What’s Going on with Google and How Does it Impact Your Site?
Google regularly updates its algorithm to help users find relevant information for their queries. In many cases, these updates can shake site rankings, which may lead to decreased organic traffic to a website. In fact, the March 2024 core update led to a 40% reduction in unhelpful content within search. After pushback from small and independent publishers that lost the most traffic, the search giant rolled out a new update to mitigate these issues. So, what is the August 2024 Google core update and how does it impact your business? Let’s dive in.
What is the August 2024 Google Core Update?
This update started on August 15 and was completed on September 3. The first four days featured a big search ranking bug that was fixed four days later. John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, noted, “Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people will find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on search.”
Although this update was in response to declining traffic to small and independent publishers, it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact. According to Search Engine Land, most sites did not see significant or meaningful recoveries. In many cases, sites saw even more declines or just stayed the same.
What Should You Do If You Were Hit?
If you’ve been ‘hit’ by this update, you’re probably frustrated and wondering what to do. Google noted that there aren’t any specific actions to take to recover from ranking changes. However, it has provided a few questions to consider. These questions can help you evaluate your site and determine whether there are any areas for improvement.
Most of the aforementioned questions pertain to evaluating your content, determining if it’s original and helpful. If you, like many other organizations, have turned to AI content, this could be a reason why you’re seeing declines in traffic. That’s why it’s so important to work with human writers for your content needs. At NgageContent, we can help you craft helpful, original, conversion-inducing resources for your business. Over the past decade, we’ve helped businesses in all industries increase website traffic and sales. Contact us today to get started.
