Google's March 2024 Core Update: what does It mean for your website?

On March 5th, 2024, the SEO world was suddenly shaken by Google’s latest Core Update, which brought about a series of substantial changes to search algorithms. The fight against digital spam has stirred a wave of concern and uncertainty among website managers. Many of them have experienced a drastic decrease in their site traffic and are seeking to understand the reasons behind this sudden loss and explore potential solutions.

March 2024 Core Update

Google has announced the release of the Core Update, which will take time to roll out, although some sites have already experienced its effects. 

Helpful Content System

The release of the March 2024 Core Update by Google has emphasized its complexity, stating that it involves changes to multiple active ranking systems. The key advice for those creating content for their website is to continue producing text that is genuinely helpful to users, focusing on their needs and interests. Google’s March 2024 Core Update aims to optimize its ranking systems to counteract the proliferation of low-value content and spam. The primary innovation lies in directly integrating Helpful Content System (a Google update launched in 2022) into the core algorithm rather than treating it as a separate system. This underscores Google’s commitment to promoting content quality and improving the user search experience.

March 2024 Spam Update

March 2024 Spam Update was introduced by Google to actively combat spam practices and search engine manipulation. This update represents a significant reinforcement of Google’s policies aimed at improving the overall quality of search results by eliminating low-quality content, link spam, and other forms of manipulation. This update has emphasized the importance of following Google’s webmaster guidelines and adopting ethical and respectful SEO practices to ensure a lasting and successful online presence.

What are the 3 anti-spam policies introduced by Google?

• Expired domain abuse: Google aims to reduce the effectiveness of tactics involving the abuse of expired domains. This practice involves purchasing expired domains to leverage their old traffic and authority, but then filling them with low-quality or spammy content. The update strengthens evaluation criteria to detect and penalize these sites.
• Abuse of automatically generated content on a large scale: another possible area of focus could be the abuse of automatically generated content on a large scale. This practice involves creating large quantities of content generated by algorithms, often of low quality or even irrelevant, solely to increase the volume of indexed pages and manipulate search results. 
• Abuse of the reputation of authoritative sites: finally, Google addresses the abuse of the reputation of authoritative sites by less reliable ones. This practice involves the use of backlinks or citations from authoritative sites to confer false legitimacy and authority to low-quality or even spammy sites. The update enhances its algorithms to identify and devalue such attempts to manipulate search engines. Google states that it has published these guidelines 2 months in advance, giving website owners time to make the necessary adjustments.

With the implementation of these 3 anti-spam rules, Google aims to reduce spam sites by 40%.

Tips to recover lost traffic

If you have lost traffic, you might consider following these strategic steps to gradually try to recover it.

• Site analysis: begin with a detailed analysis of your website to identify possible causes of traffic loss. Check for keyword ranking fluctuations, a decrease in organic traffic, or other indicators of issues.
• Content evaluation: review your site content carefully to ensure it is high-quality, relevant, and original. Remove or optimize any duplicate, low-information, or low-quality content that may have been penalized by the update.
• Backlink examination: check your backlink profiles to identify any spammy or unnatural links that may have contributed to traffic loss. Remove or disavow links that could be harmful to your online reputation.
• Adherence to Google guidelines: ensure your site strictly adheres to Google’s webmaster guidelines. Avoid unethical SEO practices such as keyword stuffing, purchasing links, and automatically generating content.
• Site authority improvement: focus on building a strong and trustworthy online authority for your site. Create high-quality content, actively engage on social media, obtain backlinks from authoritative sources, and demonstrate your expertise in your industry.
• Continuous monitoring and optimization: continuously monitor your site’s performance and make adjustments and optimizations based on trends and the progression of Google updates.

It’s a complex and detail-oriented process, which is why an SEO expert can make a difference in this case. Kontakt, and we’ll help you restore your online balance.

Google’s Core Update: how will it evolve?

Google’s Core Updates will continue to evolve guided by the constant pursuit of improving the quality and relevance of search results, along with protecting the search engine’s integrity from abuse and spam. These updates will remain crucial in keeping Google as a valuable resource for users seeking information online.