Today is the first day I have seen solid evidence of serious 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 March 5, 2024, and will take up to a month to roll out fully. We are expecting numerous ranking changes during the next few weeks.
Google said this core update should reduce the amount of unhelpful, low-quality, unoriginal content in its search results by 40%. Google is pushing out changes to numerous systems within the overall core ranking system, which is why it will take around a month to roll out and which is why you should expect ranking volatility numerous times throughout this roll out period.
Today I am seeing signs from both SEO professionals and site owners and also the automated Google tracking tools that this update has landed today, March 9th. Some saw early signs yesterday as well.
Also, keep in mind, Google dished out tons of manual action penalties on March 6th and 7th, mostly related to “pure spam” penalties. This is different from the core update or even the spam update, because manual actions are not algorithmic and you will get notified of a penalty in Google Search Console – I explain more over here.
Google Tracking Tools On March 2024 Core Update:
As you can see, most of the tools started to spike a bit on Friday, March 8th, but really started to show big volatility on Saturday, March 9th. I expect even more volatility to show tomorrow, Sunday, March 10th – I may update this story with more details then, so check back tomorrow:
SEO Chatter
Here is some of the SEO chatter of people talking about this update kicking in. This is across X, WebmasterWorld, Black Hat World and the over 1,200 comments here:
So I really think this March 2024 core update started to dig its heels in today.
What are you all seeing?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.
Update: Sunday, many of the tracking tools are showing a dip in volatility, which means things calmed the next day… Not all the charts are updated yet, so here is a GIF of some of the updated charts:
Here is some updated SEO Chatter from WebmasterWorld:
Update on Monday, March 11: Both the chatter and the tracking tools seem to continue to calm from this past weekend’s volatility. Here is a GIF of some of the tools as of Monday morning:
