Google has always upheld its reputation for delivering relevant content and connecting users with high-quality websites. However, black-hat SEO practices still persist across the platform. To address these concerns, the company periodically releases Google Core Updates to decrease the presence of low-quality and spammy content in Search.
One of its biggest updates so far is one they released on March 2024.
March 2024 Google Update
On March 5, 2024, Google released a new update, potentially changing the way marketers approach search engine optimization (SEO). The key changes under this update primarily involve the following aspects: quality ranking and new spam policies.
- Quality Ranking
In an effort to reduce low-quality results in Search, Google updated its core ranking algorithm to minimize the indexing of unoriginal and nonvalue-adding web pages and content.
Unhelpful web pages are those that:
- Provide poor user experience
- Created for search engines rather than for people
- Designed to attract clicks rather than provide information
The E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) criteria will remain a critical factor in this helpful content update. For example, product reviews written by experts and based on first-hand experience will be prioritized. With this focus, users will be able to easily find helpful information before purchasing or making a decision.
- New Spam Policies
Google is addressing SEO practices that aim to manipulate search ranking with new updates to its spam policies. Websites that violate the platform’s spam policies will rank lower in the search results or not displayed at all.
Scaling Low-Quality Content
Ranking manipulation through scaled content happens when a website produces a large amount of low-quality content that does not help target users. The new Google spam policy ensures that it takes action on scaled content abuse.
Google highlights that the policy applies to all types of content, whether produced through human efforts, automation, or a combination of both. If the scaled content is created to manipulate search results ranking, no matter the manner of production, it will be tagged as spam.
Site Reputation Manipulation
The new Google spam update also covers publishing third-party content on a reputable site to boost the third-party’s websites by association. Spammy behaviors under this category include fake reviews and paid backlinks.
The new spam policy supports Google’s goal of prioritizing natural backlinks, genuine user reviews, and other legitimate signals. Pages that violate this policy will be removed from the search index.
Moreover, Google emphasizes that it does not consider all third-party content as spam. What it wants to avoid is content that is:
- published with limited or no close oversight by the host site
- provides no value
- attempts to manipulate ranking signals
Use of Expired Domain
Sometimes, website owners purchase or repurpose an expired domain to host low-quality content. This is done to take advantage of the domain’s reputation from its previous owner. Google is now targeting these black-hat practices by assessing the relevance and value of the content of redirected URLs (uniform resource locator).
Impact of the March 2024 Google Core Update
Deindexing Low-Quality Websites
Violating Google’s guidelines or employing questionable SEO tactics will not only be penalized but completely removed both from the search results and the index. With this update, Google is taking a firm move towards achieving high-quality and spam-free search results.
According to Matt G. Southern from Search Engine Journal, Google’s March 2024 Core Update has already deindexed over 800 websites just a few weeks following the launch of the update. And this number is separate from the number of deindexed sites from a manual action.
This image is taken from Originality.ai.
In a study conducted by Originality.ai, around 2% of the approximate 79,000 websites were deindexed due to manual action.
The sites that Google deindexed include a wide range of categories and ad networks, demonstrating the significant impact of the algorithm update. One of the notable findings was that there were three sites with a normal organic site visitor of more than 1 million per month that dropped to zero after the update.
Targeting of AI-Generated Spam
In another study by Originality.ai, they discovered that 100% of the sites that received manual deindexing showed signs of using artificial intelligence (AI). Meanwhile, 50% of the 14 websites analyzed had over 90% of their content produced through generative AI. These results suggest that the latest update is weeding out websites that depend on AI content spam to manipulate rankings.
This image is taken from Originality.ai.
However, it is important to note that Google is not going after all AI content. Rather, it wants to clean the Search of results that are useless, repetitive, and spammy – whether it’s written by humans or AI, or both.
Re-strategizing Your SEO
With Google now more unyielding with its goal to remove unhelpful content in the search results, website owners should start prioritizing their delivery of quality, relevant, and original content. The data showing the number of deindexed sites should push brands to take Google’s warning seriously or risk losing traffic, revenue, and their hard-earned search authority.
It is ideal that you assess your existing content to ensure it follows E-E-A-T and adheres to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines. You may need to adopt new SEO strategies to adjust to the March core update and prevent drastic losses.
You can work with an SEO service provider Philippines to help you align your SEO initiatives with the updated Google algorithm.
Prioritize Original and Quality Content with DMP
Maintaining and improving search engine rankings after the March 2024 Google core update entails adhering to the best practice of producing original and quality content. While this may sound overwhelming, especially with the speculations going around, getting the right support can give you clarity and confidence in your next steps.
And who better to help you navigate these complexities than an SEO outsourcing company?
Digital Marketing Philippines (DMP) provides holistic SEO services that are in line with Google’s criteria. If you need SEO consultation to assess the health of your web pages, contact DMP by filling out this form: https://digitalmarketingphilippines.com/contact/.
References:
https://developers.google.com/search/updates/spam-updates
https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-march-2024/
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/5/24091099/google-search-high-quality-results-spam-ai-content
https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-march-2024/
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.