% clean ) lost nearly 95% traffic. All the traffic that was lost, is about the main keyword / main topic of the sites. The traffic that now comes from google is rubbish. 100% zombies + 100% bounce.
It is like they cut out the wrong traffic. I doubt that this will be good for users though.

[Martin Ice Web]

guys, i digged in depper. All sites that lost traffic are highly optimized sites ( not in regard of keywords ) but speed, minify html, css.
All site that are now in top ten donīt even try to speed up or minify html. There are sites with realy old html tags ( sites based on <table> ) ruling the serps.
Information content is not better than other sites.

[Shaddows]

This idea that Fred targets low quality revenue-generation-only sites does not make a lot of sense to me.

Since "Fred" we are right at the top end of "within variance" and I'm close to saying we're up. But... we're an ecom. Fred should not affected us at all, if it was all about how info sites are rated.

Obviously, all ecoms are about selling stuff, so to differentiate the monetisation method is nonsensical.

[guggi2000]

@MartinIceWeb Yes, we see that too, although we are undergoing a https move... maybe not the right time to "place feedback" . But could you check by GEO? US vs EU etc... and report?

[syedyasir]

"There are sites with realy old html tags ( sites based on <table> ) ruling the serps. "

I have noticed this too.

[Martin Ice Web]

@guggie2000, i canīt say anything about US. We are in europe. I can tell you thta i see the same pattern in pl, fr, de.
90% of 10 ten pages are confirmed by google site speed test to be less than 80/100. In some cases less than 50/100.
Highly optimized sites are gone.
Comparing content i would say it is equal but very old school looking.
-Some site donīt even use the page main keyword in title. (very short generic titles)
-internal linking is gerneric ( means nearly no keys in anachor )

This looks vermy much like there has been a overoptimize filter beeing implied.

On the other hand i canīt find an 100% matching query -> title ( except for amazon / ebay )

[guggi2000]

@martiniceweb did you see that in Germany also on March 8? Did you check by GEO on March 8?

[Jori]

Just to confirm what Martin Ice Web is saying : I have the same conclusions. Content and technical optimization is now irrelevant.

I saw a lot of EMDs in front of me. A lot of big websites : pages with very low content not even answering the question, but from big players.
Hell, even a broken website (with wrong link to thei CSS) is in front of me !

This is really annoying, since it was Google that push us in first place to optimize our websites !

[EditorialGuy]

"There are sites with realy old html tags ( sites based on <table> ) ruling the serps."

As Tedster used to warn, don't assume that correlation is causation.

[reseller]

@guggi2000

@reseller Do you mean because the previous ones where on the 8th?

@MartinIceWeb

@reseller, from what i can see, this update seems to be still in progress. Yesterday was another big shake up.

I think Fred Update is over and I'm expecting a Fred Refresh (Panda Refresh) soon :)

[Jez123]

I'm seeing a whole lot a shakin' going on too.

[reseller]

Just wish to mention that today Mar 27th 2017 is a good day for rolling out a Fred Refresh (Panda Refresh) ;)

[martinibuster]

Google Fred Update Targets Ad Heavy, Low Value Content Sites

Probably not.

Here's why:

The purpose of the core algorithm is to rank sites. An improvement to the core algorithm is more likely to be an improvement in ranking sites than it is an improvement in de-ranking sites.

The idea that the update is targeting "Ad Heavy, Low Value Content Sites" is a mistake.

It's a mistake because it causes you to focus on the wrong things, like ad heaviness etcetera. From the examples I have seen, Google is focusing on finding the right sites, not punishing the wrong sites. There's a big difference, this is not semantics, because this forces you to see the connections between the sites that are winners and better understand why some sites are losers.

Good luck,
;)

Roger Montti