Google’s March 2024 Core Update & Spam Update Are Complete: What Do They Mean for Rankings?

In March, Google treated us to one of the biggest core updates we’ve seen in years, and the search engine has only just let us know that it’s complete. Hooray!

The Google March 2024 core update took a whopping 45 days to finish. It started rolling out on March 5, 2024, and was officially completed on April 19, 2024. The update is focused on improving user experience by refining their core ranking system and upping their spam policy to crack down on clickbait and low-quality content that brings little value to the user.

But what does it mean for marketers and business owners?

After all, even the most minor Google updates are enough to jeopardise your position in the search results. If you’ve seen your rankings drop and are worried about the repercussions of this update, we’ve got you covered in our helpful blog.

What Has Google Said About the March 2024 Core Update?

The Google March 2024 core update was confirmed as complete on the Google Search Status Dashboard. Its algorithmic update is focused on helping the search engine understand whether results are helpful or not to eliminate poor user experience. It also makes sure that the results it displays contain content that has been written for humans first, not purely for search engines, with the goal of climbing up the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The update has only been complete for a few short weeks. The search engine says it has already seen a drastic difference in how much unoriginal content is appearing in results – with it being down a huge 45%, that’s an increase on the initial 40% the search engine predicted at the start of the update’s roll out.

The update affects all types of content across all regions and seeks to reward excellent content, not penalise the bad stuff.

What Has It Said About the Google March 2024 Spam Update? 

The March update also brought with it changes to how the search engine deals with spam content. This aspect took 14 days to complete, ending on March 20, 2024.

Long before this update was announced, Google had spam policies in place to stop the poorest quality content appearing in its results. However, it noticed new practices that abuse its algorithm, which can lead to some sneaky spam content slipping through the net and coming up in results. While Google doesn’t discriminate against AI-generated content as long as it provides value to the user, it is thought that AI, when used for mass production, is what Google is targeting here.

Its new spam update was all about taking a targeted approach in these 3 new areas:

• Scaled content abuse
• Expired domain abuse
• Site reputation abuse

Scaled Content Abuse

This is the search engine giant’s way of clamping down on automated and mass-produced low-quality content with only rankings in mind. As this content doesn’t put users first, it can’t be seen as providing helpful information. Whether you are churning out poor human-written content or using automation, this update will crack down on it.

Expired Domain Abuse

Every now and then, expired domains get bought and repurposed to boost the search rankings of low-quality content. This can mislead users and cause confusion when they expect to be reading content on a long-established, authoritative site. These sites are now spam and will not be shown in results.

Site Reputation Abuse

Now, Google gave us a head’s up with this one as it doesn’t technically come into effect until May 5, 2024. This will put a stop to third parties who publish sub-par, irrelevant content on websites with a high domain authority to manipulate the rankings. This is now spam.

Why Are These Updates Important?

As marketers, we’re used to Google dropping core updates and changes on us. We have an up-to-date list of Google algorithm updates right here for you to view.

However, the latest core and spam updates signal that the search engine is making user experience even more of a priority than it was before. It really cares about users getting value from using Google Search and won’t tolerate low-quality content or spammy approaches to search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts anymore.

As well as algorithmic demotion from these two big updates, people have reported being a victim of manual actions – where the humans who work at Google review a site and deem it to not adhere to its policies and algorithms. You can check if your website has had any manual actions issued against it by checking Google’s Manual Actions Report.

If you’ve seen a ranking drop on Google Search Console due to potential spam content, the search engine advises that you take a close look at its spam policies to identify where you need to make improvements.

What To Do If You’ve Had a Drop in Rankings?

If you’re worried about your site’s compliance with the latest core updates, your website quality, have seen search traffic drops due to plummeting rankings, then you must adapt fast to see ranking improvements.

Here are some of the main areas you should focus on to see improvements:

• High-Quality, Helpful Content: Now more than ever the content on your website needs to bring value to the user and answer their search intent properly.
• Original Content: Mass-produced, repetitive content is no longer good enough. You must show search engines that your content is original and brings something new to the user.
• Do a Content Audit: Take a look at all of your content to see how it measures up against Google spam policies and its helpful content guidelines. Anything that doesn’t fit the bill needs to be removed or improved.
• Be Mindful With AI Tools: AI tools can be brilliant for helping you to generate ideas and see things from a fresh perspective but you should use them with caution going forward. If you are using AI for your content, try to limit this and always make sure you take the time to edit it thoroughly for quality and value purposes.
• User-Centric Content for User Experience: Since user experience was central to this latest core update, ensuring your website delivers on this is essential. From providing insightful content to ease of use, your website must have it all.

Read our Drop in Keyword Rankings and How To Fix It guide for more information.

We’re Here to Help

If you don’t know where to start when it comes to recovering from the latest Google core and spam updates, then our friendly team can help you with our wide range of services. Whether you need to make the most of our professional Content Writing Services or need some help with your wider SEO strategy, we’re on hand to help.

Schedule a consultation today!