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Hey there, Google is in the process of rolling out one of its most significant algorithm updates yet. Here's what you need to know: The March 2024 core update will take roughly one month to roll out from it's launch date (5th March), during which time multiple ranking systems will be updated. As each ranking system is updated, it will behave differently with all the others. We've also got a spam update rolling out as well. That should be fully rolled out in just over a week. So, strap yourself in. It could be a bumpy ride. Well, a more bumpy ride than usual. 🫠HCU changes The Helpful Content Update (HCU) first went live in August 2022 to much fan fair from Google. Not much happened though. Future updates were a very different story. Sites that were hit by this update could take months to recover, or they'd have to wait until the next HCU update. HCU updates were few and far between, however. But now, the HCU is part of Google's core algo. This is good news. Core updates are more frequent than previous HCU updates so it'll provide more opportunities for sites to recover. Not that anyone knows how to recover from the HCU yet. I've seen plenty of theories presented as fact but few of them hold much weight. And in typical Google fashion, their standing advice is that if you are hit, there aren't specific actions to take. Just continue "making satisfying content meant for people." Not that helpful but they're not wrong. Identifying HCU ranking drops It's more challenging to identify a HCU ranking drop than you might expect. Surely, if you lost rankings when HCU initially rolled out, that would mean a HCU penalty, right? Hold up! Not so fast! It's not that easy. 🫠Why? Well, ranking drops may not indicate any issue with your content. They may simply be moving competitors up rather than moving you down. This is an important distinction, not that it changes the outcome at all. We'll have to wait to see how this all plays out. Google steps up its focus on specific kinds of spam In addition Google's spam update, they are ramping up efforts to reduce specific types of spam in organic search. This includes what Google is calling "scaled content abuse search spam." The idea behind this is to reduce the amount of low-quality content in organic search. They're not openly saying this is targeting AI-written content, but I suspect it is a reaction to the vast increase in AI-generated content. AI-written content can be good or bad. If the content is helpful, accurate, and satisfies search intent, then Google should be ok with it. But they're clearly not ok with the low-quality stuff. So, how is Google responding to this kind of content? Manual actions. These manual actions appear as messages in Google Search Console. The result is entire websites being deindexed. Ouch. It's an aggressive approach that shows how Google has been having trouble identifying this kind of content algorithmically. A word of caution I'm mentioning this specifically because I've seen far too many marketers encourage people to blindly publish vast quantities of AI-written content. Avoid this approach at all costs. Otherwise, it'll put your website at risk. Use AI by all means. But use it the way it's meant to be used -- as a force multiplier for creating human-centric content that's truly useful. That's it for today. I'll be back with more fresh content for you soon. 👋 Talk soon, ​Buy Me A Coffee​ |