Google March 2024 Core and Spam Updates: What’s the buzz?

This March, Google released massive search quality enhancements and multiple spam updates. Here are a few suggestions from our web developers in Melbourne.

by Jessica Richards - Business Development Manager
Google March 2024 Core and Spam Updates: What’s the buzz?

Google March 2024 Core and Spam Updates: What’s the buzz?

As technologies, shopping behaviours and customer need change, Google continues to update its search engine algorithms. On March 5th, Google announced its first-of-the-year updates. These core and spam updates are vital for everyone from marketers and business owners to web designers and digital marketing agencies in Melbourne.

Curious to know what major updates Google is making in March 2024? Read on to discover the latest Google search quality enhancements and spam updates that can impact your web presence:

Google March 2024 core and spam updates

The March 2024 updates are much bigger than a few earlier Google updates. According to Google, the new core update may take as long as a month and includes search quality enhancements that will have multiple updates within it. It will show more helpful results using different innovative signals and approaches.

Google also rolled out new spam policies in the same announcement. The Director of Product, Search at Google suggested that the spam updates are designed to help reduce unhelpful content in Google Search. The director quotes:

“We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.” – Elizabeth Tucker

As a result, there can be more fluctuations in rankings than with regular core updates. This may include websites built primarily to match specific search queries. The core and spam updates are already impacting website rankings algorithmically.

What’s included in the updates?

There are three new policies in response to recent complaints about Google’s SERP spam results. These policies are designed to allow Google to take more targeted action against spam. The policies are as follows:

1. Scaled content

Google is strengthening its policy to focus on whether automation, humans or a combination are involved in producing content at scale to boost search ranking. This update will help the search engine to take action on the type of content with little to no value created at scale. This may include the web pages pretending to have answers to popular searches, but failing to deliver helpful content.

2. Site reputation

Google now considers third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes to be spam. For instance, a third party may publish payday loan reviews on an educational website to improve the ranking. Such type of content ranking might mislead visitors, who have different expectations for the content on that given website. Google addresses these types of site reputation abuses now through its new policy.

3. Expired domain

Expired domains are often purchased and repurposed to boost the search ranking of low-quality content, misleading visitors into thinking the new content is part of the older site. This is now considered spam according to the new Google spam update in March 2024.

Why should you care?

There are numerous complaints about Google’s search engine getting worse. Some people claim that Google seems to rank big websites over smaller websites. Also, they believe that website content is simply not good in quality, with Reddit often dominating the Google search results.

The goal of the March ranking changes is to make it easier to find content that reflects first-hand perspectives across all websites in Google search results. Google is also making changes to its search quality rating guidelines by updating the characteristics of unreliable web pages and adding illustrative examples.

How to maintain or improve your search engine ranking?

March 2024 Core Updates have significant implications for website owners as well as web developers in Melbourne. These updates have already impacted many websites, especially those relying on AI-generated content, leading to the deindexing of websites. If you wish to maintain or improve your search engine ranking, you need to:

 Reassess the quality of your website content
 Ensure it meets Google’s content quality standards
 Shift towards human-generated, original web content
 Adjust content strategies to align with the new guidelines

How we can help you adapt to the new Google updates?

Content is a keystone of your website, so make sure it is original and valuable. Website owners should proactively adapt their content strategies in response to crackdowns on spam, duplicate content and AI-generated web pages. With the help of our web development agency in Melbourne, website owners can:

 Audit the existing content to identify any AI-generated material or spam
 Rework it as needed to create high-value content that benefits readers
Optimise the most important pages on a website to comply with Google updates
 Keep up with ever-evolving SEO best practices and algorithm changes by creating a solid marketing plan
 Prioritise creativity and strong editorial standards to maintain compliance with search engine guidelines

In Conclusion

Don’t let your web presence be compromised by unexpected Google updates. When you partner with a digital marketing agency in Melbourne, you will have a team dedicated to helping you adapt to these changes before updates even arrive. Feel free to contact us for more info on how to comply with the new Google Core and Spam Updates.

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