Google March 2024 Spam Updates Rolling Out - Scaled Content, Expired Domain & Site Reputation Abuse

Mar 6, 2024 - 7:41 am 12—by Barry Schwartz

Filed Under Google Updates

Google is rolling out its new March 2024 spam updates accompanying the very big March 2024 core update and three new spam policies. The new spam updates kick off this week and target scaled content and expired domain abuse, plus other spam, while giving notice of site reputation abuse for a May 2024 update.

Google announced this both on its main blog and the Search Central blog and I covered this in detail on Search Engine Land. I spoke with Google in detail about all of these updates - so I hope this clarifies some questions.

The spam update rollout may take up 2 weeks to complete, Google said.

Google linked to its evergreen spam updates page about the March 2024 spam update, which partially reads:

While Google's automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.

Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.

With this spam update, Google announced three big changes to its spam polices. Google will take action on these new spam policy violations both through automated means (i.e. the algorithmic spam updates) and manual means (i.e. manual actions).

Google rolled out two of these updates this week, the scaled content and expired domain abuse spam updates. Google is giving two months notice for the site reputation abuse (some call Parasite SEO) spam update and won't take action until May 5, 2024.

March 2024 Google Spam Update Quick Facts

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

- Name: Google March 2024 Spam Update

- Launches: Week of March 5, 2024 and then May 5, 2024 and may take two weeks to roll out

- Targets: General search spam plus scaled content, expired domain abuse and in May 2024 site reputation abuse.

- Penalty: It penalizes spam techniques that are against Google's spam policies.

- Global: This is a global update impacting all regions and languages.

- Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.

- Recover: If you were hit by this, Google said you should review its spam policies to ensure they are complying with those.

- Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to the spam update. It can take many months to recover, Google said.

Scaled Content Abuse Spam

Scaled content abuse "is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating Search rankings and not helping user," Chris Nelson from the Google Search Quality team, wrote. "This abusive practice is typically focused on creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users, no matter how it's created," he added.

It does not matter if you use generative AI, manual means, or a mix to produce this "scaled content." As long as the "scaled content" is being published to manipulate Google's search rankings, it will be considered spam and Google will go after it.

"This new policy builds on our previous spam policy about automatically-generated content, ensuring that we can take action on scaled content abuse as needed, no matter whether content is produced through automation, human efforts, or some combination of human and automated processes," Google added.

Google said this will allow them "to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content." I asked what are pages that "pretend" to do this and Elizabeth explained that it was pages that start off by saying we will answer X, Y and Z, then it follows that by adding a lot of fluff content and ends without actually answering what it set out to answer.

Google posted these two additional FAQs on this topic:

Q. Is this a change in how Google views AI content in terms of spam?

A. Our long-standing spam policy has been that use of automation, including generative AI, is spam if the primary purpose is manipulating ranking in Search results. The updated policy is in the same spirit of our previous policy and based on the same principle. It's been expanded to account for more sophisticated scaled content creation methods where it isn’t always clear whether low quality content was created purely through automation.

Q. What’s different from the old policy against “automatically-generated content” and the updated policy against “scaled abuse”?

A. Our new policy is meant to help people focus more clearly on the idea that producing content at scale is abusive if done for the purpose of manipulating search rankings and that this applies whether automation or humans are involved.

Danny Sullivan from Google said this clarification was coming and it is now here.

Note, this is an update to the "Spammy automatically-generated content" which use to read:

Spammy automatically generated (or "auto-generated") content is content that's been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it's been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.

Google's help documentation reads:

Examples of scaled content abuse include, but are not limited to:

- Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users

- Scraping feeds, search results, or other content to generate many pages (including through automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques), where little value is provided to users

- Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding value

- Creating multiple sites with the intent of hiding the scaled nature of the content

- Creating many pages where the content makes little or no sense to a reader but contains search keywords

The new scaled content spam policy is going into effect this week with both the spam update (algorithmically) and manual actions.

Expired Domain Abuse Spam

Expired domain abuse "is where an expired domain name is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate Search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users," Chris Nelson from the Google Search Quality team wrote. The example he provided is when "someone might purchase a domain previously used by a medical site and repurpose that to host low quality casino-related content, hoping to be successful in Search based on the domain’s reputation from a previous ownership."

Google said this is an intentional search spam tactic done specifically to try to manipulate Google's search rankings. Chris Nelson said it is not "something people accidentally do." "It’s a practice employed by people who hope to rank well in Search with low-value content by using the past reputation of a domain name," he added.

Of course, he said it is perfectly acceptable to use an old domain name for a new, original site, but not to manipulate search rankings.

In some cases Google said expired domains "can mislead users into thinking the new content is part of the older site, which may not be the case."

Google's policy documentation says:

Expired domain abuse is where an expired domain name is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users. Illustrative examples include, but are not limited to:

- Affiliate content on a site previously used by a government agency

- Commercial medical products being sold on a site previously used by a non-profit medical charity

- Casino-related content on a former elementary school site

The new expired domain abuse spam policy is going into effect this week with both the spam update (algorithmically) and manual actions.

Site Reputation Abuse Spam

Site reputation abuse "is when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where the purpose is to manipulate Search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site's ranking signals," Chris Nelson from the Google Search Quality team wrote. This includes sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of a host site's main purpose or produced without close oversight or involvement of the host site, and provide little to no value to users, he explained.

Some SEOs have been calling this Parasite SEO, and Google has been saying to expect changes with this spam tactic since last November while taking some steps in December but not enough. It also looks like, as expected, Google renamed Parasite SEO to "site reputation abuse."

This does not mean all third-party hosted is bad or spam. Google said "only that which is hosted without close oversight and which is intended to manipulate Search rankings," is a violation of this policy. Google have these examples, "many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers, rather than to primarily manipulate Search rankings. Sometimes called “native advertising” or “advertorial,” this kind of content typically wouldn’t confuse regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher’s site directly or when arriving at it from Google’s search results."

Here are two Q&As Google added on this site reputation abuse policy:

Q. What ranking signals does a site have?

A. Our core ranking systems are primarily designed to work on the page level, using a variety of signals and systems to understand how to rank individual pages. We do have some site-wide signals that are also considered. Please note: some third-party services provide “reputation” or “authority” scores for sites. These don't correspond to any of Google's own signals nor come from Google.

Q. My site has a coupon area that we produce in part by working with a third party. Is this considered spam?

A. Many publications host coupons for their readers. If the publication is actively involved in the production of the coupon area, there’s no need to block this content from Google Search. Readers should clearly understand how the publication sources its coupons and how it works to ensure that the coupons provide value to readers.

Google's help documentation reads:

Illustrative examples of site reputation abuse include, but are not limited to:

- An educational site hosting a page about reviews of payday loans written by a third-party that distributes the same page to other sites across the web, with the main purpose of manipulating search rankings

- A medical site hosting a third-party page about "best casinos" that's designed primarily to manipulate search rankings, with little to no involvement from the medical site

- A movie review site hosting third-party pages about topics that would be confusing to users to find on a movie review site (such as "ways to buy followers on social media sites", the "best fortune teller sites", and the "best essay writing services"), where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings

- A sports site hosting a page written by a third-party about "workout supplements reviews", where the sports site's editorial staff had little to no involvement in the content and the main purpose of hosting the page is to manipulate search rankings

- A news site hosting coupons provided by a third-party with little to no oversight or involvement from the hosting site, and where the main purpose is to manipulate search rankings

Examples that are NOT considered site reputation abuse include:

- Wire service or press release service sites

- News publications that have syndicated news content from other news publications

- Sites designed to allow user-generated content, such as a forum website or comment sections

- Columns, opinion pieces, articles, and other work of an editorial nature where there is close involvement or review by the host site

- Third-party content (for example, "advertorial" or "native advertising" type pages) that's produced with close involvement of the host site, where the purpose is to share content directly to readers (such as through promotion within the publication itself), rather than hosting the content to manipulate search rankings

- Embedding third-party ad units throughout a page or using affiliate links throughout a page, with links treated appropriately

- Coupons that are listed with close involvement of the hosting site

The new site reputation abuse spam policy is going into effect May 5, 2024 with both the spam update (algorithmically) and manual actions.

Small Link Spam Policy Changes

Google added this bullet point to the link spam section, "Creating low-value content primarily for the purposes of manipulating linking and ranking signals."

I see no other changes when comparing to the version from last month.

Forum discussion at X.

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JaneDoe

6 hours ago

"Spammy automatically generated (or "auto-generated") content is content that's been generated programmatically without producing anything original "

so, SGE, right? AI is fundamentally incapable of producing original content, LLMs are just plagiarism devices. So, in short, it's 'spam' when other sites do it, but not when it's Google doing it. SGE is 'helpful' in some magical way, even though it too is incapable of original content.

I don't disagree with targeting any of this kind of bad content, but it's pretty disingenuous when Google's grand plan is turning the SERPs into their own ad-riddled spam.

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dhigginsgwseo

12 hours ago

I write expert reviews for products (I actually am an expert in my field), and this makes me awfully nervous. My organization receives about 30% of its organic traffic from my content. I'm really sick of Google moving the dart board around when we shoot our shot.

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biomtesk1002  dhigginsgwseo

6 hours ago

If you actually have the product in hand, take your own photos, and add some unique value or insight to readers, you have nothing to worry about long term. It's the affiliate blogs that just exist to target long tail review keywords, who use manufacturer images, and don't actually review the product that are at risk (and have been for years now).

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Naman Binowl

13 hours ago

So basically, Google will punish even more web properties in order to reduce reputation abuse, content at scale, unhelpful content, expired domains, etc.

The only problem is that 90 percent of the websites are already under heavy penalties and it is already difficult to find what we're looking for.

Shit will get even harder to rank on Google and to find stuff with all these BS rules.

Google only knows the word penalty, they forget the word reward years ago!

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CodeCommander

13 hours ago

For every update in years Google has stolen traffic, but this HCU was the worst lopping off more than 50% for some. So here we are again, with another confirmed Google update scam that will take how much traffic this time? And where will this traffic go? More to Reddit, more to Google's ad spam or maybe more People Also Piss boxes? Yahoo is performing better in sales then Google for us. This is how absurdly pathetic Google has become.

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Mumuu  CodeCommander

12 hours ago edited

exactly. I find it just a smokescreen when in fact what happens is obvious: if you look almost any small business or publisher is losing exposure and traffic by the day, like it's vanishing in thin air, defies common sense logic.

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CodeCommander  Mumuu

12 hours ago

And Google wonders why small businesses have ran from Google holding onto their wallets. It's because of these scam updates and all of Google's lies. Will the small businesses ever trust Google in the future to spend with them again? Doubtful.

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Mumuu  CodeCommander

12 hours ago

We trimmed ALOT from the Google monthly spend (and when I say alot I mean we're spending probably 25% from what we used to spend on a monthly basis), and many of our competitors done same because is not converting.

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CodeCommander  Mumuu 12 hours ago

We reduced ad spend on Google to $0 a long time ago and have no desire to spend with them again. We sell products, but I know others controlling ad budgets in other industries with CPC of $10+ that have also stopped all spending with Google.

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Mumuu  CodeCommander 12 hours ago edited

sad joke: Trust me -- I see us coming to spend $0/month quite soon too in this rhythm because we see it doing worse and worse in terms of conversion rates.

It will soon be completely unsustainable. And I don't get why no one looks on this because this is a big issue which will backfire them too and when it does it will be too late. I learnt their revenue is up, BUT surely looking on how that revenue is made and from whom will show the endemic issue I spoke about here. One is to make it from say presumably 1m different businesses advertising on G, and another is to make it from say 0.5m businesses as that shows they defo contribute to them quitting the space.

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bhavani shushma

13 hours ago

I need one answer for this, I have created one blog with SEO techniques , But i mixed AI + Human content , weather this blog considered as spam ??

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dhigginsgwseo  bhavani shushma

12 hours ago

I'd like to know this, as well.

Google releasing massive search quality enhancements in March 2024 core update and multiple spam updates

The Google helpful content update is now part of the core update; all of this leading to a 40% reduction in unhelpful content within search.

Barry Schwartz on March 5, 2024 at 12:00 pm | Reading time: 10 minutes

Chat with SearchBot

Google is unleashing multiple measures aimed at improving the quality of its search results beginning today.

Google is releasing the March 2024 core update and a number of spam updates (aka March 2024 spam update). Also, Google’s helpful content system has been incorporated into its overall core ranking system.

In addition, Google announced several new and updated spam policies that it will begin enforcing through automated algorithms and manual actions.

March 2024 core update – bigger than before

Today, Google started to roll out its first core update of the year and its first algorithm update of the year – the March 2024 core update.

Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product, Search at Google, told Search Engine Land that the update will help reduce unhelpful content in Google Search by 40%.

- “We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%,” Tucker wrote.

The rollout of the March 2024 core update may take as long as a month. Multiple systems will be updated and released during the update.

This update, unlike some previous core updates, includes enhancements to several components of the overall core system. This March core update will have multiple updates within it, since this update touched on several systems within the core update, Google will push out updates to those systems over the coming weeks.

The March 2024 core update is “more complex update than our usual core updates,” Chris Nelson from the Search Quality team at Google said. Google made “changes to multiple core systems,” he added.

Google enhanced its core ranking systems to show more helpful results using a variety of innovative signals and approaches (more on that later).

In fact, since Google is updating multiple core systems, “there will be more fluctuations in rankings than with a regular core update, as different systems get fully updated and reinforce each other,” Nelson added.

Google said this update has refined how it understands which webpages are “unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people.” This “could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries,” Google added.

Previous core updates. Here’s a timeline and our coverage of recent core updates:

- The November 2023 core update was on November 2nd and ended on November 28.

- The October 2023 core update was on October 5th and ended on October 19

- The August 2023 core update was on August 22nd and ended on September 7.

- The March 2023 core update was on March 15th and ended on March 28th.

- The September 2022 broad core update was less impactful than previous core updates and finished on Sept. 26.

- The May 2022 broad core update was a significant and fast update.

- The November 2021 core update

- The July 2021 core update.

- The June 2021 core update, which was slow to roll out but a big one.

Helpful content update now part of core updates

With this March 2024 core update, Google will stop announcing new helpful content updates, since the helpful content system has been incorporated into the core update system.

The last helpful content update, the September 2023 helpful content update was a large update that impacted several sites. Hopefully, some sites impacted will see relief from this March 2024 core update, but it is hard to say at this point.

The classifier for the helpful content system was overhauled and is now baked into the March 2024 core update.

But the helpful content classifiers are not the only systems part of this March 2024 core update. In fact, Google said work for the March 2024 core update started with the 2022 helpful content update.

What to do if your rankings drop. Here’s the advice Google has given in the past for those negatively impacted by a core update:

- There aren’t specific actions to take to recover. A negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.

- Answer these questions to evaluate the quality of your content.

- Wait for another core update. You may see some improvement between core updates, but the biggest changes will occur after another core update.

In short, write helpful content for people and not to rank in search engines.

- “There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page,” Nelson explained.

March 2024 Spam updates

Google also announced the release of new spam updates, which it is calling the March 2024 spam update, and spam policy updates to complement the release of the March 2024 core update.

Two of these spam updates will result in both automated and manual actions this week. The site reputation abuse spam update will go into effect in two months from today, on May 5.

Scaled content abuse search spam

The scaled content abuse search spam is an update to the old “spammy automatically-generated content” policy that now goes beyond just “spammy auto-generated content” and is now inclusive of any method of producing content at scale for the purpose of ranking in search.

Google said producing content at scale to boost search rankings – whether with automation, people or a combination – is against its guidelines.

- “This will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content,” Google wrote.

What are examples of pages that pretend to have answers but fail to deliver? Tucker explained that those are the pages that start off by stating it will answer your question, lead you on with low-quality content, and never end up giving you the answer to your questions:

- “Our long-standing spam policy has been that use of automation, including generative AI, is spam if the primary purpose is manipulating ranking in Search results. The updated policy is in the same spirit of our previous policy and based on the same principle. It’s been expanded to account for more sophisticated scaled content creation methods where it isn’t always clear whether low quality content was created purely through automation.”

- “Our new policy is meant to help people focus more clearly on the idea that producing content at scale is abusive if done for the purpose of manipulating search rankings and that this applies whether automation or humans are involved.”

Google will start to take action against scaled content abuse both through algorithmic spam systems and manual actions this week.

Expired domain abuse now considered spam

“Expired domain abuse” – the practice of buying expired domains and repurposing them with the “intention of boosting the search ranking of low-quality content” – is now considered spam, Tucker said.

This technique may try to trick users to thinking new content on a domain is part of the old site, when it may not be.

This is a specific and clear message to content creators to not purchase expired domains with the intent of repurposing those domains with the goal of ranking in Google Search.

Google will start to take action against expired domain abuse both through algorithmic spam systems and manual actions this week.

Site reputation abuse (aka Parasite SEO) is spam too

Google has a new policy for “site reputation abuse,” some SEOs have been calling it “Parasite SEO,” where third-party sites host low-quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third-party websites. Google explained, “a third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site.”

“Such content ranking highly in Search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website,” Google added.

This new policy clarifies that “third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam.”

But this new policy doesn’t consider all third-party content to be a violation. Google said “only that which is hosted without close oversight and which is intended to manipulate Search rankings.”

Google offered this example:

- “Many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers, rather than to primarily manipulate Search rankings. Sometimes called ‘native advertising’ or ‘advertorial,’ this kind of content typically wouldn’t confuse regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher’s site directly or when arriving at it from Google’s search results.”

Google said they are giving two month advance notice of this policy and will start to take both automated and manual actions on this abuse in two months. The specific date is May 5.

Why we care

Over the past several months there has been numerous complaints and studies about Google search getting worse. Content on the web is simply not great, and Google seems to have been ranking big sites over smaller sites, where Reddit recently has been dominating the Google search results.

When I asked about the proliferation of Reddit rankings, a Google spokesperson responded:

- “We know that for some queries, people are really seeking out content that comes from other people with relevant experiences. We want to surface content that people are looking for, in cases where it’s helpful. There is high-quality and low-quality content across all content types – including user-generated forum and discussion content. Our goal is to surface the best of the web, and we believe these ranking improvements will help us surface higher-quality discussion/forum content for searches where it’s helpful – and will help us get better at detecting when such content is truly helpful.”

Google said the ranking changes were done prior to any relationship with Reddit.

- “We’ve been working on making it easier to find content that reflects first-hand perspectives across all types of sites in our search results, including hundreds of forum sites. This ranking improvement launched before and is independent of the Reddit partnership,” the spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

The criticism that the quality of Google search results isn’t up to par is nothing new. They echo what former Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan wrote back in 2017 in A deep look at Google’s biggest-ever search quality crisis.

Sullivan, now Google’s official Search Liaison, has been promising this and future updates that address the quality issue. In November, Google advised us to “buckle up.” The company reiterated this in January. And again in February. Is this the Google update that we’ve been waiting for?

Google also updated its search quality raters guidelines PDF today by updating the characteristics of untrustworthy pages and added illustrative examples.

Google will post on its Search Status Dashboard when the updates are done and we will post a story here as well.

Table of Contents

The Google helpful content update is now part of the core update; all of this leading to a 40% reduction in unhelpful content within search.

Helpful content update now part of core updates