Since yesterday morning, the SEO industry has been watching an unconfirmed Google ranking update that has been going on for the past 24+ hours. This update has been named the Fred update and it seems to target more of the link quality aspects of the overall algorithm.
We’ve seen more chatter and changes from within the “black hat” SEO community versus the “white hat” SEO community, which generally means that this is a spam algorithm update around links. Last time we reported a link spam related update was in early February and that update also was unconfirmed by Google.
There was also a large content quality Google update on February 7th that was also unconfirmed by Google. As you expect, Google is very unlikely to confirm algorithm updates these days – but that won’t stop us from reporting large shifts in the search results that convey an algorithm update has happened.
Many of the automated tracking tools currently show significant volatility and fluctuations, which is an indicator of an update. Plus with all the industry chatter with webmaster both complaining about ranking declines and rejoicing about ranking increases, the chances that there was a Google update is likely.
Google has not confirmed or denied an update – we are waiting to hear back from Google on if they have any comment or not. All we have right now are the typical Google lines from John Mueller and Gary Illyes that Google makes updates all the time.
If and when we get an update from Google, we will make sure to update you. For now, you can read about the chatter and ranking speculation over here.
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