How Does the March 2024 Google Core Update Affect Your Small Business?

Google did it again.

The tech giant’s latest “core update” arrived this month to “[enhance] Search so you see more useful information, and fewer results that feel made for search engines.”

That sounds good on face value (and it is!), but in the short-term we are all looking at major organic traffic volatility.

Let’s first take a look at what the update aims to accomplish, and then we’ll get into some action items for you and your team.

Google’s March 2024 Core Update

Every day, your audience (and the rest of the world) uses Google Search to find the most relevant and insightful content online. Google has rules and smart tools to stop spammers from showing low-quality stuff and manipulating search results. Because this is a dynamic digital media environment, Google continually updates these rules and tools to catch new spam tricks and keep search results useful and full of good websites.

Now, Google is making some big changes to make Search even better and more helpful:

1. Better Quality Ranking: Google is tweaking its system to make sure the top search results are super helpful and original, and to push down boring, copied content.
2. Tougher on Spam: Google is updating its rules to block really bad content from showing up in search results, like old websites turned into spam dumps and fake obituary pages (yikes!).
3. Cutting Down on Low-Quality Stuff: Starting in 2022, Google began to crack down on unhelpful, copied content showing up in search results. With the March 2024 update, they’re getting even smarter about finding pages that aren’t useful or are just made for search engines, not real people. Google’s team believes that these updates will cut down on bad content in search results by 40%.

Fighting More Spam: For a long time, Google has used advanced tech and rules to keep spammy content out of search results. They’re introducing updates to catch new spam tricks and stop low-quality content from getting a high spot in search results.

Scaled Content Abuse: Google doesn’t like it when people use robots or any method to create tons of low-quality content just to trick their way to the top of search results. They’re tightening their rules to crack down on this, whether it’s robots, humans, or both making the content.

This issue gets into the broader question of how AI tools, like ChatGPT or Google’s own Gemini, can play a role in developing meaningful content online. For now, Google’s primary (if somewhat vague) metric is helpfulness.

That December 2022 Google update introduced the concept of  E-E-A-T, which stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.” Those are the factors that determine the helpfulness of a piece of content (and thus the ranking potential within search).

Site Reputation Abuse: Sometimes, good websites end up hosting bad content from others trying to ride on their good reputation. For example, a trusted education site might unknowingly have spammy loan reviews. Google will start seeing this kind of thing as spam and will give site owners until May 5 to clean up their sites.

Expired Domain Abuse: Sometimes people buy old website addresses and fill them with junk to trick Google’s rankings. Google’s calling this spam, too.

Google’s aim is to always make Search better, somehow, and to keep the quality of content high. They’re working to ensure that what shows up in your search results is there to help you, not to mislead or waste your time.

That said, the language of this core update is aimed at users. So…

What Does This Mean for Small Businesses?

As a small business owner with a focused digital presence, the March 2024 Google Core Update has several implications for how you manage your website and content strategy.

Here’s a breakdown of what this means for you:

1. Higher Standards for Content Quality: The update emphasizes the importance of creating high-quality, original content. This means moving away from generic, unoriginal content and focusing on providing valuable information that genuinely serves your audience’s needs. (Remember: E-E-A-T.) It’s an opportunity to review and possibly revamp your existing content to ensure it’s engaging, informative, and unique; Encore360 is here to help!
2. Crackdown on Spam and Low-Quality Content: With Google’s new and improved spam policies, any low-quality content or spammy practices you might have overlooked on your site could penalize your search rankings. This includes outdated practices like keyword stuffing or duplicating content across pages. Ensuring your site adheres to Google’s guidelines is more critical than ever. Spam referral links can be an unsuspecting source of stress, and a big no-no for Google. Regularly monitor where your web users are coming from; if you see a lot of spam referrals, you could get dinged. This is a good reminder to regularly audit your website content; we can do that, too!
3. The Importance of Website Reputation: The update targets content that exploits a website’s reputation, meaning that if your site hosts guest posts or third-party content, it’s crucial to maintain high editorial standards. Ensure any external content aligns with your site’s quality and topic relevance to avoid being flagged as spam.
4. Changes in Content Creation Practices: If you’ve been relying on automated content creation tools or mass-producing low-value content to boost your search rankings, it’s time to shift strategies. Google is getting better at identifying and penalizing such content, so focusing on quality over quantity will be key to your online visibility.
5. Reviewing Your Domain Strategy: For businesses that have acquired expired domains to redirect traffic or enhance SEO, it’s important to ensure these practices don’t negatively impact your reputation. Google’s new stance on expired domains means repurposed sites need to provide genuine, high-quality content relevant to the original domain’s audience.

For small businesses, this update reinforces the need for a thoughtful, quality-focused approach to digital content and SEO practices. Adapting to these changes can help improve your online visibility, attract more meaningful traffic to your site, and ultimately support your business growth. Staying informed and adjusting your digital strategy accordingly will be crucial in navigating the post-update landscape successfully.

Photo by Kai Wenzel