Fred is not an official Google update. Google never confirmed it.
Around 8th Mar 2017, rank trackers and site owners reported major ranking swings. Search Engine Land covered it as a new, unconfirmed ranking update.
It noted that early chatter suspected changes around link quality. Much of that chatter came from the black-hat SEO community.
Google offered only its stock response that it makes updates regularly.
The name was an accident of humor. Google's Gary Illyes joked on 9th Mar 2017 that "from now on every update, unless otherwise stated, shall be called Fred".
The source is Search Engine Journal's history of the update. The community adopted the name for this one.
The most-cited description also comes from the community. Barry Schwartz reviewed more than 100 affected sites for Search Engine Land.
He found roughly 95% were ad-heavy, low-value-content sites that put revenue above helping users. Reported organic traffic drops were 50-90%.
Google declined to describe the update at all. At SMX West later that month, Illyes said Google's search leads had decided not to talk about Fred.
He said only that the techniques it affected were "well-documented within the Google webmaster guidelines". He did not say which.
Because the update was never confirmed, there is no official target and no official recovery path. Everything written about Fred rests on what the community found in the coverage cited here.
