Google’s March 2024 Core Update: Things You Need to Know!

Have you heard about Google’s latest update? As of March 5, 2024, Google announced its much-awaited core update – the March 2024 update. This update is about providing users with more relevant and useful content while minimizing content just made to get clicks. But that’s not all!

Along with the core update, Google announced a spam policy. In this policy, Google addresses practices that negatively affect search engine results. This update will give you more relevant and better search results.

This article explains the Google algorithm core update and how to improve rankings after its implementation.

The search engine is entirely deindexing websites.

Have you ever searched on Google and found nothing relevant? Well, Google is always trying to remove low-quality content from its search results. In March 2024, they updated their search algorithm to remove unhelpful, irrelevant, and unoriginal websites. As a result, some websites disappeared from Google’s search results after the update.

As part of its cleanup initiative, Google wants to get rid of up to 40% of low-quality sites. These sites lack useful information and offer a bad user experience. They are usually created just to match certain search queries, so they’re often used to boost their rankings. If these websites violate Google’s guidelines, they will be penalized and removed from search results.

Core Update 2024: What is it about?

●      Purpose – The update will prioritize genuinely helpful content over advertisements to improve search results.

●      Complexity – This is more complicated than the average core update because multiple systems are affected.

●      Evaluating innovation – Instead of relying on one or two signals, Google uses various innovative signals and methods.

●      Rollout date – A ranking fluctuation may be noticeable for up to a month after a system update as the systems interact and update.

●      Creator’s Guide – The Google content creation guide may help those experiencing ranking drops if they produce effective content.

Spam update for March 2024

There are some updated rules to stop unwanted messages called spam. These rules prevent spam in three ways:

• Sending messages from nonexistent websites.
• Sending the same message to a bunch of people.
• Pretending to be someone trustworthy.

Expiring Domain Abuse

People sometimes buy old website addresses that aren’t used anymore and use them for malicious purposes. They then create new websites that have nothing to do with the old ones.

The idea is to trick search engines into thinking that the new website is important and should show up first in search results. For example, they might use a medical website’s old address for a new online gambling site. It’s a sneaky way to get people to visit their site instead of a more helpful one.

Increased abuse of content

Many websites are made to rank high in search results, but they need to provide useful information. In this case, a lot of content is generated that’s not original and doesn’t help anyone. This is just a trick to get more people to visit the website, but those who click on it don’t get anything out of it.

Here are some examples of scaled content abuse:

• Generative AI or similar tools can generate many pages without adding any value to the user.
• Users don’t get much value from scraping feeds, search results, or other content to generate many pages (including through automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques).
• Writing pages with little or no content that make sense to a reader, but have keywords on them.

Site reputation abuse

Sometimes, third-party content is posted on websites without the owner’s knowledge. This can be a problem if it’s supposed to trick search engines into ranking your site higher. Third-party content uses the website’s reputation to appear more popular, which can fool people.

If you read a blog post or article, sometimes you will see ads that look just like the content. These ads are called native advertising or advertorials because they blend in with regular content and don’t look like ads. This type of advertising reaches regular publication readers, not search engines. If the ads break any rules, the website could be penalized, and the ads might be removed from search results.

Note: Recently, Google introduced a policy to prevent websites from using unethical tactics to rank higher. As a violation, this policy only considers third-party content hosted without oversight and manipulated to manipulate search rankings. Google won’t punish websites that cheat the system by using shady tactics to rank higher.

Penalties are swift

What’s notable about this update is that the penalties were harsh and fast, and site owners scrambled for answers.

To check if the Google update impacted your site, look for your website in Google by typing “site:website.com” and see if you are showing up in the search results.

It’s important to note that, as Barry Schwartz pointed out, sites affected by the March 2024 core update or spam update “would not get notified of a ranking decline through Google Search Console’s manual action viewer.”

“Algorithmic updates are automated and Google does not not notify the site owner when a site is negatively (or positively) impacted by an algorithm update,” Schwartz writes.

How does this affect website owners?

Using these updates, Google sends a clear message: create high-quality, helpful content that truly serves your audience. You can adapt your website by doing the following:

• Make user value a priority.
• Give your target audience valuable information that addresses their needs and questions in your content.
• Invest in expertise and authority
• Showcase your expertise to establish yourself as a credible source.
• Humans come first, not search engines
• Avoid keyword stuffing and manipulative tactics when writing content, and write in a natural, human-readable style.
• Maintain an effective website.
• Make sure your website is user-friendly and has a solid technical foundation. Rankings can be negatively affected by broken links, slow loading times, and poor mobile responsiveness.
• Keeping up with Google’s evolving algorithms and following these guidelines will ensure website owner’s content continues to succeed.

It’s all about quality.

Google values originality and depth of content. In the past, it has removed websites that lack unique perspectives or provide little value to readers. To avoid being removed, you need to demonstrate your authority and expertise to both Google and your audience. One way to do this is to cite credible sources within your niche and showcase the expertise of your website’s authors.

You no longer have to use fancy words to get noticed on websites. These days, it’s important that your website is easy to navigate without getting lost or confused. Nowadays, search engines care more about a website’s overall experience. It means search engines will pay more attention to websites that load fast, work well on mobile devices, and have clear directions for what to do next.

It’s easy to make your website better for everyone who visits it if you follow a few steps. Not only do these steps make search engines happy, but they also make visitors enjoy using your website.