Unpacking the March 2024 Google Core Update
E2 Marketing Solutions
March 28, 2024
Web developers and search engine optimizers are on the edge of their seats following Google’s latest announcement involving two substantial updates to their algorithms. In this latest addition to The Beta Blog, we’ll unpack exactly what’s changing and how to avoid negative impacts to your website and search engine rankings.
The 2024 Google Core Algorithm and Spam Updates
On March 5th, Google announced the rollout of a new Core Algorithm update and a Spam update. The intentions by Google are ones we should all appreciate, aimed at reducing the amount of clutter and spam on search engine result pages (SERP). Or in other words, their intent is to reduce the amount of click bait, traffic focused, and AI generated content that we have all experienced. Most of us would agree that making the internet a better place should be a consistent focus, but how can you be sure that your website and content is safe from being penalized?
The first step is understanding exactly what’s involved in each update.
Dissecting Google’s March 2024 Core Algorithm Update
First, it’s important to note that the new Core Algorithm update is complex and will take time to complete. At the time of writing this article, the separate Spam update is complete while the Core Algorithm update is still processing (specifically pending within the Ranking service that Google provides). Status on the progress can be found here.
Again, the purpose of the Google Core Algorithm update is to improve the quality and relevance of all search results. To do so, Google uses multiple systems and signals to push more authoritative pages to the top of the SERP and demote lower quality content. Although Google can be somewhat secretive as to exactly what has changed, one main system change involved major improvements to their Helpful Content Ranking system developed in 2022, which is a main component of their Core Rankings Systems suite.
If you’re looking to dive deeper into how all these systems work in unison, review the below list with included links for more information:
When a search is performed, hundreds of results could match exactly or be very close, the Deduplication Systems show only the most relevant results to relieve clutter.
A system designed to give less credit to domain names that are targeting long tail key word searches. For example, if someone created a domain, “the-best-places-to-eat-in-Italy”, then EMD would penalize with lower rankings for that website if the content within was weak.
This Algorithm focuses on how often webpages are updated and awards higher rankings to sites with newer content.
This System looks for authentic content written by real people and supported with backlinks and other substantiation that validates its authenticity.
Various systems including PageRank that measure the importance of webpages based on the quality and quantity of links pointing to them, with incoming links playing a higher factor in rankings than backlinks.
This system is designed to identify original content as opposed to content that cites another website or plagiarizes one.
When certain types of content such as legal disclaimers (i.e. copyright removal requests), or if real people request personal information be removed from the web, this Google system reacts by either removing that content or highly penalizing it down the rankings.
This System specifically applies to any review section of a webpage and awards a higher rank to webpages that not only have better reviews, but reviews from authentic sources.
One of the most important Systems which makes sure that, in general, no more than two web page listings from the same site rank in the top results to promote a more diverse search.
Multiple Systems designed to highly penalize predatory websites designed to spam users with pop ups, click bait, and email spam.
Google also employs several Artificial Intelligence (AI) Systems to determine rankings. We’ve broken down details on the main ones below:
Launched in 2015, this AI system helps search understand how words relate to concepts. For example, if you searched, “What is the food pyramid of marketing”, a computer may get confused and think that you are relating the phrase “food pyramid” to nutrition, etc. When actually the person who searched had an intent to display marketing tactics in a hierarchy pyramid like format. RankBrain can bridge this gap and connect the dots of the true search intentions.
Launched in 2018, this system was designed to examine the words within a search phrase and link them to related synonyms or other phrases in order to broaden the search and produce a better end result. For example, if you searched, “Why does my chest hurt after eating spicy food” the old Google may return results on general chest pain or heart attack symptoms. With Neural Matching, Google is crawling webpages that have words from your search phrase and linking those words to related words, like “Heart Burn” and “Spicy Food”, to produce a more relevant result that the user is seeking.
Launched in 2019, this AI system was developed to help understand how combinations of words express different meanings and intents. So instead of searching for singular words, BERT reviews how each word interacts with other words in the search phrase to determine the real meaning of the search term. For example, if you searched, “Log into Google analytics for another person”, prior to BERT you may have seen instructions on how to log into Google Analytics (GA), when the real intent of the search is instructions on how to set up a third party with GA access.
The latest and still developing AI product, MUM is capable of generating language, reading images, and trained across 75 languages. Currently MUM is not used to rank Google searches but expect changes here with future algorithm updates.
It’s good practice for a web developer or SEO expert to fully familiarize themselves with exactly how Google determines SERP rankings. Spending the time reviewing the above systems will ensure you set up your websites and content from potential ranking penalties.
New Additions to Google’s March 2024 Spam Update
In addition to the Core Update, Google launched a new Spam Update to address and counter newly popular spam tactics. Bottom line is no one likes spam, and Google is painstakingly working to create the best search experience they can. In addition to Google’s Existing Spam Policies this new update added three new policies.
Expired Domain Abuse
Expired Domain Abuse is a tactic where an expired domain is purchased and repurposed with the intent to manipulate search rankings that have little to no value to users. Often this could be a domain that went out of business but had high traffic. The domain is sold and repurposed to something completely unrelated in hopes to retain and monetize its traffic from the previous ownership. The new Spam Update is designed to identify these sudden changes and remove them from the internet or heavily penalize them.
Scaled Content Abuse
This policy targets websites that typically create large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users with an intent of manipulating the search rankings. Examples include websites with high amounts of generative AI content, sites that scrape other sites to automatically add content, sites with stitched together and highly plagiarized content, and in general websites with low originality value.
Site Reputation Abuse
These situations are when lines are blurred between strong first party sites and third-party pages and content posted on those sites that often is completely unrelated to the main theme of the website. A hypothetical example being a website that reviews video games but has posts and content from third party sites on “how to excel in affiliate marketing”. This not only reads as incredibly confusing for the user but is designed to manipulate rankings for the affiliate marketing scheme and Google is cracking down on this type of spam.
Effects of the Google March 2024 Update
With less than a month of being live, the Google update without a doubt has had a massive effect on many websites. Some websites are seeing large losses to traffic and revenue while other sites are being completely deindexed from search.
Thousands of Websites Deindexed
Deindexing is the process of Google manually removing a website from their search results. The website can still be found on the internet if a user types the URL directly into the address bar, however if a user types the website name or any related content into the search bar no results will be returned once it’s deindexed.
Shortly after the March Update, hundreds of websites were completely deindexed from Google search. A sampling of close to 50,000 websites by SEO company Niche Site Metrics found that over 800 of those websites were deindexed following the update. Of those websites deindexed, it’s very clear in the study that they violated Google’s new policy changes especially the new Spam updates. The most trafficked website affected on the study, FreshersLIVE, is a cluttered website of brainteasers, crossword puzzles, and millions of AI generated articles with backlinks to irrelevant information. This site is a great example of a business model set up to solely gain the system and generate ad revenues. The example below compares a direct URL input versus the Google Index check.
A separate study performed by Originality.ai reviewed over 79,000 websites and found over 1,400 of those were also deindexed. Their study also found a commonality in the majority of these deindexed websites contained AI generated content, with many of them close to 100% of their content failing AI checks.
Substantial Traffic and Revenue Losses
With mass deindexing of websites, major loss in website traffic and revenues directly correlate. The Niche Site Metrics study estimated a monthly revenue loss for deindexed websites just north of $440k. These sites drove in over 20 million visits per month and since deindexing these numbers have surely nosedived close to zero.
Another discussion on Search Engine Roundtable shared several screenshots such as the example below showing a sharp decline in web traffic starting on March 9th
It’s clear that Google’s update is attempting to create a better internet that focuses on quality and originality. The two studies pinpointed that the majority of affected websites leaned on AI automation farms with very little human generated content. In our opinion, we’re on board with this, recently it has become increasingly more difficult to find reliable information and it’s time to clean things up.
Has The Google March 2024 Update Affected Your Website?
There has been chatter from a few reputable websites reporting lower traffic following the March 2024 Google Update, as well as some rare cases of deindexing. In the next section we’ll review how you can check if your website has been affected by the recent update, and if so, what to do about it.
How to Check if Your Website is Indexing on Google
The process is very simple. Open Google and in the search bar type “site:domainname.com”. For example, “site:e2marketingsolutions.com” returns the below result indicating that it is indexing properly on Google.
How to Resolve a Deindexing Issue with Google
When a website is deindexed on Google, usually it’s due to Google taking a Manual Action on your site, but there are other possible reasons as well. Below is a list of potential Deindexing reasons and how to resolve them.
If you received a Manual Action from Google, then your site has been deindexed. You will find the notification by going to the Google Search Console then Security & Manual Actions and then Manual Actions. For example, you could see a notification called “Pure Spam” and a description further clarifying the violation. To resolve there is a button “Request Review” that will start the resolution process. Of course if your website is violating any of the new or old Google policies, you will need to fix those first before submitting for review.
Noindex code is generally used on Category and Archive pages of websites, or areas of site that webmasters purposely want to tell Google to spend less time on versus more important areas. It is possible that code could be in the wrong places of your website, and you can check the head tag on each page of the website to make sure there is no unwanted code within. Additionally, if you have a WordPress site, in the Admin Panel, then Settings, then Reading, make sure the “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is not checked.
If you allow your domain name to expire, then so will its indexing within Google. The resolution here is straightforward, don’t let this happen unless you are planning to sunset your website.
Another commonsense reason for deindexing. If your website goes down for a long period of time, Google will pick up this signal and deindex you. So, keep an eye on your web hosting performance, and if your server does crash, you may need to resubmit your sitemaps to Google.
Not finding the right reason or resolution to your deindexing issue or wanting to learn more? Check out this thorough list of resources and resolutions from Search Engine Journal.
Changing Your Tactics in the Wake of the Google March 2024 Update
For most whom already exercise proper fundamentals, no drastic changes are needed. However, a solid review of your SEO best practices is always a good measure. AI content is being attacked so start by cleaning those areas up on your website if they exist. Let’s review the must “must do’s” when it comes to web development and SEO practices post update:
You live in Google Search Console, GA4, and SEMrush but now would be a good time to frequent those sites more often, like daily. Keep an eye on your traffic, if you see a dip, drill down to the page and keyword levels to analyze further. Working with these tools can also help you spot areas to optimize, such as page load speeds, mobile friendliness, and UX areas to identify site structure improvements.
We’re all guilty of using ChatGPT to save time, but if you are copying and pasting from prompt to website, it’s time to rethink that technique. Anyone who has spent more than 40 hours using LLM’s can spot AI generated content from a mile away. Quick research and developing article outlines can be okay but avoid full dependency and add human touch with a sprinkle of your personality to all the content you create. Remember to always fact check AI, it likes to make stuff up. If you are worried that any content on your site is heavy AI, we recommend GPTzero to gauge detectability scores.
Make sure your backlinks are high quality and feel natural (refer to the new Site Reputation Abuse Spam policy) and understand that less is more if your referred sources are reputable. Google penalizes link purchasing, exchanging links, and websites that suddenly obtain a lot of links in a short amount of time. Beyond backlinks, you can up your quality scores within your content as well, make it human. When humanizing your site, focus on a user first approach by creating high quality engaging and informative content that came from your own mind.
Following this approach with web development and content creation will not only cover tons of ground but save you time and avoid pain in the long run. The E-E-A-T method consists of creating content that has real life Experience and Expertise tied to it and shows that you are the Authority behind it. All of this leads to Trust and Google can detect and tell the difference between a true topic expert versus someone that is “winging” it.
Beyond your website, leveraging other sites, forums, and especially social media can have a powerful impact on your rankings. Getting your name out there and allowing real people to post comments and interact with your brand builds massive authority and separates you from being just a static website. Google can see all these connections and will reward you as a power player in the SERP.
Following these best practices and methodologies will help your site inch up the rankings. To simplify it, focus on creating a product, service, content, etc that is truly helpful to people. Be ethical. If you own a website that puts out tons of content just to achieve traffic volume, or clobbers viewers with 10+ banner ads on each page, then you’re doomed. Please stop, it’s time to reinvent the wheel and become a true contributor to the internet.
Summing it Up
The latest changes at Google have shown us far more drastic effects to websites and traffic than prior updates, and this one’s not even finished processing yet. It reminds us that Google is serious about creating a better environment for its users to remain the king of search. The best approach you can take is to set up a good defense and understand exactly how Google’s systems determine the rankings, then apply that knowledge to your creations.
It’s clear that Google’s focus continues to remain on high quality and original content creation, and those who follow those guidelines will be promoted to the top of the SERPs.
If you are looking to learn more about the Google March 2024 Core Update, or have a website that is experiencing problems, reach out to E2 Marketing Solutions to set up an exploratory consultation, free of charge!