Google March 2024 Core Update: Reducing “Unhelpful” Content By 40% via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has announced a significant update to its search algorithms and policies to tackle spammy and low-quality content on its search engine.

The March 2024 Core Update, which the company says is more extensive than its usual core updates, is now rolling out.

This update includes algorithm changes to improve the quality of search results and reduce spam.

Here are the full details.

Improved Quality Ranking

One of the main focuses of the March 2024 Core Update is to enhance Google’s ranking systems.

“We’re making algorithmic enhancements to our core ranking systems to ensure we surface the most helpful information on the web and reduce unoriginal content in search results,” stated Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product for Search at Google.

The company has been working on reducing unhelpful and unoriginal content since 2022 and the March 2024 update builds on those efforts.

The refined ranking systems will better understand if webpages could be more helpful, have a better user experience, or seem to be created primarily for search engines rather than people.

Google expects that combining this update and its previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.

Google states:

“We believe these updates will reduce the amount of low-quality content in Search and send more traffic to helpful and high-quality sites. Based on our evaluations, we expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.”

New Spam Policies

In addition to the ranking adjustments, Google is updating its spam policies to remove the “lowest-quality” content from search results.

Google states:

“We’ll take action on more types of these manipulative behaviors starting today. While our ranking systems keep many types of low-quality content from ranking highly on Search, these updates allow us to take more targeted action under our spam policies.”

Scaled Content Abuse

Google is strengthening its policy against using automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale to manipulate search rankings.

The updated policy will focus on the abusive behavior of producing content at scale to boost search ranking, regardless of whether automation, humans, or a combination of both are involved.

Google states:

“This will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content.”

Site Reputation Abuse

Google is addressing the issue of site reputation abuse, where trusted websites host low-quality, third-party content to capitalize on the hosting site’s strong reputation.

Google provides the following example of site reputation abuse:

“For example, a third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefits from the site. Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website.”

Google will now consider such content spam if it’s produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of the website owner.

Expired Domain Abuse

Google’s updated spam policies will target expired domain abuse, where expired domains are purchased and repurposed to boost the search ranking of low-quality content. This practice can mislead users into thinking the new content is part of the older, trusted site.

Timeline

The March 2024 Core Update is starting to roll out now.

Websites have a two-month window to comply with the new site reputation policy. The other changes come into effect this week.

Google’s announcement emphasizes the company’s ongoing commitment to improving the quality of its search results.

“Search helps people with billions of questions every day, but there will always be areas where we can improve,” Tucker stated. “We’ll continue to work hard at keeping low-quality content on Search to low levels and showing more information created to help people.”

Featured Image: salarko/Shutterstock

Google Announces A New Carousel Rich Result via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google announced a new carousel rich result that can be used for local businesses, products, and events which will show a scrolling horizontal carousel displaying all of the items in the list. It’s very flexible and can even be used to create a top things to do in a city list that combines hotels, restaurants, and events. This new feature is in beta, which means it’s being tested.

The new carousel rich result is for displaying lists in a carousel format. According to the announcement the rich results is limited to the following types:

“LocalBusiness and its subtypes, for example:
– Restaurant
– Hotel
– VacationRental

Product

Event”

An example of subtypes is Lodgings, which is a subset of LocalBusiness.

Here is the Schema.org hierarchical structure that shows the LodgingBusiness type as being a subset of the LocalBusiness type.

• Thing > Organization > LocalBusiness > LodgingBusiness
• Thing > Place > LocalBusiness > LodgingBusiness

ItemList Structured Data

The carousel displays “tiles” that contain information from the webpage that’s about the price, ratings and images. The order of what’s in the ItemList structured data is the order that they will be displayed in the carousel.

Publishers must use the ItemList structured data in order to become eligible for the new rich result

All information in the ItemList structured data must be on the webpage. Just like any other structured data, you can’t stuff the structured data with information that is not visible on the webpage itself.

There are two important rules when using this structured data:

1. The ItemList type must be the top level container for the structured data.
2. All the URLs of in the list must point to different webpages on the same domain.

The part about the ItemList being the top level container means that the structured data cannot be merged together with another structured data where the top-level container is something other than ItemList.

For example, the structured data must begin like this:

Be As Specific As Possible

Google’s guidelines recommends being as specific as possible but that if there isn’t a structured data type that closely matches with the type of business then it’s okay to use the more generic LocalBusiness structured data type.

“Depending on your scenario, you may choose the best type to use. For example, if you have a list of hotels and vacation rentals on your page, use both Hotel and VacationRental types. While it’s ideal to use the type that’s closest to your scenario, you can choose to use a more generic type (for example, LocalBusiness).”

Can Be Used For Products

A super interesting use case for this structured data is for displaying a list of products in a carousel rich result.

The structured data for that begins as a ItemList structured data type like this:

E-E-A-T’s Google Ranking Influence Decoded via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The idea that something is not a ranking factor that nevertheless plays a role in ranking websites seems to be logically irreconcilable. Despite seeming like a paradox that cancels itself out, SearchLiaison recently tweeted some comments that go a long way to understanding how to think about E-E-A-T and apply it to SEO.

What A Googler Said About E-E-A-T

Marie Haynes published a video excerpt on YouTube from an event at which a Googler spoke, essentially doubling down on the importance of E-A-T.

This is what he said:

“You know this hasn’t always been there in Google and it’s something that we developed about ten to twelve or thirteen years ago. And it really is there to make sure that along the lines of what we talked about earlier is that it really is there to ensure that the content that people consume is going to be… it’s not going to be harmful and it’s going to be useful to the user. These are principles that we live by every single day.

And E-A-T, that template of how we rate an individual site based off of Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, we do it to every single query and every single result. So it’s actually very pervasive throughout everything that we do .

I will say that the YMYL queries, the Your Money or Your Life Queries, such as you know when I’m looking for a mortgage or when I’m looking for the local ER,  those we have a particular eye on and we pay a bit more attention to those queries because clearly they’re some of the most important decisions that people can make.

So I would say that E-A-T has a bit more of an impact there but again, I will say that E-A-T applies to everything, every single query that we actually look at.”

How can something be a part of every single search query and not be a ranking factor, right?

Background, Experience & Expertise In Google Circa 2012

Something to consider is that in 2012 Google’s senior engineer at the time, Matt Cutts, said that experience and expertise brings a measure of quality to content and makes it worthy of ranking.

Matt Cutts’ remarks on experience and expertise were made in an interview with Eric Enge.

Discussing whether the website of a hypothetical person named “Jane” deserves to rank with articles that are original variations of what’s already in the SERPs.

Matt Cutts observed:

“While they’re not duplicates they bring nothing new to the table.

Google would seek to detect that there is no real differentiation between these results and show only one of them so we could offer users different types of sites in the other search results.

They need to ask themselves what really is their value add? …they need to figure out what… makes them special.

…if Jane is just churning out 500 words about a topic where she doesn’t have any background, experience or expertise, a searcher might not be as interested in her opinion.”

Matt then cites the example of Pulitzer Prize-Winning movie reviewer Roger Ebert as a person with the background, experience and expertise that makes his opinion valuable to readers and the content worthy of ranking.

Matt didn’t say that a webpage author’s background, experience and expertise were ranking factors. But he did say that these are the kinds of things that can differentiate one webpage from another and align it to what Google wants to rank.

He specifically said that Google’s algorithm detects if there is something different about it that makes it stand out. That was in 2012 but not much has changed because Google’s John Mueller says the same thing.

For example, in 2020 John Mueller said that differentiation and being compelling is important for getting Google to notice and rank a webpage.

“So with that in mind, if you’re focused on kind of this small amount of content that is the same as everyone else then I would try to find ways to significantly differentiate yourselves to really make it clear that what you have on your website is significantly different than all of those other millions of ringtone websites that have kind of the same content.

…And that’s the same recommendation I would have for any kind of website that offers essentially the same thing as lots of other web sites do.

You really need to make sure that what you’re providing is unique and compelling and high quality so that our systems and users in general will say, I want to go to this particular website because they offer me something that is unique on the web and I don’t just want to go to any random other website.”

In 2021, in regard to getting Google to index a webpage, Mueller also said:

“Is it something the web has been waiting for? Or is it just another red widget?”

This thing about being compelling and different than other sites, it’s something that’s been a part of Google’s algorithm awhile, just like the Googler in the video said, just like Matt Cutts said and exactly like what Mueller has said as well.

Are they talking about signals?

E-EA-T Algorithm Signals

We know there’s something in the algorithm that relates to someone’s expertise and background that Google’s looking for. The table is set and we can dig into the next step of what it all means.

A while back back I remember reading something that Marie Haynes said about E-A-T, she called it a framework. And I thought, now that’s an interesting thing she just did, she’s conceptualizing E-A-T.

When SEOs discussed E-A-T it was always in the context of what to do in order to demonstrate E-A-T. So they looked at the Quality Raters Guide for guidance, which kind of makes sense since it’s a guide, right?

But what I’m proposing is that the answer isn’t really in the guidelines or anything that the quality raters are looking for.

The best way to explain it is to ask you to think about the biggest part of Google’s algorithm, relevance.

What’s relevance? Is it something you have to do? It used to be about keywords and that’s easy for SEOs to understand. But it’s not about keywords anymore because Google’s algorithm has natural language understanding (NLU). NLU is what enables machines to understand language in the way that it’s actually spoken (natural language).

So, relevance is just something that’s related or connected to something else. So, if I ask, how do I satiate my thirst? The answer can be water, because water quenches the thirst.

How is a site relevant to the search query: “how do I satiate my thirst?”

An SEO would answer the problem of relevance by saying that the webpage has to have the keywords that match the search query, which would be the words “satiate” and “thirst.”

The next step the SEO would take is to extract the related entities for “satiate” and “thirst” because every SEO “knows” they need to do entity research to understand how to make a webpage that answers the search query, “How do I satiate my thirst?”

Hypothetical Related entities:

• Thirst: Water, dehydration, drink,
• Satiate: Food, satisfaction, quench, fulfillment, appease

Now that the SEO has their entities and their keywords they put it all together and write a 600 word essay that uses all their keywords and entities so that their webpage is relevant for the search query, “How do I satiate my thirst?”

I think we can stop now and see how silly that is, right? If someone asked you, “How do I satiate my thirst?” You’d answer, “With water” or “a cold refreshing beer” because that’s what it means to be relevant.

Relevance is just a concept. It doesn’t have anything to do with entities or keywords in today’s search algorithms because the machine is understanding search queries as natural language, even more so with AI search engines.

Similarly, E-E-A-T is also just a concept. It doesn’t have anything to do with author bios, LinkedIn profiles, it doesn’t have anything at all to do with making your content say that you handled the product that’s being reviewed.

Here’s what SearchLiaison recently said about an E-E-A-T, SEO and Ranking:

“….just making a claim and talking about a ‘rigorous testing process’ and following an ‘E-E-A-T checklist’ doesn’t guarantee a top ranking or somehow automatically cause a page to do better.”

Here’s the part where SearchLiaison ties a bow around the gift of E-E-A-T knowledge:

“We talk about E-E-A-T because it’s a concept that aligns with how we try to rank good content.”

E-E-A-T Can’t Be Itemized On A Checklist

Remember how we established that relevance is a concept and not a bunch of keywords and entities? Relevance is just answering the question.

E-E-A-T is the same thing. It’s not something that you do. It’s closer to something that you are.

SearchLiaison elaborated:

“…our automated systems don’t look at a page and see a claim like “I tested this!” and think it’s better just because of that. Rather, the things we talk about with E-E-A-T are related to what people find useful in content. Doing things generally for people is what our automated systems seek to reward, using different signals.”

A Better Understanding Of E-E-A-T

I think it’s clear now how E-E-A-T isn’t something that’s added to a webpage or is something that is demonstrated on the webpage. It’s a concept, just like relevance.

A good way to think o fit is if someone asks you a question about your family and you answer it. Most people are pretty expert and experienced enough to answer that question. That’s what E-E-A-T is and how it should be treated when publishing content, regardless if it’s YMYL content or a product review, the expertise is just like answering a question about your family, it’s just a concept.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi

Google Chrome Showing More Relevant Search Suggestions via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has released three new features for its Chrome web browser to provide more helpful and relevant search suggestions.

The features use Chrome’s access to aggregated user data to deliver crowdsourced recommendations.

Overview Of New Features

1. Search Suggestions Based On Previous Searches

Launching on the desktop version of Chrome, the first feature will provide tailored search suggestions in the browser’s address bar based on your previous searches and similar searches others have made.

For example, if you recently looked up the Korean dish “Japchae,” Chrome may suggest other popular Korean foods like Bulgogi, Bibimbap, and Tteok-bokki to help inspire your next search.

This crowdsourced approach allows Chrome to go beyond regurgitating a user’s search history and leverage the collective knowledge of what many others have searched for related to a given topic. The feature provides a way to discover new ideas and lateral topics you may have yet to consider.

2. Enhanced Shopping Search Suggestions

The second feature enhancement focuses on shopping-related searches on mobile.

Chrome will now display relevant product images alongside search suggestions for broader categories, whereas previously, images were only shown for searches specific to a particular product name.

This enables more visual browsing and inspiration for generic searches like “bohemian table” rather than needing to search for a specific table name upfront.

3. Improved Suggestions With Limited Connectivity

Lastly, Chrome’s improved on-device search capabilities will now provide search suggestions even with a poor internet connection on mobile.

By relying less on external server calls, users can get search ideas in Chrome when offline or with limited connectivity.

The feature also works in Incognito mode, providing suggestions while maintaining privacy.

Takeaways For Digital Marketers

For digital marketers and SEO professionals, these features highlight the increasing importance of ranking for valuable long-tail search queries.

As Chrome gets better at suggesting relevant ideas to users, optimizing content for specific searcher intent will become more critical.

Overall, these additions provide smarter search assistance to Chrome users while underscoring the need for brands to focus beyond just top keyword rankings.