Decoding Google Core Update 2024: What You Need to Know

Recently Google announced its March 2024 Google Updates. It’s defiantly affects the SEO. The impact of Google update, which targets low-quality content and spam, is becoming apparent as the rollout progresses. It is core update of the year and more complex than usual core updates, involving changes to multiple systems. With this update, Google will no longer rely on one single signal or system to show more helpful search results.

Google Updates includes new spam policy that aims to refine your search quality and overcome the spammy practices that hamper the user experience. These changes represent a turning point in the development of search policies and algorithms, reshaping the online environment for both users and producers. Let’s examine these revolutionary shifts’ nuances and how they affect web creators in more detail.

This update is not like any regular update. This version marks a change in how the helpfulness of material is assessed, giving relevance and usefulness priority in search results. This multifaceted approach will reflect how Google is committed to providing high quality and informative search results.

Google officials said they expect the Google update (along with previous efforts) to reduce low-quality unoriginal content in search results by 40%.

According to Niche Site Metrics  data Of the 49,345 sites monitored, 837 websites had been removed entirely from Google’s search index.

New Spam Policy

Google has also rolled out a new spam policy that is designed to address emerging and trending spammy practices, which include expired domain abuse, content abuse, and site reputation abuse. Google explains what they hope to achieve and the type of
SEO/spam tactics they’re targeting:

• Scaled Content Abuse
• Expired Domain Abuse
• Site Reputation Abuse

1).Scaled content abuse: when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. This abusive practice is typically focused on creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users, no matter how it’s created.

Examples of scaled content abuse include, but are not limited to:

• • Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users
  • Scraping feeds, search results, or other content to generate many pages (including through automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques), where little value is provided to users
  • Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding value
  • Creating multiple sites with the intent of hiding the scaled nature of the content
  • Creating many pages where the content makes little or no sense to a reader but contains search keywords

2).Expired Domain Abuse: Spammers who buy up expired domains to host low quality content and get an initial boost will also be targeted with this update.

The targeting of expired domains is also interesting, as Google has insisted for years that this tactic doesn’t work. That, obviously, wasn’t quite true.

3).Site Reputation Abuse: Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site’s ranking signals. Such third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of a host site’s main purpose or produced without close oversight or involvement of the host site, and provide little to no value to users.

Illustrative examples of site reputation abuse include, but are not limited to:

• • An educational site hosting a page about reviews of payday loans written by a third-party that distributes the same page to other sites across the web, with the main purpose of manipulating search rankings
  • A medical site hosting a third-party page about “best casinos” that’s designed primarily to manipulate search rankings, with little to no involvement from the medical site
  • A movie review site hosting third-party pages about topics that would be confusing to users to find on a movie review site (such as “ways to buy followers on social media sites”, the “best fortune teller sites”, and the “best essay writing services”), where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings
  • A sports site hosting a page written by a third-party about “workout supplements reviews”, where the sports site’s editorial staff had little to no involvement in the content and the main purpose of hosting the page is to manipulate search rankings
  • A news site hosting coupons provided by a third-party with little to no oversight or involvement from the hosting site, and where the main purpose is to manipulate search rankings.

Site reputation abuse is Google’s terminology for what the SEO industry calls ‘parasite SEO’. In their spam policy documentation on this particular issue, Google uses the example of a news publisher hosting 3rd party coupon content with little to no editorial oversight.

Conclusion

Google’s continuous efforts to improve search quality and fight spam have reached important milestones with the release of the March 2024 core update and new spam regulations. Creators and search engines may collaborate to give people everywhere a more rewarding and richer online experience by adhering to best practices and engaging in collaborative efforts.