Huge Google Updates - March 2024

So what’s happening?

Google has finished rolling out its spam update for March 2024. The update began on March 5, about 15 days ago. The core update for March 2024 is still being rolled out and is expected to continue for the next few weeks.

There’s no doubting that these are the biggest Google algorithm changes we’ve seen in a while, volatility in the rankings is expected, we hope that it will do exactly what Google says, make search results more relevant and shouldn’t affect any white-hat SEO (like ours), only poorly optimised websites that, for example, keyword stuff and use expired spammy domains as backlinks, but only time will tell. If your business is currently working with Digital Landscope, then we are closely monitoring your website.

This is what Google had to say in their documentation:

While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.

For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.

Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.

In the case of a link spam update (an update that specifically deals with link spam), making changes might not generate an improvement. This is because when our systems remove the effects spammy links may have, any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost. Any potential ranking benefits generated by those links cannot be regained.

Google introduced the three new spam policies:

• Scaled content abuse

• Expired domain abuse

• Site reputation abuse

The first two went into effect immediately, but the site reputation abuse will not go into effect until May.

After Google implemented their auto spam policies, we witnessed a flood of manual actions targeting spam issues. It's important to note that these manual actions are separate from the spam update itself. While the spam update may not lead to a manual action, it can result in an algorithmic demotion. With the introduction of the new spam policies, Google has made significant changes to their search results. However, it's worth mentioning that the core update is still ongoing, and Google advises users to exercise patience before making major SEO related changes.

After the core update, we plan to write a blog covering what changes we have seen in the rankings and the search forums, and what this means for businesses in the UK.

Thanks for reading!