I’m writing this from the convention center in the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas. Just as the Pubcon event kicked off here yesterday, Google announced its March 2024 core algorithm update.

Suffice to say, we’re not lacking for conversational topics at this search marketing event.

We’ve seen many core updates before, and I’ve previously written about their impact on the news publishing industry. But this one feels different.

Changing the Narrative

First, it’s rare for Google to accompany a core update with a PR blitz, as they’ve done this time.

In addition to an extensive post on their main search blog, Google also added new spam policies to their documentation and many employees posted about this update on their official social media channels.

Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product at Google Search, also spoke with Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz (arguably the most-read reporter in the SEO industry) to give background information about the update.

It’s obvious that this update is an attempt to change the narrative about Google search. The last several months have seen a steady stream of negative commentary about the quality of Google’s search results, with many claiming that AI-generated spam has made Google almost unusable.

This core update and the surrounding communication seems to be Google’s initial attempt to change that narrative and restore faith in their search results. I expect more of such endeavours to come, as Google strives to rebuild their reputation as the web’s best search engine.

Specific Targets

Second, this update is different because it has very clear targets. In their communications, Google explains what they hope to achieve and the type of SEO/spam tactics they’re targeting:

• Scaled Content Abuse: Google is taking aim at large-scale AI-generated content farms.

I find it a little ironic that Google wants to penalise AI-generated content, while also paying publishers to produce AI-generated content. Of course the contexts are very different, but at a glance the messaging seems a bit contradictory.

• Expired Domain Abuse: Spammers who buy up expired domains to host low quality content and get an initial boost will also be targeted with this update.

The targeting of expired domains is also interesting, as Google has insisted for years that this tactic doesn’t work. That, obviously, wasn’t quite true.

• Site Reputation Abuse: High authority websites that host 3rd party content with little editorial oversight can expect to be affected.

Site reputation abuse is Google’s terminology for what the SEO industry calls ‘parasite SEO’. In their spam policy documentation on this particular issue, Google uses the example of a news publisher hosting 3rd party coupon content with little to no editorial oversight.

All of the site reputation abuse examples listed there are applicable to many publishing websites that partner with 3rd party content providers. This has been a popular revenue stream for publishers for many years, but it looks like the party might soon be over.

Google is giving publishers a two-month grace period to mend their ways. In their blog post, Google states:

“We're publishing this policy two months in advance of enforcement on May 5, to give site owners time to make any needed changes.”

Now, when Google pre-announces updates to their systems to give site owners the chance to make the required changes, I’m always a bit skeptical.

Social Engineering

We’ve seen this before with HTTPS, mobile-first indexing, core web vitals - these were all pre-announced as major updates to how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks websites, and all proved to have very little impact.

The highly suspicious SEO in me understands that Google is well-placed to use these announcements as a means of manipulating the web as a whole and the SEO industry in particular.

Take disavow files for example. This was positioned as a way to let Google know which links pointing to your site were spam links, and shouldn’t be counted to prevent receiving a Google penalty.

Many folks in the industry realised that disavow files can also be used by Google to learn which links are actual spam links. By allowing the SEO industry to openly declare their spam links to Google, we’re giving Google the data to more accurately detect spam links.

This pre-announcement for site reputation abuse may serve a similar purpose. Google tells us to get rid (delete, robots.txt disallow, or noindex) 3rd party content, then sits back and watches us do exactly that.

This provides valuable data to Google about what we, as site owners, consider to be potentially spammy 3rd party content, thus enabling Google to train their systems to more accurately detect that content.

I’m probably being overly paranoid here. Yet, I’ve been in SEO long enough to understand the close attention the whole web pays to what Google says is a prime opportunity for Google to encourage certain behaviours that benefit them.

And it points to a wider issue, which The Independent’s Beth Ashton formulated on LinkedIn:

“No one wants spammy content in search but Google are so far down the road of deciding what journalism is surfaced that it has a responsibility, I think, to work with us for a more sustainable and innovative future.”

Google is quick to penalise, but slow to reward.

What To Do?

There’s no doubt that this is a major update that’ll have a profound impact. There are already reports of sites getting de-indexed and manual spam penalties being applied.

Is it time to panic?

If you’re not engaging in any of the behaviours that Google intends to target, then you’re probably going to be alright. There is a long history of collateral damage from core updates, with sites being affected that didn’t deserve it, so even if you’re not doing anything shady you might still feel some pain.

If you are engaging in any of the targeted tactics, especially in parasite SEO, you may need to mend your ways - and quickly, before the May 5th deadline Google has imposed.

The ‘brute force’ approach to avoiding traffic loss is to get rid of the parasite content entirely. But of course this also has a cost; you will lose the traffic and revenue associated with this content.

That may be the lesser evil - Google has previously hinted that parasite SEO penalties will be applied site-wide. So if you don’t get rid of your parasite content, your entire site could suffer when the May 5th deadline passes. And recovering from such site-wide penalties can be a lengthy (and costly) affair.

I’ve been having such conversations with clients for many months (years even), as I’ve always felt uneasy about mixing editorial journalistic content with obvious commercial content. Publishers have been hesitant to take remedial action, as commercial content only seemed to have benefits and no drawbacks.

This core update is the impetus required to take action and force publishers to focus on their core purpose as journalistic outlets.

Yet this begs the question, why should Google decide how publishers make money? It’s a tricky conundrum, but in reality we’re all subject to Google’s whims. Right now, we lack the power to change the dynamic between Google and publishers.

If you want to monitor how this update is rolling out and impacting websites, I highly recommend following folks like Lily Ray, Glenn Gabe, Marie Haynes, and Barry Schwartz.

Internal Linking Masterclass

I’m teaming up with Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackey from WTF is SEO? to deliver a masterclass on internal linking for publishers. Join us live on Google Hangouts on March 28, 2024 at 11am EST (3pm UK) for a 60-minute session dedicated to optimizing your internal linking strategy. 

Internal links are little bits of SEO dust, sprinkling authority across your stories and telling Google what's important on your site. They're an SEO superpower, the main currency in Google's ecosystem — effectively, a recommendation from one page to another. 

In this live and recorded call, learn about using internal links as a core part of your overall SEO/search strategy. In the first half of the call, we will cover: 

1. Linking in your navigation; 

2. In-article/on-page internal links;

3. Crawl optimization.

Participants are encouraged to bring questions relevant to their publications. This off-the-record conversation is an opportunity to get into the weeds on internal links, and get clarity on real-world problems that SEO and audience editors are facing every day. 

After the masterclass, participants will receive the initial recording (the first half), presentation materials, an actionable tip sheet/checklist, and access to a private Slack channel with Jessie, Shelby and myself for 60 days following the event to ask relevant follow up questions. 

Details and tickets here.

Miscellanea

Here are official Google announcements, interesting articles, and the latest in SEO from the past few weeks.

Official Google Docs:

• What web creators should know about our March 2024 core update and new spam policies

• Adding structured data support for Product Variants

Interesting Articles:

• Google Is Paying Publishers to Test an Unreleased Gen AI Platform - Adweek

• Reddit and the 11.4 Million Organic Search Click Funnel - Sistrix

• News media versus AI: What if we win? - Press Gazette

Latest in SEO:

• What Is Google Discover, and How Can You Boost Your Traffic? - Moz

• How to succeed as a news SEO - WTF is SEO

• Google Most-Read Articles Search Carousel - SER

• Planning to live blog the next major event? Here’s what to expect for Engaged Time, Recirculation, and traffic sources - Chartbeat

Lastly, there’s still time to sign up for next week’s Advanced Technical SEO for News Publishers webinar with John Shehata and myself. Register here.

That’s it for another edition. As always, thanks for reading and subscribing and I’ll see you at the next one.