If you keep up with the world of SEO, you’ve probably already heard: Google has launched its core Update: March 2024. This update follows the same approach that Google has been taking in recent years: filtering content to weed out misleading, bland and low-quality material, and rewarding original, high-quality content that provides genuine value to the user.
Following the devastating core update in mid-2023 that left many websites reeling, Google has announced a new twist in its algorithm that has all marketers on tenterhooks. However, the tech giant has warned that there will be fluctuations throughout March, as Due to the complexity of this update, it will take a month to fully implement it.
In this Euroinnova article, we explain what Google’s next content update involves and which types of websites it will negatively affect.
Reduce the amount of unoriginal content
Google aims to continue refining its ranking system so that the algorithm can make more accurate judgements whether a web page is useful to the user, if it offers a poor user experience or if it is geared more towards a search engine than towards human users. One type of content that may be significantly affected by this aspect of the update is posts that focus on very specific keywords and which tend towards keyword stuffing.
The aim of this improvement is to provide users with more polished, useful and engaging content based on their search intent – in short, content of a higher quality.
When a user carries out a search, they expect the results they receive to be of high quality and to meet their information needs in a precise and useful way. These days, although this is becoming less common, there are still many top search results whose sole purpose is to “circumvent” search engines by using SEO techniques.
As a general rule, this content is of very poor quality. If Google were to allow this sort of low-quality content to rank highly across the board, users would lose confidence in its search engine and the company’s brand image would suffer.
Delete pages containing spam
As regards content that lacks originality and is overly focused on SEO, we can also identify other underhand tactics used by websites to to try to gain a foothold at any cost on the SERP.
The first is the mass generation of content, something to be expected following the rise in popularity of generative artificial intelligence, particularly ChatGPT. The second issue addressed by Google’s update is cross-domain collaborative content, paid for under the table, whereby a reputable domain publishes content from a third party. The final one is the purchase of expired domains and their repurposing.
Google is set to refine its algorithm so that these three types of low-quality content disappear a little further from the face of the internet.
Mass production of content
Google faces a major challenge with the mass production of content, which clutters search results with redundant, irrelevant and, at times, even false information.
Websites often resort to generating content on a massive and indiscriminate scale in the hope of increase their visibility on search engines and attract more traffic to their websites. Clearly, the underlying reason for these malpractices is a desire to generate more conversions in the form of revenue.
Google has been tackling this issue for years through its successive updates, as it has negative consequences for both users and Google. On the one hand, the mass production of content dilutes the quality and usefulness of search results by flooding them with repetitive or irrelevant information, making it difficult for users to find useful and relevant answers to their queries. Overall, this results in a very poor user experience.
The introduction of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has set alarm bells ringing at Google in this regard, as it has exacerbated this problem by enabling the automated content creation on an even larger scale. With generative AI, websites can produce vast amounts of content in just a couple of clicks. This content, naturally, as it is generated without any discernment, is not curated and offers no useful information.
Content ranked based on third-party reputation
The problem with cross-domain collaborative content, where payment takes place behind the scenes, is that it involves a deliberate attempt to manipulate search results in breach of Google’s quality guidelines. This practice involves a reputable domain – that is, one that Google considers trustworthy and relevant to certain topics – publishing poor-quality content created by a third party in exchange for payment or some other benefit.
Generally speaking, This sort of collaboration takes place in secret, without clearly disclosing that the content has been paid for or that it comes from a third party. It is a way of disguising content. It therefore undermines the quality of the content, as users are accessing content with expectations that are not met. Furthermore, this practice undermines the trust that Google places in the reputation of the website publishing the content.
Purchasing expired domains
That is to say, the practice of buying expired domains with the aim of manipulating search results and to capitalise on the authority of these previously established domains to rank new and potentially irrelevant or misleading content.
When a third party purchases an expired domain, their aim is to capitalise on the reputation and authority that the domain previously enjoyed on search engines in order to rank their content – which usually bears no relation whatsoever to the previous domain. Expired domains retain their link history and reputation accumulated over time, making them an attractive target for those wishing to rapidly increase their online visibility.
The problem arises when the new owner of the domain uses it to host content that is unrelated to the website’s original content, or worse still, for malicious activities such as the distribution of spam, malware or misleading content.
Will Google’s 2024 update affect AI-generated content?
Not exactly. Ever since the use of generative AI began to become widespread, Google has made it clear that does not consider AI-generated content to be bad per se. In fact, its guidelines emphasise that rewards high-quality content, regardless of how it was created.
As for AI-generated content, Google simply states that it will limit itself to assessing whether or not the content is of high quality, regardless of how it is generated. However, it stands to reason that content churned out en masse by ChatGPT – with little planning, barely any editing and no clear focus on the user – is a prime candidate for Google to weed out in a new update designed to further sweep away all content of dubious quality.
The conclusion is the same one that is repeated every time Google rolls out an update: what matters most about content is its quality in terms of meeting the user’s needs.
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