Google has announced an update to its search algorithms that should provide the user with more useful content, while also marking more results as spam. The company is “fine-tuning” its ranking system to better determine whether web pages are truly useful, have a poor user experience, and are designed for search engines rather than people.
This is SEO-optimized (SEO) content, which can be too long, wordy, and serve no purpose other than looking good to Google’s algorithms. Google’s concern is that large language and generative AI models will exacerbate this problem. According to the company, the changes will affect “sites created mostly to match very specific search queries.”
This update aims to reduce the amount of low-quality, unoriginal content in Search by approximately 40%, according to Google, while driving more traffic to useful, high-quality sites.
Google says the March 2024 update will be more comprehensive than regular major updates, as it makes changes to several key systems. Updates can take up to a month to roll out.
“We have improved our core ranking systems to show more useful results using various innovative signals and approaches. There is no longer a single signal or system for this, and we’ve also added a new FAQ page to explain these changes.”
Also, Google will classify more things as spam. The updated abusive content policy will allow Google to take action on more content “with little or no value, such as pages that purport to have answers to popular search queries but provide no useful content.”
“To better deal with these methods, we are strengthening our policies to focus on such abusive behavior – creating content to improve search rankings – whether automation, humans or a combination of the two are involved.”
Google’s changes also target sites that may have good original content, but host low-quality affiliate content provided by third parties in order to cash in on the site’s reputation. This practice will be considered spam, and from May 5 measures will be implemented to encourage sites to make changes.
“For example, a third party may post payday loan reviews on a verified educational website in order to benefit from the site’s ranking. Such a high ranking of content in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who have completely different expectations about certain content on the site.”
Google will also consider domains “that have been purchased and repurposed to increase the ranking of low-quality content in search results” as spam.
Source: 9to5google
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