Google announced the March Core Update, the first core update of 2024. This is what Google calls “an evolution in how we identify the usefulness of content.”
This comes with a spam update that targets persistent spam that Google is trying to eliminate.
Core updates are designed to “surface the most useful information on the web,” an initiative Google launched with the Helpful Content Update (HCU) in August 2022, and spam updates are designed to surface the most useful information on the web. It targets activities such as using a domain as a spam factory. Or dedicate part of your prestigious website to his SEO-driven spam content.
Google has jointly promised that the update will reduce “a total of 40% of low-quality, unoriginal content in search results.”
These announcements will come as welcome news to anyone who believes that the quality of Google's search results has been declining in recent years. But how effectively will Google's changes address the problem at hand? And how effectively will the methods used by Google help the “by people, for the people” content that Google claims it wants to rank for? Will it affect sites that are trying hard to rank?
SEO Twitter (“SEO The most pathetic opinion to help parse this change.
Google is aiming for automated content creation: AI content or programmatic SEO?
Aleyda Solis, a veteran SEO consultant, speaker, and author, posted the following. annotated screen cap She talked about Google news highlighting questionable SEO strategies that she believes Google is targeting with its announcements. Notably, she emphasized the term “large-scale content fraud” and wrote “(low-value) programmatic SEO” (and also wrote “site reputation fraud” as ” Parasite SEO”).
This is an interesting point. That's because “massive content abuse,” which Google describes as “the use of automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale,” is often used to refer to content generated by AI. Because that's what people assume. But at Google, a technology company that has invested heavily in generative AI, this seems a bit contradictory.
SEO insiders are debating whether Google is moving toward blocking only “low-quality” content generated by AI. This has been discussed since HCU was first deployed. This may still be the case, and Google's vague language allows it to cover more ground. However, the use of the word “scale” is also important.
Writer search engine land, Barry Schwartz asked Google for more information about the update and concluded that “any method of producing content at scale for the purpose of improving search rankings” violates Google's guidelines. This is essentially the definition of programmatic SEO (or pSEO). The technique is all about scaling up content production (using templates and databases to create large numbers of landing pages) to match the size of your current search traffic.
Proponents of programmatic SEO say that pSEO is not necessarily spam (which is why Solis highlighted “low-value” programmatic SEO), but that if done correctly, it can be used to create insightful content. I am claiming. You might want to see if Google's algorithm agrees.
Is Google targeting niche sites?
Tony Hill describes himself on his website as a “niche site owner since 2005.” questioned Google's wording In its announcement, it means “pursuing the traditional niche site model.”
Google wrote that it is fine-tuning its algorithms to detect “unhelpful” webpages, which include “sites primarily created to match very specific search queries.” It may be included.”
However, Hill notes that Google's own SEO guidance, found in the Google Search Essentials documentation, advises site owners to “use the words that people would use to search for your content, and add those words to your page.” He pointed out that the instructions were to “place it in a conspicuous place on the top.” In fact, this is the basic essence of his keyword optimization in SEO.
There's probably nothing wrong with creating content or a website just to match a specific query. only for This content satisfies the query (it doesn't just appear to satisfy the query). But the problem with Google is that this content is so targeted that it may not be useful when it appears as a result of other types of searches.
Hill is right that Google has effectively created its own monster. SEO does this because Google has the potential to deliver a ton of traffic if it hits the right places, and Google's business model relies on this (and not only). Because it pays to talk and engage, but because paid search positioning requires value).
But the flip side of that is that there have always been ups and downs brought on by algorithms (Oli Zilberstein probably best described this roller coaster). With GIFs of his choice.).
I'm skeptical that Google will deliver on SEO
barry schwartz voted Ask SEOs if they think Google's March update really delivers on its promise of 'cuts'[ing] Reduce useless content from appearing in search results by 40%. ”
The reaction was overwhelmingly skeptical, with 79% of SEOs voting “no” and over 1,000 votes cast at the time of writing.
In the replies, many users expressed hope but had doubts, with one user expressing concern that there are “a lot of smaller, high-quality sites out there.” [might] They'll be caught in the crossfire” (Charlie Conti), or the updates “will also bring in some decent sites” (Peter Mindenhall).
Daniel Hart said, “It depends on what you consider an update to be useless. I've been having the same problem for the past six months.”
In fact, Google has been working on this problem for a while (well over six months since the first announcement of helpful content updates). The fact that such updates still need to be rolled out shows that this is far from the goal. Problem solved. You can't blame SEOs for being skeptical that this latest wave won't change much.
Many users have lampshaded Google's predictable cycle of core updates, with Mark Williams-Cook creating a humorous graphic depicting core updates as a wheel of fortune, resulting in big brands and spam sites I support it.
As Carl Hendy wrote in a still-important tweet from May 2020, the basic takeaways from Google core updates do tend to be consistent.
My Google Core Update blog post:
???? Visibility has been improved on some sites.
???? Some sites are no longer displayed.
⚒ Technical issues need to be resolved.
???????????? UX needs to be improved.
???? Don't have stupid content.➡️ Sign up for our newsletter here.
— Carl Hendy (@carlhendy) May 16, 2020
Google says the March core update will be a “more complex update with changes to multiple core systems,” and the rollout could last up to a month, potentially causing ranking shifts in the process. I warned you that there is. Authoritative sites hosting some spam content (known as “site reputation abuse”) will be given two months to sort out the problem, and these penalties will not be applied to him. It will come into effect from May.th May.
As always, the true impact of Google's updates will take some time to become clear, but in the meantime, there's plenty to keep SEOers busy.