A few days ago Google announced its latest update on search. Again, they emphasize that they are fighting against automated systems for spammers. Google regularly updates those policies and systems to effectively tackle new trends so it can continue delivering useful and high-quality content.
In their blog post, they announced major changes to improve the quality of Search and the helpfulness of your results:
- Improved quality ranking: Google is making algorithmic enhancements to its core ranking systems to ensure the most helpful information is getting a higher position on the web and reduce unoriginal content in SERP.
- New and improved spam policies: Google also updated its spam policies to keep the lowest-quality content out of Search, like expired websites repurposed as spam repositories by new owners and obituary spam.
Reducing low-quality, unoriginal results
This update involves refining some of Google’s core ranking systems to help it better understand if webpages are unhelpful, have a poor user experience, or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. After this update, you may see that these updates reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.
Keeping more spam out of your results
Removing spam is another important side of this update. Google will take more targeted action under its spam policies.
Scaled content abuse
Most people are using automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale to manipulate search rankings. This policy was originally designed to address instances of content being generated at the scale where it was clear that automation was involved. It will also help Google to take action like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content.
Site reputation abuse
Sometimes, websites that have great content also host low-quality content provided by third parties to capitalize on the hosting site's strong reputation. After this update, Google may reduce such content and its effects on SERP.
Expired domain abuse
Generally, expired domains are purchased by website owners with the primary intention of boosting their ranking of low-quality or unoriginal content. This can mislead users and Google wants to decrease its effects on search results. After this update, this kind of content is considered spam.