What’s this about?
I think Google confuses itself, but it really doesn’t like admitting it.,,,mmm
Apparently, the Fred Update wasn’t really an update, or at least not a specific enough update to really give it a name and worry about it.
It was just an every day BAU update, if you believe Google. Or something more, if you were hit by it.
Read the full story at the link beneath, including making your site effectively algorithm proof.
This is an extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 29 Sept 2017.
#SEO #SEONews #GoogleUpdates #SERP
Google Still Says Fred Wasn’t a Major Algorithm Update
Summary:
- At the UK Digital Marketing conference BrightonSEO recently, Gary Illyes from Google waxed lyrical about Google’s Fred Update from March this year.
- He downplayed the importance of this update, saying all updates should be called Fred, as Google routinely makes 2-3 algorithm updates a day. (That’s around 700-1,000 a year, folks).
- He also revealed that something like 95% of updates are “not actionable by webmasters”.
- Basically, he wants all webmasters to stop worrying about Google updates.
Actions to take:
- The first thing I always recommend is to stop worrying about Google algorithm updates. They happen, move on.
- The second thing I always recommend is to build content and sites which are (relatively) algorithm proof.
- This means making your content so good and so unique that Google would be failing if it did not rank it well.
- The other approach to take is also to understand that Google is a rational, competitive algorithm. You need your site and content to be better than, but within normal bounds to be continuously successful.
- Think Goldilocks and being “just right”, not too much, and not too little.
- The final thing I recommend is always to pay a little bit of attention to updates, glean where the edges of acceptability might be and make sure you remain inside them.
- Click here to contact me to discuss keeping your site Google update safe.
Discussion:
Google appears to be taking a backwards step in its discussions of algorithm updates, which I think is a shame. For years, they trotted out the “xx updates a day” line, and for the most part that is absolutely true.
What the conveniently trite line manages to ignore is the potential, or actual, impact of those updates. Many of the updates will result in extremely superficial changes to the Google search results, some will bring about a fairly significant shake-up. And despite Google’s best efforts at claiming otherwise, it does care about large-scale results shifts. You can see it when results bounce around in the aftermath of a major release as Google fine-tunes its algorithm change to maintain a consistent set of “good” results.
I realise that there are plenty of people who game the algorithm. We all do to a certain extent, but I still think there is room for honest discourse between Google and the webmasters who provide its content on a daily basis.
Finally, I’d love it if Google put the “95% not actionable by webmasters” issue to the test. I’d be willing to bet that percentage is significantly overstated and webmasters would find a way to action and deliver content aimed at improving its performance in the new algorithm.
More info:
The State of SEO Mid-2017 Released
TL;DR
- Fred wasn’t a proper Google update – says Google.
- Yes it was! Say webmasters.
- No. It wasn’t says Google.
- The likelihood is that it was an update which affected something a lot of optimised sites had been doing, but Google doesn’t want to let on.
- Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
- Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
- Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.
