With constantly changing technology, customer behavior, too, changes constantly. This gives rise to new problems, which require different novel solutions. For this very reason, it becomes necessary for any search engine to constantly update its algorithms so that its users can avail themselves of the best service and are satisfied with it.
After numerous such updates, Google’s March 2024 Spam update is more markedly complex than the previous ones. The update aims to improve Google’s search quality and weed out unresponsive or spam content from search results. To learn more about the details, read below.
Contents
What are Google Algorithms?
When you Google anything, Google algorithms are complex systems that work behind the scenes. They decide what you see and what websites you surf when you browse the web.
The algorithms retrieve data from Google’s search index and surf through billions of web pages and their contents, looking for keywords and phrases that match the query you entered. Then, they instantly deliver the best search results for your query.
To deliver this result, the Google search engine uses a combination of algorithms and ranking systems that show the results on your screen according to relevance. Google’s system understands what you’re looking for, retrieves the data from web pages, and provides a list of pages ranked according to the quality of the search results.
Previous Google Spam Updates
Google launched a spam update on 19 October 2022, completed on 21 November 2022. This was followed by another spam update in October 2023, which began on October 4th and was completed on October 19th, 2023.
Google also launched a link spam update targeting to neutralize higher rankings using unnatural link networks in December 2022, completed in January 2023.
What’s The March 2024 Spam Update About?
Google promised some big changes during the first few months of 2024. On March 5th, 2024, Google announced these key changes to improve Search results. The first was the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, which involved changes to multiple core systems.
The second was the Google March 2024 spam update that includes improved quality ranking and new enhanced policies regarding spam content. The updated system is to understand better if web pages can be made more useful and provide a better user experience. The procedure has been underway since 2022; the recent 2024 update adds to it.
Google has also predicted a higher number of rankings fluctuations for site owners than usual with regular updates. This is due to several systems at work, which are meant to work together and reinforce each other once updated.
Improved Quality Ranking
Improved quality ranking includes algorithmic enhancements to Google’s core ranking system. The March 2024 Core Update ensures that when you search for anything, Google effectively browses the best and most helpful content while reducing the amount of unoriginal content appearing in your search results.
This optimizes the Search tool and benefits users by filtering out unwanted or irrelevant sites that do not contain any information or material of value.
New Spam Policies
The Google March 2024 spam update also includes policies to keep low-ranking content out of Search. This includes out-of-date websites and obituary spam. The update aims to reduce unoriginal and low-quality search results by 40%, targeting content abuse, site reputation abuse, and expired domain abuse.
The Google March 2024 Spam Update focuses on controlling three types of abuse. The policy is mainly in response to the search engine pages (SERPs) producing far more spam pages in recent years than they did before.
Scaled Content Abuse
The first on Google’s spam category list is scaled content abuse. The policy against scaled content abuse was launched to prevent sites from producing many web pages containing AI-generated content.
Some website owners generate numerous pages to manipulate search engine rankings. A higher number of web pages inadvertently results in higher rankings but no substantial or helpful content for users.
These pages primarily consist of AI-generated, unoriginal content of poor quality, adding no value for users. However, they contain the keywords that help them rank higher on Google search pages. These companies or site owners often tend to create multiple sites to hide the scaled nature of their websites’ content.
Site Reputation Abuse
Some websites tend to host low-quality third-party pages to websites with strong reputations and little or no host site involvement. The purpose here is to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the host site’s rankings and thus ranking well on Google searches.
For example, consider a sports site hosting a page written by a third party about “best casino games”, where it is evident that the sports site’s editorial staff had little to no involvement in the content and the main purpose of hosting the page is to manipulate search rankings.
Site reputation abuse can often confuse users visiting a website for a certain purpose only to find very different content that fails to meet their expectations for that website.
Site reputation abuse is meant to become active from May 2024 onwards. Google’s blog, published on March 5th, 2024, forewarns companies, site owners, and individuals to make any necessary changes before their websites are marked as spam.
Expired Domain Abuse
Some companies or individuals buy domains from websites that once had strong reputations. They then build low-quality repurposed websites while using the same URL and links. This enables them to rank well on Google searches because of the previous site’s reputation. They remain of no value or help to users and can confuse or misdirect users into thinking they are part of the previous website.
What Does Google Consider Spam?
As per Google’s previous spam updates, some of the things that Google considers spam include pages with heavily distracting advertisements that contribute no value to users, text or links that may not be visible to users but only to search engines, and affiliate pages that have little to no value-added content but focus solely on monetization.
Google also considers pages advertising products and services by making false claims as spam. According to Google, such websites and webpages attempt to trick users into providing personal information or installing malware into users’ devices.
How Frequently Does Google Update Its Algorithms?
Google constantly evolves and develops its search algorithms to provide a better user experience. This means more relevant results and more helpful information. Danny Sullivan from Google accounts for the fact that Google makes up to nine changes to its algorithm daily. This alone makes about 3,200 changes per year.
Google lets its users participate in some changes, while the rest mostly go unnoticed. Google runs numerous experiments yearly to test new features and the working of the existing features and functions, ranging from Natural Language Processing (NLP) to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (ML).
FAQs
What is the Google link spam update?
Link spam refers to backlinks on websites or web pages with several irrelevant links deliberately placed to artificially inflate the website to boost search rankings and increase website traffic. These links may be completely out of context and no use to users. Link spam is also known as blog, comment, or wikispam. Google’s December 2022 link spam update deals specifically with link spam.
What is the Google algorithm update for January 2024?
After the November 2023 Reviews Update, Google published no algorithm updates in December, January, or February. The November 2023 Reviews Update was followed by the Google March 2024 Core Update and the Google March 2024 Spam Update on 5th March 2024.
How do I recover from Google spam updates?
If your website has been affected by Google spam updates, start by improving the quality of your content. Focus on analyzing user intent from the available data. List the points, identify the content that needs improvement, and begin by making it more relevant, user-friendly, authoritative, and natural.
How many times does Google update its algorithms?
Google search is constantly updated by developers. In 2021, Google made more than 5,000 changes to Search. Most of these changes are undetectable unless published by the company.
Conclusion
The March 2024 spam update aims to greatly enhance Google’s ranking systems. According to Elizabeth Tucker, director and in charge of product management for search at Google, it focuses on “making algorithmic enhancements to (our) core ranking systems to ensure (we) surface the most helpful information on the web and reduce unoriginal content in search results.”
Many core systems are expected to work together for the March 2024 Updates. Therefore, the March 2024 update, which is more complex than regular core or spam updates, is expected to roll out over a month.