Another day, another Google update was announced. In the newest episode of Local Search Tuesdays Greg takes a deep dive into the latest Google update. Find out what is getting an update, how you will be affected, and how you and your business can prepare and be ready for the changes ahead.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. In this week’s episode, we’re talking about Google’s March twenty twenty four core update and what you should do about it.
Google announced the rollout of a big core update last week, and of course, there’s a lot of buzz on social media about it. Google rarely announces updates. So when a public announcement is made, you should always pay attention. Since this update is touching multiple Google core systems, it’s rolling out slowly over the next month. Google even warned that this will cause more ranking fluctuations than a regular update since the systems will be updated separately.
Once they’re all updated and can reinforce each other, ranking fluctuations should settle down. One of the biggest pieces of info around the update was that the helpful content system is now fully integrated into the ranking algorithm. Google also announced a few new and updated spam policies that were introduced with the core update. In the announcement, Google said that it expects that the update will reduce unoriginal content and search results by forty percent.
Google is aggressively fighting spam and low-quality content whether it’s written by AI or by humans. They’re also pointing out an update to the old spam policy where they’re targeting mass-produced pages created with the sole purpose of ranking in search results. If you produce content at scale, regardless of whether it’s written by AI or humans, that’s against guidelines. Google specifically warns against content that pretends to have answers, but fails to deliver.
If a page states that it will answer a question, but then leads you on with low quality content, that’s a problem.
Car dealers, you should pay attention to that bit. Because that’s the type of content that you’re getting from most of the SEO providers in automotive.
If you’ve been creating content for humans that truly helps answer questions, You’re gonna be okay. If you’re writing crappy content or content that’s just meant to show up in search results, but doesn’t really help people, Then you’re probably going to see some loss in visibility.
If your site is negatively affected by the March update, there isn’t anything you should do. A negative impact on ranking doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something wrong with your site. If you do get hit, You should take a look at your content and reevaluate. Ask yourself the following questions. Is the content original information?
Is the content of substantial or comprehensive description of the topic? Is the content an insightful analysis or interesting information that isn’t obvious.
If the content draws from other sources, are you just repeating information, or are you adding additional value or analysis?
Do the heading and page title provide a helpful description of the content? Is the content free from spelling or grammatical errors?
Does the content display well on mobile devices? Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of site visitors or Does it seem to be written by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search results?
So That’s what’s up with the March core update, and that’s all the time we’ve got left for today’s episode. So you know what that means. Put your hand on the screen right here.
We totally just tie five because you learned something awesome. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next week for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.
