March 2024 spam update: dates, what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Google launched the March 2024 spam update on 5 March 2024, in the same Search Central post that announced the March 2024 core update. The post introduced three new spam policies “against bad practices we’ve seen grow in popularity”: expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse.

Scaled content abuse replaced the narrower policy on automatically generated content. Google wrote that producing content at scale is abusive if done to manipulate rankings, “whether automation or humans are involved.” Expired domain abuse covers buying an expired domain and repurposing it to host low-value content on the strength of its past reputation. Site reputation abuse covers third-party pages published with little or no first-party oversight to exploit a host site’s ranking signals; Google said that policy would take effect starting 5 May 2024.

When it rolled out#

The Google Search Status Dashboard logged the release on 5 March 2024 at 09:03 PST, noting the rollout could take up to two weeks. Google posted on 20 March 2024 that “the rollout was complete as of March 20, 2024,” a total of 14 days and 21 hours.

The rollout overlapped completely with the March 2024 core update, which started the same day and did not finish until 19 April 2024. A ranking change between 5 and 20 March 2024 may come from either update, so do not attribute it to spam systems on timing alone.

What is known about its impact#

Google did not publish impact figures for this update. Its standing explanation is that sites which violate its spam policies “may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.” Treat any percentage you see attributed to this update as a third-party estimate, and check its method.

What site owners should do#

Google’s guidance for spam updates is to review its spam policies and make sure the site complies with them. In practice:

• Audit the site against the three new policies: expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse.
• Check for pages produced at scale mainly to rank, whether written by people, automation or both.
• If you host third-party content, confirm you have close involvement in it, or block it from Google Search.
• If you received a manual action, fix the issue and request reconsideration in Search Console.
• Expect recovery to be slow: Google says systems may need months to learn the site now complies.

How to check whether it affected you#

In Search Console, set the Performance report to cover February to April 2024 and compare clicks for the week before 5 March with the week after 20 March. Because the core update was still rolling out until 19 April, repeat the comparison after that date too. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every confirmed update with its dates, so you can see the overlap before attributing a change to this one.

Related updates#

• The March 2024 core update launched the same day and overlapped it.
• The October 2023 spam update was the spam update before it.
• The June 2024 spam update was the next one.