We’re now two weeks into Google’s March 2024 core and spam updates and we’ve already seen significant changes in the search results.
Google announced the March 2024 core and spam updates on March 5th and promised to remove up to 40% of the low-quality websites that provide useless information and a poor user experience.
On March 6th and 7th Google did just that and issued a large number of manual actions for websites violating their spam guidelines.
Google has said they will issue a spam manual action “when a site appears to use aggressive spam techniques that violate Google’s spam policies.”
They added: “This includes tactics like automatically-generated content, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, or other severe violations.”
As a result, a substantial number of websites were completely de-indexed from Google searches.
Google’s ability to detect low-quality content has become more refined which has even led to penalties for small sites.
Google’s aggressive approach is most likely in response to all the negative feedback they’ve been receiving over the past few months.
Users have become unhappy and have been very vocal online about the amount of spam on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs).
In the past, manual actions were a rare occurrence but we believe here at TRAFCK that to improve the helpfulness of results, Google has dialled up the importance of backlinks.
TRAFCK also believe (and it’s hard to know because Google is so opaque and doesn’t give any insight into how their algorithm works) that the importance of dwell time and keeping users on your web pages is more important than ever.
Google knows how long a user has interacted with a given page which we believe then sends positive signals back up the funnel.
User experience feeds into this so making sure your website is easy to navigate and not intrusive is important.
Websites that have neglected UX are being penalised.
What does the March 2024 spam update target?
1) Scaled content abuse
Websites will be penalised if they are producing low-quality or unoriginal content at scale using automation, humans or a combination of both to manipulate search rankings.
2) Site reputation abuse
Websites will be penalised if they host low-quality, third-party content to capitalize on the hosting site’s strong reputation. An example of this – which is being referred to as parasite SEO – is the Daily Mail’s voucher codes subdomain.
Google has given website owners until May 5th to make any necessary changes.
3) Expired domain abuse
Websites will be penalised if the owner has purchased an expired domain name and then repurposed it to manipulate search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users.
For example, a third party might buy an expired medical website to take advantage of its ranking power and then publish low-quality casino content on there.
It’s important to emphasise that Google isn’t specifically targeting AI content with these updates but rather low-quality, unoriginal content whether that be written by AI or a human.
The main takeaway so far is quality is king.
Google has emphasised the importance of originality and adding value to the reader.
If you look at the websites that were de-indexed, the majority of them relied heavily on thin and duplicate content and didn’t provide anything unique.
Focusing on E-E-A-T is now more important than ever.
How can I recover from the March 2024 core algorithm update and spam update?
Google has advised website owners not to make any changes until the updates are complete.
The spam update is expected to last two weeks (expected to finish on March 19) and the core algorithm update is expected to last one month (expected to finish on April 5).
TRAFCK’s main takeaways are:
1) Focus on quality content
2) Build natural backlinks
3) Improve your dwell time and keep users on your website
4) Improve your user experience
5) Improve your spelling and grammar
TRAFCK have a team of SEO experts who can help rectify any negative impacts these latest updates have had on your website.