Did your site experience a drop in traffic in March 2024? You may have been subject to a manual action or a penalty due to Google’s latest attempts to reduce the influx of AI webspam that has entered search results in recent months. It’s reported that a high number of websites were entirely removed from Google’s index as a result of what is now considered ‘spammy practices.’
In this article, we review why sites were affected and what this could mean for your website.
The March 2024 spam update, completed on the 20th of March, is Google’s latest effort to refine its search results by targeting and mitigating spammy content and those who produce it. Leveraging improvements to SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based system, the update aims to enhance the detection of spammy content and practices that are designed with the sole intention of ranking in Google.
Google has implemented a number of improvements encompassing the following:
These updates have been implemented with the purpose of reducing the amount of low quality content ranking in search results.
For every new tool that is made with good intentions (ChatGPT and the like), there is always going to be a section of marketers that use and abuse it. Since the availability of Chat GPT and other AI content writing tools, spammers have created sites with hundreds of thousands of pages all written by unedited AI content. This latest algorithm update appears to have put a stop to sites built purely to gain the system and benefit from ad revenue for a short space of time. The manual actions taken against these sites demonstrate Google’s commitment to combating the rise of AI-driven spam and low-quality content.
The update signifies a shift towards more stringent content quality requirements. Business may experience fluctuations in search rankings as Google’s enhanced algorithms recalibrate to prioritise authentic, high-quality content.
This change really emphasise what has been true in SEO for 20 years – focussing on shiny new objects always brings short term gain but long term pain. This algorithm is reminiscent of the original Penguin update that saw thousands of website that were abusing links disappear from search overnight.
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Has your website been affected by the recent Google Algorithm update? Or are you prepared for the next algo update? Get in touch with Sixtwo to discuss with our team.
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