Google announced the release of the March 2024 Core Update – the first core update for this year. It is designed to improve the quality of search by showing less content that feels like it was made to attract clicks, reduce unoriginal and low-quality content, and in turn, show more content that people find useful.
According to Google, the March 2024 core update is a more complex update than the usual core updates that they release as it involves changes to multiple core systems. It marks Google’s evolution in how they identify the helpfulness of content. The core ranking systems have been enhanced to show more helpful results using a variety of innovative signals and approaches and it no longer uses one signal or system to be able to do this.
It is expected that the update will reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in the search results by 40%.
Since the update is complex, the rollout may take up to a month and it is likely to experience fluctuations in rankings compared to a regular core update as different systems get fully updated and reinforce each other.