Google’s New Core Update: What It Means for Website Owners

On March 5, Google announced the details of their new core update, which looks to tackle lessening the number of spammy, low-quality content on Google Search. Every few months, Google releases a new core update, but this newest core update implemented changes to “multiple core systems”, which is “more complex” and will have a larger impact on website owners, according to Chris Nelson from the Search Quality team at Google. This time, the update aims to target the excess of spam that even we here at PSPINC have encountered.

 

Aside from just affecting Google Search results, this update will also affect Google’s email service, Gmail. To combat the spam excess, we recommend our customers to be vigilant of fraudulent emails, but Google is working toward reducing the number of low-quality, unoriginal search results. To do that, Google is actively updating its spam-fighting systems and spam policies to better address evolving cybercrimes, and their efforts are already starting to appear on the search engine result page (SERP).

 

 

 

For every website owner, it’s ideal to rank higher up in the SERP by optimizing their website for search engines. But this update may affect how you optimize your site for search engine optimization (SEO), how your site ranks in the SERP, and how to rank higher on the result page. This update also includes trying to reduce “unoriginal content” and to focus on content “where it was clear that automation was involved”, which could include content created using AI tools, especially mass-content generation using AI. As a better indicator of how significant of an impact this update could make, Google has predicted that it will “reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%”, which could lead to a big shift in what users see in their SERP.

 

If your website isn’t ranking as well as you’d like, Nelson recommends reading Google’s SEO fundamentals page about creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. The important thing to take away from this update, however, is that if you already have original content made for users rather than search engines, you shouldn’t worry too much about how this update will change your ranking.