Search giant Google is currently undergoing one of its biggest algorithm updates in its history, sources are told.
The online search platform which manages more than 8 billion searches per day is doing a significant update to its internal systems which will impact how search queries will be shown, with attention to parasite websites, improved quality rankings and spam policies.
The core update as it is known has been processed for around 2 months, starting on 5th March 2024 and ending officially on 5th May 2024, which is shown on the Google Status Dashboard.
Why Does Google Update its Algorithms?
The search company typically updates their search algorithm every couple of months to increase the quality of search results for their users looking for products, services, information and everything in between. From checking the weather, to finding a nearby plumber or to answer questions and queries, Google remains the go to place for online search requests and is the search engine with the largest market share in most parts of the world.
Certain algorithm updates address particularly search issues, including mobile quality, site speed, trust and authority (E-E-A-T), spam and general quality. The updates are used to constantly improve the quality of search results on the web and those companies and websites that appear.
In many respects, Google uses algorithm updates to massively remove the poor quality, which is often manipulated by SEO (search engine optimisation) professionals using alternative and often unsavory techniques.
In this particular core update from March 2024 to May 2024, Google speak about reducing spam and how the impact of this update should reduce overall spam by 40% across all their searches. Here is an excerpt from their blog announcement below:
What Google is Addressing in This Update?
Scaled Content
The use of AI and ChatGPT has made the process of writing and scaling content extremely fast for website owners. For those that used to spend months or years creating individual and unique content can now produce this in just a matter of hours.
For Google this is creating a dramatic surge in new pages and websites to index, faster than Google can often process. But in this update, Google is trying to decipher between content that is unique and original with those that is AI generated, again rewarding those that have taken time to write something unique and not scaled their websites with poor quality using AI.
Site Reputation
Google thrives to reward companies with the most quality content that is created by legitimate authors and reputable individuals and websites.
This includes the use of third party content whereby tough-to-rank industries such as casinos and payday loans use trusted news or authoritative third party sites to produce long articles for the sake of gaming the rankings. This low quality content should thus be removed or majorly de-valued in the upcoming core update.
Additional authority measures may include having legitimate authors on guides and posts, dates it was created and clear references – to show trust and value to users. Websites in highly competitive industries such as health and finance that do not uphold these standards may find themselves on the wrong side of the algorithm update and suffering huge losses in rankings and traffic.
Expired Domain Abuse
The practice of purchasing old domain names for the sake of redirecting them to pass on search value is something that Google is addressing in this update.
Their blog explains that this process can mislead users into thinking that the content is part of an older website or brand which may not be the case – and is only used to pass on ranking value. In this update, using expired domains may now be considered as spam.
The algorithm update concludes on 5th May 2024 with dramatic shifts in search positions expected in the run up to this core update.