Keeping Up With Google: October Edition

Your one-stop shop for all things Google!

Welcome to "Keeping Up With Google" - your go-to source to keep tabs on the recent happenings of the world’s largest search engine! 

This month’s edition will highlight the early October Google updates and related discussions that took place in X (Twitter). 

If you are a digital marketer, advertiser, business owner, or individual with a keen interest in keeping up on significant Google updates, we are here to condense the information to help you stay on top of your game.

TL;DR

• Google Search Spam Update rollout aims to find and filter out different types of spam like cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam. 
• The Google Core Update doesn’t specify any particular improvement, but it's rather a general Google system update. 

The Google Search Spam Updates

Google is keenly focusing on delivering people-first content to the readers. The helpful content update is a sound signal that Google is working towards improving the results showcased in the SERP. 

Following the September helpful content update, Google announced a search spam update on the 4th of October 2023 at 12:52 P.M. ET. 

The spam update is not yet fully rolled out, and you can expect to see the impact in the upcoming week.

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What is Google Spam Update? 

Google uses an AI-based spam-prevention system called SpamBrain to filter out the spam content that appears on the search result page. This spam update is an attempt to improve the spam-prevention system to find and filter out different types of spam. 

Google wrote, "This spam update aims to clean up several types of spam that our community members reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindu, Chinese and other languages. We expect to reduce the visible spam in search results, particularly when it comes to cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam." 

How does this update impact your website? 

Google mentioned that "sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies." 

If you have seen a decline in average position or traffic, it's best to look back at the Google Spam policies to ensure your sites do not support any spam activities. 

While the impact of the helpful content update has not yet been settled, and websites are still processing the changes, this spam update is another hit for websites that solely aim to rank higher without focusing on adding value to the readers. 

The Google Core Update 

Adding up to the heat, Google also announced a core update on October 5th around 12 P.M. ET. This core update is not related to the spam update. 

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Even though Google did not write much about this rollout, they mentioned it's a "general improvement in how we rank."

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These core updates do not aim to promote or demote specific pages in SERP. "Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall," writes Google. 

If you have seen any impact on your website due to the core update, unfortunately, you might not be able to pinpoint one factor and fix it to get back on track. In fact, Google says, "Pages that experience a change after a core update don't have anything wrong to fix." 

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However, they also suggest that if you aim to rank higher or boost your content performance, it's best to refer and self-assess your content by answering Google's Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content questions. 

In Closing

The early October Google updates from Google signify a substantial shift towards elevating the user experience and serving the best and most relevant results to the users.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, staying attuned to these updates and aligning content strategies with user-centric approaches will be pivotal for marketers, content creators, and publishers. 

For further updates, make sure to follow along with Keeping Up with Google at Scalenut.