Google’s Fred update, the update encompassing many updates that SEOs have seen in fluctuations in the search results is still a hot topic.  Fred, which we know is a quality related update, was discussed by Gary Illyes from Google at last week’s SMX Advanced.

Illyes confirmed one thing that some SEOs had pondered about the update.  He confirmed that the updates known as Google Fred (of which there are many of them) is not a new version of the Google Panda algorithm.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to most SEOs, since many of the suspected signals of Fred were not quality content specific, and because Google seems to be happy with how Panda is working today.  But the Fred update does have some similarities with Panda because they both revolve around quality, although it is much less specific than Panda, which deals solely with content on a page.  Fred covers many other quality signals, which can be found in Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines.

Google’s Panda algo is still an active part of Google’s ranking algorithm today.