Google’s ‘March 2024 core update’ fights back against site spammers

If you’ve noticed more iffy links creeping into your Google results, you’re not alone. Even Google says it’s keenly aware that it could do a better job of deflecting widely-used tactics for gaming its search engine. And it just announced several changes it’s making to push substandard pages down in results or eliminate them altogether.

Known as the March 2024 Core Update, this round of fixes builds on algorithmic tweaks the company began implementing in 2022 to prevent questionable sites from competing with the useful ones people turn to a search engine to find. In total, Google says, these adjustments should reduce the amount of “low-quality, unoriginal content” by 40%.

Google already penalized sites that used AI to churn out vast amounts of content that was willfully lousy but highly optimized to rank well in its results. With the advent of large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s own Gemini, it’s never been easier to stuff a site with AI-generated material. But rather than target sites specifically for harnessing AI in such efforts, Google now says it will focus on curtailing low-grade, high-SEO content regardless of the techniques involved.

“I think generative AI is actually a really valuable tool for creators, and there’s nothing wrong with using it to create the content you create for your users,” says Pandu Nayak, a Google Search VP overseeing quality and ranking. “The problem is when you start creating content at scale not with the idea of serving your users, but with the idea of targeting search ranking.” (Whether the revised policy mentions automation or not may be a wash: It’s tough to imagine anyone who’s mass-producing web pages without regard to their quality not relying on AI to do most of the work.)

In some cases, questionable third-party pages appear on otherwise respectable sites to leech off their established search ranking: One example, Google says, is “payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website.” The company will begin treating those pages as spam, with a two-month warning so the sites in question have the option of cleaning up their act. It also says it will take action against site proprietors who acquire old domains that were once home to reputable material and then revive them as repositories of SEO drek. (Wired’s Kate Knibbs recently wrote an excellent exposé of this practice.)

Even with stricter policies rolling out, using algorithms to enforce them will never be effective 100% of the time. But Nayak stresses that Google’s modifications build on learnings from thousands of human testers trained to evaluate search results the way users do. The company shows them two sets of results side-by-side—one without any changes, the other reflecting proposed tweaks—and asks them to identify the higher-quality version.

To help impose some degree of consistency on these testers’ assessments, they refer to Google’s 168-page Search Quality Rating manual. “Think of it as the North Star for what search aspires to be,” says Nayak.

With the new measures in place, will users notice that their Google search experience has improved? Nayak told me he hopes and thinks they will. But he cheerfully acknowledges that searchers are less likely to be impressed by good results than they are to be annoyed by subpar ones.

“Nobody comes to me and says, ‘Oh, I did this search, and it worked great,’ he says. “Because of course that’s what it should do. But people always notice the things that don’t work well.” The fewer of those things there are to notice, the stronger the evidence that Google’s great de-spamming initiative is paying off.

If you’ve noticed more iffy links creeping into your Google results, you’re not alone. Even Google says it’s keenly aware that it could do a better job of deflecting widely-used tactics for gaming its search engine. And it just announced several changes it’s making to push substandard pages down in results or eliminate them altogether.

Known as the March 2024 Core Update, this round of fixes builds on algorithmic tweaks the company began implementing in 2022 to prevent questionable sites from competing with the useful ones people turn to a search engine to find. In total, Google says, these adjustments should reduce the amount of “low-quality, unoriginal content” by 40%.

Google already penalized sites that used AI to churn out vast amounts of content that was willfully lousy but highly optimized to rank well in its results. With the advent of large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s own Gemini, it’s never been easier to stuff a site with AI-generated material. But rather than target sites specifically for harnessing AI in such efforts, Google now says it will focus on curtailing low-grade, high-SEO content regardless of the techniques involved.

“I think generative AI is actually a really valuable tool for creators, and there’s nothing wrong with using it to create the content you create for your users,” says Pandu Nayak, a Google Search VP overseeing quality and ranking. “The problem is when you start creating content at scale not with the idea of serving your users, but with the idea of targeting search ranking.” (Whether the revised policy mentions automation or not may be a wash: It’s tough to imagine anyone who’s mass-producing web pages without regard to their quality not relying on AI to do most of the work.)

In some cases, questionable third-party pages appear on otherwise respectable sites to leech off their established search ranking: One example, Google says, is “payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website.” The company will begin treating those pages as spam, with a two-month warning so the sites in question have the option of cleaning up their act. It also says it will take action against site proprietors who acquire old domains that were once home to reputable material and then revive them as repositories of SEO drek. (Wired’s Kate Knibbs recently wrote an excellent exposé of this practice.)

Even with stricter policies rolling out, using algorithms to enforce them will never be effective 100% of the time. But Nayak stresses that Google’s modifications build on learnings from thousands of human testers trained to evaluate search results the way users do. The company shows them two sets of results side-by-side—one without any changes, the other reflecting proposed tweaks—and asks them to identify the higher-quality version.

To help impose some degree of consistency on these testers’ assessments, they refer to Google’s 168-page Search Quality Rating manual. “Think of it as the North Star for what search aspires to be,” says Nayak.

With the new measures in place, will users notice that their Google search experience has improved? Nayak told me he hopes and thinks they will. But he cheerfully acknowledges that searchers are less likely to be impressed by good results than they are to be annoyed by subpar ones.

“Nobody comes to me and says, ‘Oh, I did this search, and it worked great,’ he says. “Because of course that’s what it should do. But people always notice the things that don’t work well.” The fewer of those things there are to notice, the stronger the evidence that Google’s great de-spamming initiative is paying off.