Google Set to Release Major Search Quality Enhancements in March 2024 Core Update Along with Multiple Spam Updates
Google is rolling out several measures today aimed at improving the quality of its search results.
The March 2024 core update and various spam updates (collectively known as the March 2024 spam update) are part of these changes. Additionally, Google’s helpful content system has now been integrated into its overall core ranking system.
Moreover, Google has announced new and updated spam policies that it will enforce via automated algorithms and manual actions.
## March 2024 Core Update – Bigger Than Before
Today marks the start of Google’s first core update of the year—the March 2024 core update.
Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product, Search at Google, mentioned that this update aims to reduce unhelpful content in Google Search by 40%.
– “We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%,” Tucker added.
The rollout of the March 2024 core update could take up to a month, during which multiple systems will be updated and released.
This update is more intricate than previous ones, incorporating enhancements to several components of the overall core system. Google’s Chris Nelson from the Search Quality team described it as a “more complex update than our usual core updates” due to changes to multiple core systems. Consequently, more fluctuations in rankings are expected as these systems get fully updated and reinforce each other.
The update has refined Google’s understanding of which webpages are unhelpful, have poor user experiences, or seem designed primarily for search algorithms instead of people.
### Previous Core Updates
Here’s a timeline of recent core updates:
– November 2023 core update ended on November 28.
– October 2023 core update ended on October 19.
– August 2023 core update ended on September 7.
– March 2023 core update ended on March 28.
– September 2022 broad core update finished on September 26.
– May 2022 broad core update was significant and fast.
– November 2021 core update.
– July 2021 core update.
– June 2021 core update, which was slow to roll out but impactful.
## Helpful Content Update Now Part of Core Updates
With the March 2024 core update, Google will no longer announce new helpful content updates separately. The helpful content system has now been incorporated into the core update system.
The last helpful content update in September 2023 was significant, impacting many sites. The classifier for the helpful content system has been overhauled and integrated into the March 2024 core update. This integration began with work initiated during the 2022 helpful content update.
### What to Do If Your Rankings Drop
Here’s advice Google has provided in the past for those negatively impacted by a core update:
– There aren’t specific actions to take to recover. A drop in rankings does not necessarily indicate something is wrong with your pages.
– Evaluate your content’s quality by answering specific questions.
– Wait for another core update. You may see some improvement between updates, but significant changes will occur after the next core update.
In short, focus on creating helpful content for people, not merely to rank in search engines.
– “There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page,” Nelson explained.
## March 2024 Spam Updates
Google also announced new spam updates, named the March 2024 spam update, and related spam policy updates.
Two spam updates will result in both automated and manual actions this week. The site reputation abuse spam update will go into effect on May 5.
### Scaled Content Abuse Search Spam
This update expands Google’s “spammy automatically-generated content” policy to include any content produced at scale for ranking purposes, regardless of the method used.
Google stated that creating content at scale to boost rankings—whether through automation or human efforts—is against its guidelines.
– “This will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content,” Google wrote.
### Examples of Scaled Content Abuse
Pages that start by claiming to answer a question but lead viewers on with low-quality content without providing a genuine answer fall under this category.
– “Our long-standing spam policy has been that use of automation, including generative AI, is spam if the primary purpose is manipulating rankings in Search results. The updated policy expands on this by addressing more sophisticated content creation methods.”
Google will begin to act against scaled content abuse through both algorithmic spam systems and manual actions this week.
### Expired Domain Abuse Now Considered Spam
“Expired domain abuse” refers to the practice of buying expired domains and repurposing them to boost the rankings of low-quality content. This technique is now considered spam.
This message is clear: don’t purchase expired domains intending to repurpose them for better search rankings.
Google will start taking action against expired domain abuse both through algorithmic spam systems and manual actions this week.
### Site Reputation Abuse (aka Parasite SEO) Is Spam, Too
Google has a new policy for “site reputation abuse,” often referred to as “Parasite SEO,” which involves third-party sites hosting low-quality content to benefit from the ranking power of more reputable sites.
– “Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website,” Google explained.
The new policy clarifies that “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight” is considered spam. However, not all third-party content violates this policy—instead, it targets poorly supervised content meant to manipulate search rankings.
## Why We Care
Over the past several months, there have been numerous complaints and studies about the declining quality of Google search results. Large sites have often been favored over smaller ones, with Reddit frequently dominating search results.
When questioned about the rise in Reddit rankings, a Google spokesperson responded:
– “We know that for some queries, people seek out content that comes from others with relevant experiences. We want to surface content that people are looking for, in cases where it’s helpful. There is high-quality and low-quality content across all content types – including user-generated forums and discussion content. Our goal is to surface the best of the web, and we believe these ranking improvements will help us surface higher-quality discussion/forum content for searches where it’s helpful – and will help us get better at detecting when such content is truly helpful.”
Google emphasized that ranking changes were made independently of any relationship with Reddit.
– “We’ve been working on making it easier to find content that reflects first-hand perspectives across all types of sites in our search results, including hundreds of forum sites. This ranking improvement launched before and is independent of the Reddit partnership,” the spokesperson stated.
Criticism about the quality of Google search results is not new. Such concerns were highlighted by Danny Sullivan, former Search Engine Land editor, back in 2017.
Sullivan, now Google’s official Search Liaison, has been promising updates to address the quality issue. In November, Google advised users to “buckle up,” reiterating this warning in January and February. Could this be the significant update users have been waiting for?
Google has also updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF with new characteristics of untrustworthy pages and illustrative examples.
Google will announce the completion of these updates on its Search Status Dashboard.
