A quick update from our SEO team regarding the latest Google Core Update for March 2024 that was announced earlier this week…
On Monday 4th March, Google announced their March 2024 Core Update and new spam policies. Due to the amount of spam and unhelpful content popping up in the SERPs recently and taking up valuable positions, this is a welcome update by a lot of people in the SEO industry and there is hope that a lot of the sites using questionable tactics will be removed.
March 2024 core update:
Google has said that the March 2024 core update will be ‘more complex’ than their usual core updates, suggesting that we should expect more volatility in the SERPs whilst Google evolve their ranking systems to determine what is perceived by them as helpful, high quality content.
As the rollout is more complex, rather than being given the usual two weeks period for the complete rollout of the update, Google has advised it should be rolled out within a month. They have announced that they expect that this update, in combination with previous updates, will see low quality, unoriginal content in search results reduced by 40%.
New spam policies
Three new spam policies have been introduced within the latest Google Core Update to tackle bad practices that have recently grown in popularity:
- Scaled content abuse (whether AI or human-generated)
- Expired domain abuse (taking advantage of an old domain’s previous authority)
- Site reputation abuse (taking advantage of a reputable website by hosting third party content on their domain with the intention of boosting rankings by capitalising on their strong reputation)
Sites that go against these new spam policies may rank lower in search results and are at risk of receiving a manual action such as the below:
This is leading to some sites being completely de-indexed overnight. This is positive in most cases as it’s getting rid of sites purely built on spammy AI tactics. You can find more detail and information here.
Please get in touch with our SEO team at seo@modo25.com if you would like any more information or help with this – or head to SEO at Modo25 😊
