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Google wrapped up the big March 2024 Core Update on April 19, a week before announcing it to the public.

 

Google’s March 2024 Core Update is officially over

It officially ended on April 19, 2024, and took 45 days to launch after starting on March 5, 2024. Google also said that this helped reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45%, which more than their estimate of 40%.

First released on March 5th, the Core Update was completed on April 19th. It took 45 days to complete. Unlike the usual routine updates, Google warned that this one is more complex.

Google’s documentation says:
“Since this is a complex update, it may take up to a month to roll out.” There will likely be more fluctuation in ranking than with a regular core update, as the different systems are fully updated and reinforce each other.”

The tremors were palpable, with some websites reporting losses of over 60% of their organic search traffic, according to industry watchers. The ripple effects also led to the de-indexing of hundreds of sites that allegedly violated Google’s guidelines.

 

Dealing with manipulation attempts

In its official guidelines, Google has outlined the criteria it looks for when targeting spam content and manipulation attempts:
• Creating “low value content” solely to collect manipulative links and increase rankings.
• Links intended to artificially increase site rankings, including manipulative outbound links.
• “Repurposing” expired domains with radically different content for search visibility fraud .

 

The updated guidelines warn:
“All links that aim to manipulate the ranking in Google search results can be considered as spam links. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outbound links from your site.

Google’s John Mueller responded to a question about the turbulence in search results by advising against making rash changes while the Core Update is underway. However, he suggested that sites could proactively address issues such as unnatural paid links.

Mueller stated on Reddit:
If you noticed things worth improving on your site, I would keep doing things. The idea isn’t to change just for browsers, right? Your users will be happy if you can improve things even if search engines haven’t updated their view of your site yet.

 

Emphasizing quality, not links

The major update brought significant changes to the way Google ranks websites.
Most importantly, Google has reduced the importance of links in determining a website’s ranking.

In contrast to describing links as “an important factor in determining relevance”, Google’s updated spam content guidelines removed the “important” label, simply calling links a “factor”.

This change is consistent with Gary Illyes’ statement that links are not among the top three most influential ranking signals. Instead, Google places more weight on quality, credibility, and meaningful content. Consequently, long-running campaigns that favor low-quality link acquisition and keyword optimization are downgraded.

Once the update is complete, it remains to revise strategies and websites to ensure compliance with Google’s new perspective on rankings.

 

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Source: Searchenginejournal

Made by Nebojša Radovanović – SEO Expert @Digitizer