Lily Ray's presentation about Google's March 2024 Core Update.

2. VP, SEO Strategy
& Research
Amsive

3. SEO in 2024
The lay of the land…

4. Many of us have been
patiently waiting for the next
Google update…

5. GOOGLE ANNOUNCED A
MASSIVE UPDATE YESTERDAY
and of course…

6. ✴ 4 months since last major Google
update (until yesterday 😅)
✴ 4 unconfirmed Google updates in
2024 (something was brewing)
✴ Dozens of mainstream articles
about search quality & AI spam
✴ SEO industry has felt like it’s on
fire

8. NEW
GOOGLE
UPDATE
AIMS TO:
Keep more
spam out of
your results
★ Scaled content abuse
★ Site reputation abuse
★ Expired domain abuse
Reduce
low-quality,
unoriginal
results
★ 40% reduction in
unhelpful content

10. Major SEO issues
on Google in 2024
(and complaints from site owners)

11. Helpful content update –
no recoveries
Discover traffic dropping to 0
“Parasite SEO”
(site reputation abuse)
AI scraper sites
outranking the source
Content
syndication
issues
301-redirect cloaked
spam and malware
Spam in UGC
AI spam Renaissance
(scaled content abuse)

12. The exponential rise of AI-generated
content in Google’s results…
…that works until it doesn’t.

13. The common trajectory of low-quality
AI content spam (Mark Williams Cook)
“I believe there is a lag before
Google’s systems detect low-
quality content.
That’s why you see the pattern
repeat: [AI] content passes an
initial “sniff test,” only to be
identified later.”
- Mark Williams-Cook

14. “It’s Goog Enough”
- AJ Kohn
High authority
sites own top
positions for most
“best” keywords,
even when topic is
outside of their
wheelhouse

15. The rise of “Parasite SEO”
(what Google calls ‘site reputation abuse’)

16. What “site reputation abuse” looks like in the wild:

17. Google is giving site owners a 2-month warning
to address “site reputation abuse” issues
(until May 5, 2024)

18. But Google is onto the
parasites.
They are figuring it out as we
speak.
The parasite party might be
ending soon.

19. October 2023: "If you host third-party content on your main site or in your
subdomains, understand that such content may be included in site-wide signals
we generate, such as the helpfulness of content.
For this reason, if that content is largely independent of the main site's purpose
or produced without close supervision or the involvement of the primary site, we
recommend that it should be blocked from being indexed by Google."

20. (this part of the update kicks in now)

21. And last but not least…

22. Let’s talk about the in the room.

23. Reddit’s SEO growth in 2023 was literally off the charts.

24. h/t Garrett Sussman
Reddit apparently
gets to rank in top
positions for literally
everything now.

25. Reddit keyword research &
reputation management
(Higher Visibility)

26. The never ending Helpful Content Update bloodbath

27. Many affected sites saw
rapid SEO growth
…before a major hit by the HCU (-80%)
Before massive decline

28. Nobody is recovering from the HCU… yet.
February 2024 visibility

29. We audited dozens of sites impacted by the HCU.
COMMON ISSUES
Excessive ads everywhere Auto-play video footer ads
Vignette ads Browser notifications
Overly templated SEO-focused <titles> on every page Lack of authorship and/or transparency
SEO tricks that are bad for users (2024 on titles of old articles) No brand awareness
Stock photography Poorly written content Unsubstantiated claims / no citations
Deceptive affiliate links Biased review content No evidence of real experience

30. ‣ HCU
Spoiler alert:
she’s not real

31. Sites are unlikely to see any
major recoveries outside of
another HCU or core update.

32. 3/5 update
The HCU is now baked into
Google’s core ranking system
and there will not be future
Helpful Content Updates.

33. There’s no movement yet,
and it feels like an SEO
revolution against Google is
brewing…

34. There are
unconfirmed
murmurs, but not the
type of big update
that could result in
major recoveries…
for now.

35. But don’t worry:
Google keeps saying
they’re working on it.
(3-5 update: they are.)

36. Google has been saying they’re
working on it… over and over.

37. 3/5 update:

38. For now… we sit back and wait.
(Unless, of course, you’ve been spamming Google.)

39. @lilyraynyc |