It's been exactly a week since Google's March 2024 Core and Spam Update, and well, it's been busy. During that time, we have seen fluctuations in search rankings, some related to algorithm updates and some related to Google's manual steps to implement updated spam policies.
Haven't done it yet. It is important to emphasize that these updates are not finished yet. Google said it will take about a month for the core update to be fully rolled out, during which time some systems will be updated. Spam updates also take approximately two weeks to deploy. It's only been a week since the update, so expect more changes to search result rankings in the coming weeks.
Timeline of change. Here's a quick timeline of the changes we've seen over the past week.
- March 5 – Google announces March 2024 Google Core and Spam Updates.
- March 6th and 7th – Google took a number of manual actions regarding spam policy violations and many sites were removed from Google Search.
- March 8th and 9th – We may have seen the first signs that core and spam updates are algorithmically impacting site rankings.
- March 10th and 11th — Google seemed to calm down a bit, but at the same time there was some reversal (at least temporarily) for some sites affected by both algorithm changes and manual actions. There were numerous (though not many) reports indicating that it had been seen.
Duplicate and confusing updates. With so many changes happening all at once in Google Search, it's hard to track what's impacting what. Today we have core updates, spam updates, manual actions, and changes to Core Web Vitals. The effects of overlapping changes can confuse SEOs and site owners.
In fact, Google has deviated from its stated goal of limiting duplicate updates. In 2021, Google Search Director Danny Sullivan said they are working to avoid duplicate updates. He reiterated the same in 2022, saying, “We've worked hard to keep updates separate from each other, or with as little duplication as possible, to give creators a better understanding.”
He reiterated that in this past update, adding: “Normally we try to work around this, but we are preparing both core and spam updates, and ultimately intend to push out updates that we believe will improve the quality of search” results. Manual actions are not updates. The new spam policy is not an algorithm update. Therefore, these are not “updates” that “duplicate” core updates or spam updates. ”
example. I've posted many examples of these changes on Search Engine Roundtable, but I'll just post briefly about some of the chart Xs here.
why do we care? I write about it, so it might be fun to see these updates published every day. But for SEOs and site owners, it can be very stressful. It probably makes sense to wait until these various updates are complete and see if the problem is resolved.
In the meantime, you can continue to follow Google's advice to improve the quality of your site's content and user experience. It's never a bad thing to focus on it all the time.
Stay tuned to see how all of these Google search algorithm updates unfold.