Unveiling Google’s big search update: The era of real content

Google has unveiled two sets of updates to improve search by highlighting more useful content and identifying more items as spam.

The first update includes refinements to Google’s core ranking systems. The goal is to better judge whether web pages are useless, provide a poor user experience, or appear designed for search engines rather than humans. The goal is to improve the quality of content displayed in search results.

This type of content is known as search engine optimized (SEO) content. It’s usually too long, wordy and may lack meaningful information that doesn’t suit Google’s algorithms. There is growing concern that large language models and generative AI may exacerbate this problem. Google specifically mentions websites built primarily to align with very specific search queries as a cause for concern.

The goal of this update is to reduce the presence of “low-quality, unoriginal content” in Search by roughly 40%, according to Google’s estimates. At the same time, the goal is to drive more traffic to websites that are considered useful and of high quality.

Google explains the new search update

Google says the March 2024 update will be “more complex” than typical major updates. This includes changes to multiple key systems. The implementation process is expected to last more than a month to ensure these sweeping changes are implemented.

we have improved our core ranking systems to show more useful results using various innovative signals and approaches. There is no longer a single signal or system used to do this, and we have also added a new FAQ page to help explain this change.

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In addition, Google will expand its classification of spam. Through an updated scaled content abuse policy, Google intends to address more types of content that have no value and are created at scale. This includes pages that pretend to provide answers to popular searches but ultimately fail to provide useful content.

To better address these techniques, we are strengthening our policy to target this abusive behavior – producing content at scale to improve search rankings – whether automation, humans or a combination is involved.

Google Search update will fight against spam content

Google is taking action against websites that may have “great content” but also host “low-quality content provided by third parties in order to take advantage of the hosting site’s strong reputation.” The search engine will categorize this practice as spam and enforcement will begin on May 5. This will allow the websites to make the necessary changes.

For example, a third party may post payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to receive ranking benefits from the site. Such high ranking content in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have significantly different expectations of a website’s content.

In the latest update, Search will now identify “expired domains that have been purchased and repurposed with the intention of boosting the search rankings of low-quality content” as spam. The move is aimed at tackling manipulative practices. This includes acquiring and redirecting expired domains to boost search rankings for low-quality content.