Everything You Need to Know About Google’s Core Algorithm March 2024 Update
Google's March 2024 Core Update has sent waves through the digital community, sweeping up pieces of unhelpful content along the way. This significant update, announced on the 5th of March, is a complete overhaul of the search engine results page (SERP) with many websites being completely deindexed by Google and disappearing from search results altogether.
Whether you see Google’s March 2024 core update and new spam policies as a worry for your brand, or as an opportunity for improvement, understanding its implications is crucial. Below, we take you through the key aspects of the update, what’s changed and why, as well as how you can navigate through it successfully.
What Is Google's March 2024 Core Update?
The update to Google’s Core Algorithm includes a series of changes that are being rolled out in the four weeks following March 5th’s announcement. A Core Update is significant because it means that Google is making changes to the underlying algorithm that determines what ranks highly in search engine results and what may not even be discoverable.
It’s expected to have as big of an impact on SERPs as the famous Panda update, which tackled content farming and poor-quality content, and the Penguin update, which targeted spam and manipulative link-building activities. In fact, Google estimates that it will reduce the amount of “low-quality, unoriginal content in search results” by a staggering 40%.
We’ll explore the changes in more detail below, but the key objectives of the March 2024 Core Update by Google are to:
Improve the ranking of high-quality content and reduce unoriginal content that appears in search results.
Introduce new spam policies to keep spam off of our SERPs.
Websites across the internet are feeling the effects, with reports of entire sites being de-indexed as Google implements manual penalties. The core update signals a fundamental shift in how websites are ranked and prioritized in search results.
Why Has Google Updated Its Core Algorithm?
So, why has Google dropped this bombshell of an update? Google users have been criticizing Google Search recently, noting that larger sites tend to outperform smaller sites, even when the content on the smaller sites is the original, better content.
Although users have been discussing these issues for decades, Google has finally had to really pay attention and take action, since Gen Z and younger audiences have crowned TikTok as their favorite search engine. Even when it’s shared by a bigger account, poor-quality content doesn’t tend to surface on TikTok, as it has to clear the obstacles of the algorithm before it can get millions of eyes on it. Google, on the other hand, would prioritize content from bigger domains, even if the quality wasn’t quite there… until now, that is.
What Changes Did the March 2024 Google Core Update Bring In?
Google is rolling out a series of algorithmic changes to ensure that original, good-quality content is discoverable regardless of domain power. The update also strives to rid SERPs of spam, poor-quality content that may have originally skated by on domain authority, poor-quality AI-generated content, and parasite SEO tactics.
THE HELPFUL CONTENT UPDATE IS NOW PART OF THE CORE UPDATE
The Helpful Content Update by Google is used to prioritize content that is actually helpful to users. Unfortunately, some digital content creators publish content that is written for search engines first, uses black hat SEO tactics to rank higher in SERPs, and isn’t actually useful to humans. So, Google has updated its algorithms to catch those who are trying to trick the system.
Don’t worry, though. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use SEO to boost your chances of ranking highly. You just need to be optimizing good-quality, helpful content.
EXPIRED DOMAIN ABUSE SPAM UPDATE
A common black hat SEO trick is to purchase expired domains and repurpose them to share low-quality or unoriginal content. In this scenario, the authority of the expired domain helps to boost the search ranking of the poor-quality content. Google users then mistakenly think that the content was shared by the original domain owners and interact with it.
However, the practice of buying expired domains to benefit from its domain authority and repurposing it with low-quality content is now considered spam by Google.
SCALED CONTENT ABUSE SPAM UPDATE
Google has been tackling sites that churn out automated, poor-quality content at scale for a long time. With the development of AI, scaled content creation is trickier for search engines to spot. In this update, they’ve adjusted their spam policies to help flag content that generates clicks from users but fails to actually help users answer their search queries.
SITE REPUTATION ABUSE SPAM UPDATE
Sometimes, trusted websites that usually produce good-quality content will host low-quality third-party content as a way to monetize their good reputation. But this randomly placed poor-quality content can be misleading to Google’s users. Therefore, Google will now consider this kind of content spam.
Actions to Take Following the March 2024 Core Update
Following the March 2024 Core Update, website owners and SEO content marketers need to take proactive measures to adapt to these changes:
TRACK YOUR WEBSITE PERFORMANCE TO SEE IF AND HOW YOU'VE BEEN AFFECTED
Track your domain’s performance on Google Search Console to see how you’re performing in search results. You can also use the tool to check if pages are indexed, or you can try searching “site:domain.com” on Google Search.
Keep an eye on GA4 to monitor your site’s traffic levels and take action quickly if you think you’ve been penalized. You can use the data available on GA4 to identify the problem pages.
MAKE SURE YOUR CONTENT IS HELPFUL AND CREATED FOR HUMANS FIRST
As the core update emphasizes, it’s all about prioritizing helpful content in rankings and removing unhelpful content. As long as you’re creating content for humans to use and consume, with the input of a human at the creation level, your website should be spared. While it can be okay to use AI to assist your content creation and planning, don’t rely on it.
ENSURE THIRD-PARTY CONTENT IS USEFUL TO YOUR NATURAL AUDIENCE
It’s fine to host third-party content, so long as it makes sense for your website and your audience. If you don’t think it is, remove it.
Need help navigating Google’s Core Update?
Whether your site has been penalized by Google’s algorithm or you’d like to ensure that your content will perform successfully moving forward, the SEO specialists at Block & Tam are here to help.
