On 5 March 2024, Google announced a new ranking update known as the March 2024 Core Update (and some call it the March 2024 Spam Update)... I've waited until the dust has settled to share my thoughts on this update and whether you should panic...
In this post, I'm going to cover…
- March 2024 Core Update
- March 2024 Spam Update
- What do these updates mean to affiliate marketers?
- What do they mean to content creators in general?
Let's begin...
What is the March 2024 Core Update?
Google has started rolling out its first core update of the year, the March 2024 Core update...
On the Google Blog, Elizabeth Tucker, Google's Director and Product Manager wrote this:
"Today we’re announcing key changes we’re making to improve the quality of Search and the helpfulness of your results."
According to Tucker, this core update is expected to decrease the unhelpful content results in Google searches by 40%.
The update has started rolling out and is expected to be completed within one month since this is a big one that takes time to complete.
Google stated that this update marks a refinement in its ability to discern webpages that lack helpfulness, offer a poor user experience, or seem tailored more for search engines than human users. According to Google, this may include websites primarily designed to cater to very specific search queries.
But this core update is not the only update that was announced... In fact, there's a more serious one regarding spam results...
What is the March 2024 Spam Update?
Google has been fighting spammy low-quality content for more than a decade now...
Today they have taken it a step further...
Mrs. Tucker wrote this:
"We’re making several updates to our spam policies to better address new and evolving abusive practices that lead to unoriginal, low-quality content showing up on Search. We’ll take action on more types of these manipulative behaviors starting today."
This spam update is divided into 3 major updates each addressing one separate spam behavior...
1. Scaled Content Abuse
This update focuses on generating low-quality or unoriginal content at scale to manipulate search rankings. In the past, Google was only identifying the content generated by automation.
However, they've now found that many people are using the exact same method but with content written by humans. This update was mainly because of that...
So from now on, Google will penalize this behavior whether created by automation, humans, or a combination of both.
2. Site Reputation Abuse
Another recent behavior that has widespread is some websites that have great content may also host low-quality content provided by third parties to capitalize on the hosting site's strong reputation.
Google gave an example of this behavior by a third party that might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefits from the site.
This behavior has been used widely by affiliate marketers and is called "Parasite SEO" where affiliates post their affiliate content on big websites with high-ranking power to gain a high position in the SERPs.
Google said that “such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”
Google now with this update considers very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam.
To give website owners enough time to take any needed measures, they decided to start this update on 5 May 2024.
3. Expired Domain Abuse
For nearly a decade now, SEOs have been leveraging the power of expired domains that used to have high authority either to build PBNs (private blog networks) for the sole purpose of getting high-quality backlinks to their sites or to build new websites on these expired domains that have no relation to the original website (only to utilize the high ranking power of the site!)
Now Google considers this behavior spam as this can mislead users into thinking the new content is part of the older site, which may not be the case.
These are the new March 2024 Core Update and Spam Update from Google.
But what does it mean?
In fact, it will mean different things for different categories... here are the most common two categories who need to pay close attention to these updates...
What do these updates mean to affiliate marketers?
It means everything to affiliate marketers... This is again a time that ethical affiliates rise and spammy ones fall.
This is a good thing really... because manipulating search engines always harms ethical affiliates who offer real genuine content and make great effort to promote products...
Spammy affiliates who do the above behaviors usually get higher rankings because they either use the Parasite SEO tactic or use Expired Domains to rank low-quality content. And of course, they do use the scaled content tactic to generate hundreds of low-quality webpages to manipulate rankings.
So now all affiliates must stop these spammy behaviors and focus only on ethical methods to promote products while giving people real value that helps them make an informed decision of buying instead of spamming them all the time!
What do these updates mean to content creators in general?
Some people have jumped to the conclusion that this update is because of using AI to generate content...
This is true but not in the way they meant... how?
AI is a tool like any tool to generate content... You can use it in a good way or you can use it in a bad way...
You can use it to help you with ideas or you can use it to generate thousands of low-quality content pieces... the second case is the one penalized...
Originality AI (the most famous tool that discovers content written by AI) has made a study of websites after these updates and found that some sites that have gone from millions of organic traffic to ZERO traffic are using AI content.
the results were shocking...
It doesn't stop here...
This means that Google is now officially fighting low-quality content generated by AI...
So if you are using AI tools to write content, it's time to rethink your strategy.
You can read the entire study at Originality.ai blog here.
Btw, if you use outsourced content and want to make sure that writers are not using AI tools to generate content, I highly recommend you get Originality AI to find out. It has very tough rules for discovering AI content and plagiarism.
Conclusion
Creating helpful content is the key to overcoming any Google algorithm update. That's it!
Google cares more about its visitors (a.k.a. people doing searches)... so it wants to give them relevant helpful original content...
At any time you create or outsource a new piece of content think about this:
1. Is this content helpful to people?
2. Is this content original or scraped from other websites?
3. Will this content be relevant to someone searching for what I cover in it?
Your answer must be YES for all three questions...
If any of them is NO, then don't publish your content until you edit it to get 3 yes!
Has your site been penalized? Or better has it gained some ranking power after these updates? Share your experience with us in the comments below.
At the same time, you may want to check my free guide where I share my biggest 3 affiliate marketing secrets 
Drive more commissions by leveraging these 2 PRO secrets
Get access to tested tips for making high-ticket affiliate commissions in record time.
Leave a Reply (I read them personally)