Today is the first day I’ve seen solid evidence of major ranking volatility and changes related to the big Google March 2024 Core Update. As a reminder, the Google March 2024 Core Update officially started on 5 March 2024 and will take up to a month to fully deploy. We expect numerous ranking changes in the coming weeks.
Google said this core update should reduce the amount of unhelpful, low-quality and unoriginal content in search results by 40%. Google is pushing changes to numerous systems within the overall core ranking system, so it will take about a month to roll out, so you should expect ranking volatility many times during this release period.
Today I’m seeing signals from both SEO professionals and site owners and also from Google’s automated tracking tools that this update has arrived today, March 9th. Some also saw early signs yesterday.
Also, keep in mind that Google handed out tons of manual action penalties on March 6th and 7th, mostly related to “pure spam” penalties. This is different from the basic upgrade or even the spam upgrade, because manual actions are not algorithmic and you will be notified of a penalty in Google Search Console; I explain more here.
Google Tracking Tools in March 2024 Core Update:
As you can see, most tools started to rise a bit on Friday, March 8th, but really started to show high volatility on Saturday, March 9th. I expect even more volatility to show tomorrow, Sunday March 10; I may update this story with more details then, so check back tomorrow:
SEO Network
Here’s some of the SEO talk from people talking about this update. This is through X, WebmasterWorld and the more than 1,200 comments here:
And here are some sites that are starting to ramp up as of the March 2024 core update. Again, these are sites previously affected by core updates or HCUs. I will share more as time goes on. I think we will see a lot more volatility in the next day or two… pic.twitter.com/cMOy1rldv8
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 8, 2024 Traffic is terrible this morning. The battle between Google and spammers is more intense than ever. And they don’t use precision munitions either. They are launching nuclear weapons. The collateral damage is immense. Spammers are changing tactics. Reddit, Medium, Linkedin Pulse are becoming Blogspot style spam dumps. Search quality continues to steadily decline. It’s Spamaggeddon! Interestingly, GSC shows a corresponding increase in indexed pages to about 150k for 1 ccTLD. It only has about 1200 pages to index. All the noindexes are checked and in order, so what’s going on, I wonder.
No manual penalties reported.
There is a lot of volatility in many queries right now. A guide of mine with various solutions on Android auto problems is overtaken by news sites that give a solution that was on a certain day a few years ago. Obviously this solution no longer works and is not valid for all problems that can be had with the operation of Android auto, in addition these news were only about a bug of a version of Android auto. Once my article used to be among the top positions, rightfully so, as it has all possible solutions to try to solve them. I hope this is also a bug in Search Console. But the other thing my GA4 must be failing too, because it also shows a drop to 2 clicks a day. But…
I’m checking my Semrush, checking the Hrefs numbers – they all show some changes (~10%), but no drop to zero or anything. I hope this is a mistake…
I don’t see a big decrease in overall traffic, but this morning there is a big increase in traffic to hide lower level pages and also from unusual locations. I’m also seeing single product pages with unusually high levels of hits from different unique visitors. It’s like this item suddenly shot to the top of searches and a lot of people clicked on it, and then it disappeared again. So I think there must be a lot of commotion now as the visiting pattern is very different from the norm. Steady decline in converting traffic continues… no serious inquiries from US, UK, CA, AU or UAE… it’s like the blood has been drained from my business. But I did get an inquiry from Mongolia…no joke. That remains to be seen, although many will believe it simply because Google said so. Instead, watch the snakes for evidence. I see that numerous very high quality websites have been very successful in the last few days. By high quality, I’m talking about sites created by professionals with degrees in their fields who have so much EEAT that their eyes are oozing. My observation suggests that the facts do not back up the claim that Google easily penalizes AI sites. But we’re still early in this update to come to any definitive conclusions. US traffic is -31% today, so something is definitely happening in the US SERPS. My global search traffic is up slightly, and UK, AU, CA and most of Europe outside of France is very high today. I see a slight increase today, compared to the last 3 days and compared to the last 3 Saturdays – Saturday is a big mark for one of my sites. So, in this place I see a small increase. Seeing that many sites decrease overall traffic, meaning no impressions, but the page is still indexed.
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) March 9, 2024
So I really think that March 2024 core update started digging in its heels today.
What are you all watching?
Discussion in the forum a WebmasterWorld.
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