As you probably are aware, we at last got genuine confirmation this past Friday on the March seventh/eighth update named the Google Fred update, which I believed focused on low value content websites.
John Mueller really talked about the issue in his Webmaster hangout on Friday evening at around 12:50pm EST, which was 90 minutes after Gary Illyes affirmed the update.
John Mueller at the 53:50 mark into the video was given a Fred quality and in his reaction, John refered to “quality” six times and he didn’t invest all that much time answering the question.
I think we have to lookup again on webmaster guidelines.
Basic principles
- Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
- Don’t deceive your users.
- Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
- Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.