Google’s March 2024 Core Update has removed many websites from its index. It’s aimed at AI-generated spam and focuses on high-quality, human-made content.
In this article:
Highlights
- Google’s March 2024 Core Update has removed many websites from its index, mainly targeting low-quality content and AI-generated spam.
- De-indexed sites can suffer consequences like losing organic search traffic and advertising revenue.
- This update is supported by a study from Originality.ai, which found a lot of AI-generated content among the affected websites.
The impact of Google’s March 2024 Core Update, which targets low-quality content and spam, is becoming apparent as the rollout progresses.
In the start of the update, over 800 websites have been completely removed from Google’s search results.
Widespread Deindexing
Ian Nuttall, a well-known figure in the SEO community, has been keeping an eye on the indexing status of 49,345 websites since the March 2024 Core Update was launched and manual actions were taken against AI-generated spam.
Nuttall’s findings shed light on the sweeping impact of Google’s latest initiative.
Out of the 49,345 sites watched, 837 websites were completely taken off Google’s search index.
This is around 1.7% of the websites in Nuttall’s database. The deindexed sites cover different categories and ad networks, showing how wide Google’s actions are.
But it’s still too soon to know if these websites will stay deindexed because some are already showing up again in Google’s search results.
Significant Traffic & Revenue Losses
The consequences of being deindexed are severe for the affected websites.
As per Nuttall’s study, the 837 deindexed sites used to get over 20.7 million visits from organic search each month before the action. Losing that traffic suddenly is a huge blow for them.
Plus, it’s expected that the deindexing will lead to a monthly loss of about $446,552 in displayed advertising revenue across those sites.
Targeting AI-Generated Spam
The findings from Nuttall’s analysis align with a recent study conducted by Originality.ai, which investigated the prevalence of AI-generated content among the deindexed websites.
The study discovered that all the affected sites had AI-generated content, with half of them having 90-100% of their posts created by AI.
These findings indicate that Google’s March 2024 Core Update effectively goes after websites that heavily use AI-generated content to influence search rankings.
The manual actions against these sites show Google’s dedication to fighting the increase in AI-driven spam and low-quality content.
Reshaping The Search Landscape
As the March 2024 Core Update keeps going, its effect on search results is getting clearer.
Many websites, especially those using AI-generated content, are being deindexed. This shows a big change in how Google wants to keep search results good.
The data from Nuttall’s research and the Originality.ai study match up. It shows that Google is taking strong steps to deal with the growing issue of AI-driven spam.
As the update goes on, websites and creators need to adjust to Google wanting better quality and original content.
We’ll see more about how the March 2024 Core Update is changing things in the coming weeks. But early signs from Nuttall’s research and the Originality.ai study say that Google is pushing for better-quality, human-made content.
