Last week, Google began rolling out a major core update that intends to improve search results by removing sites with unoriginal and low-value content from its index.

This isn’t the first time Google has taken a stand against low-quality content. Previous updates such as Panda and the Helpful Content Update (HCU) also took similar measures but 

were not as impactful as the March 2024 core update.

It’s important to understand how these changes will influence digital strategies moving forward and how tools like generative AI can either enhance or weaken your digital footprint:

What is the Core Update?

Google’s latest core update, launched in March 2024, represents a strategic shift in how the search engine evaluates and ranks websites. 

According to Google: 

“We’ve long had a policy against using automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale with the goal of manipulating search rankings. This policy was originally designed to address instances of content being generated at scale where it was clear that automation was involved.”

This is the same status they have always had. While previous updates focused on penalizing article spinners and keyword stuffing, newer algorithms are able to detect pages created with sophisticated technologies such as generative AI.

“Today, scaled content creation methods are more sophisticated, and whether content is created purely through automation isn’t always as clear. To better address these techniques, we’re strengthening our policy to focus on this abusive behavior — producing content at scale to boost search ranking — whether automation, humans or a combination are involved. 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.We believe these updates will reduce the amount of low-quality content on Search and send more traffic to helpful and high-quality sites.”

This is essentially an extension of the Helpful Content Update (HCU) that Google rolled out in March of 2022. Google’s mission is and always will be to deliver users the best possible content available. Entities who create content at scale – no matter how they do it – for the sole purpose of manipulating search results may see short term gains but will experience diminishing returns in the long run.

“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%.”

And that’s the part that leadership needs to know. If your company’s current strategy is to produce mass amounts of “high quality” content using Generative AI, it’s time to rethink that or risk damaging your pipeline. Plenty of sites have already been completely deindexed and businesses are losing 100% of their traffic overnight. 

How Does This Affect Strategy and Pipeline?

Yes, marketers need to be aware of how these changes will impact their strategy, but it’s also important for executives and business owners to understand how new tools such as generative AI could affect their pipeline.

1. Prioritizing Quality and User Experience

Building off the 2022 HCU, Google is continuing to reduce the appearance of web pages that may be unhelpful or provide a poor user experience. In other words, websites that appear to be designed more for search engines than real people. For businesses, this means publishing content that satisfies user intent and resonates with the target audience. 

2. Value Over Volume

This update is aggressively cracking down on sites filled with content produced specifically to manipulate search results without providing value to the user. Businesses need to move away from strategies that focus on brute force tactics — namely ones that abuse generative AI — to penetrate the SERPs.

3. Enhanced Focus on Organic Growth

Sites that use spammy tactics such as purchasing expired domains, paying for backlinks, and publishing fake reviews are also being targeted by the update. Businesses will need to grow their reputation through high-quality, linkable content. 

It’s More Than a Small Tweak

Google representatives have described the latest core update as “more than just algorithm tweaks. It’s a strategic move to reshape the narrative around Google’s search quality.”

This means that Google is slowly minimizing the amount of shortcuts a website can take to boost its rankings. It’s time to focus on publishing original, user-first content!