In March of this year, Google rolled out one of its major core updates. These updates can have a significant impact on website rankings. Understanding what they are and how they work is important for marketing and website teams.
What is a Google core update?
A Google core update is a significant enhancement to the search engine’s algorithm that strives to improve the overall quality of search results for users.
Designed to reassess how websites are ranked in search results to present the most relevant and authoritative information, the updates take many factors into account.
Factors that affect search rankings include content relevance, the user experience on the site, as well as your content expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Comprehensive in nature, Google core updates don’t tend to follow a set schedule. They can occur throughout the year and can have a wide-ranging effect on search rankings.
What changes were made in the March 2024 Google core update?
The March 2024 core update covered several areas.
- Google enhanced its core ranking systems to show more helpful results using a variety of signals and approaches. We often hear that Google will reward people-first content. One of the goals of the March 2024 core updates is to provide search results that are more useful, relevant, and aligned with search intent.
- New and improved spam policies: Google updated its spam policies to keep the lowest-quality content out of its search results. Some examples include poor web practices like using expired websites that are repurposed as spam repositories by new owners and other examples like obituary spam.
Google reported that these core updates reduced the amount of low-quality content by 45% on their search results and will now send more traffic to helpful and high-quality sites.
How to manage the Google core update for your own website
It’s hard to keep up with all the signals Google is considering in its search algorithm. Here are several things you should consider doing and things to stay away from:
- Be aware of the factors that could affect your website’s ranking.
- Familiarize yourself with what the updates include and the websites that have received manual actions.
- Identify patterns among the websites being penalized.
- Keep an eye out for updates and have a game plan in place to adapt.
- Optimize your content to focus on keyword research, readability, and relevance.
- Implement technical best practices such as optimizing website speed, improving mobile experiences, and fixing any broken links.
- Avoid unnecessarily loading keywords, adding links, or redoing your website.
To stay on Google’s good side and weather the core updates, it’s essential to understand the factors that influence the algorithm changes. We recommend that clients continue using high-quality content on their websites (that responds to items users are searching for) to showcase expertise and provide relevant, helpful information.
If you notice a sharp drop in web traffic, reach out to our BFTeam. It might be necessary to assess your content to adapt to the core update changes to improve your chances of being favorably positioned in the search rankings.
