On March 5th, 2024, Google announced a broad core algorithm update, as they do a few times a year. This newest update is called the March 2024 Core Update. These updates typically take a couple of weeks to fully roll out.
Latest Google Broad Core Algorithm Updates and Rollout Timing
- November 2023 Core Update – 29 days.
- October 2023 Core Update – 13 days, 23 hours to complete.
- August 2023 Core Update – 16 days, 3 hours to complete.
- March 2023 Core Update – 13 days, 2 hours to complete.
- September 2022 Core Update – 14 days to complete.
- May 2022 Core Update – 15 days to complete.
You can reference the Google Search Status Dashboard for full information on Google Search services.
What is a Broad Core Algorithm Update?
A few times a year Google will make “significant” updates to the search algorithms that may be noticed by webmasters. The goal of these updates is to ensure users are presented with the most relevant and trustworthy results for their search query.
While Google typically releases one or more algorithm changes a day, these core updates are expected to be more noticeable.
You can read more about these core updates on Google’s Webmasters Blog.
What’s Special about the March 2024 Algorithm Update?
Google stated, “The March 2024 core update is a more complex update than our usual core updates, involving changes to multiple core systems. It also marks an evolution in how we identify the helpfulness of content.” Read more here.
This update is strongly focused on spam abuse, including, expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse, and site reputation abuse.
Our Philosophy on Core Algorithm Updates
We want to be aware of the update and monitor site performance, but there is no reason to panic. We have all been working to ensure your site is as relevant and trustworthy as possible for your audience. All Google wants to do is make sure that the searcher gets the most relevant and trustworthy results.
If you have noticeably been hit by a core update, it’s probably not just one issue that needs to be fixed. There is likely a combination of many issues to solve—technical SEO problems, low content quality, poor user experience issues, deceptive marketing techniques, etc. If you think your site fits into this category, we will want to take a step back and get a broader view of how your site could be improved overall.
The Impact We Have Seen
We have not seen any signs that our current clients have been directly impacted by any of the 2023 or 2024 Core Updates.
Ranking fluctuations seem normal. Many clients have seen positive patterns in their rankings, but I believe this is a result of continuous optimizations versus a direct impact from an algorithm update.
SEO is a long-term investment. If you are always trying to make your site as relevant and trustworthy as possible, there is no reason to be alarmed. We are monitoring the results of the March 2024 Core Update and will publish any relevant updates if we see any major shifts.