The March 2024 Core Update, initiated by Google on March 5, has now been completed. According to the company, it finished rolling out on April 19, 45 days after it began.
It is only now that Google has confirmed the completion of this important update to its search algorithm. According to the company, this update was more complex and involved more changes to key systems, and it also included an update to the company’s helpful content standards.
In addition, a spam policy update was also carried out, which began on March 5 alongside the Core Update and, in this case, finished rolling out on March 20.
The goal of this new update is to show fewer search engine-targeted contents and reduce the amount of low-quality, non-original content in search results.
According to the company, these goals have been achieved, reducing the appearance of low-quality content by 45%, which exceeds their initial expectations of around 40%.
On the other hand, Google has stated that it will no longer announce the launch of new Helpful Content updates in the future, since from now on, changes will be made continuously to constantly improve the quality of search results.
Google’s Complaint and Feedback Form
Since so many and such varied changes have been introduced by Google in this new update to its search algorithm, it will not be easy for website administrators to know which of them has affected—positively or negatively—the performance of their site.
Google does not usually provide detailed information to each website indicating which aspects have influenced their improvement or decline in ranking.
However, on this occasion, Google has enabled a form for webmasters to provide feedback and make specific complaints about the ranking of their web pages after the implementation of the Core Update.
Through a Google Forms form, which can be accessed here, you can submit complaints and give feedback on how a specific search has changed. The company allows you to indicate how the ranking of a specific search (the content entered in the search box) has changed and provide feedback indicating that it no longer appears among the top 10 search results, or why it does not appear as high among the top 10, or that other web pages should appear in the top results, or that the search results shown are of low quality, among other options.
Google also allows you to indicate which specific page should appear among the top 10 search results. This allows website owners to provide feedback to Google if they believe their site should be better ranked.
Whether Google will take any action with the feedback it receives—which is expected to be a lot, given how many websites have been affected by the update—or whether it will provide any kind of personalized response to users is another matter. The company has not confirmed what it will do or what procedure it will follow with the responses obtained from the form.
