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How To Future-Proof Your Content From Google AI Core Updates?
May 18th, 2024 by esigners
The first half of 2024 is on its way to an end and the relationship between content creators and search engine algorithms has become complex to a level that had not been anticipated earlier. Now that Google has introduced its Core March Update it is expected that the dynamics of online visibility will undergo a major transition. This will create both opportunities and challenges for those who are engaged in the digital marketing scene, one which is always evolving. At the heart of this particular shift would be the need to address AI (artificial intelligence)–generated content, a phenomenon that is always growing.
The crux of Google’s March 2024 update
The said update happens to be the first one that Google has made this year. It is different from the earlier core updates in the sense that it enhances different aspects of the core system of Google. This is a detailed update that touches on various systems within the core and it is expected that it will prompt Google to implement further updates to these systems at later dates. Experts were getting habituated to dealing with the effects of the Core and the Helpful updates separately but now Google has combined them in the latest update.
This means that the works of performing correlation analysis and assessing potential effects have now had an additional layer of complexity added to them. In layman’s language, this means that webmasters and SEO (search engine optimization) experts will not get individual announcements regarding helpful content updates any longer. Rather, they would all come as parts of the core updates. Chris Nelson, part of the Search Quality team of Google, says that this particular update is more detailed than the ones that preceded it as it concerns multiple core systems of Google. Google has also improved its core ranking systems to deliver more helpful results.
For this, it is using a diverse array of innovative methods and signals. Essentially, the core updates are – at their heart – prioritizing helpful content.
The reason why AI-generated content has become a challenge that must be solved
With the new AI models, the entry barriers to becoming a copywriter or a content writer have reduced now and drastically at that! However, for this, you also need to be good at using these tools. Producing content has become more economical now and this is perhaps why we are seeing such an increase in the amount of content being generated these days! However, most of such content is not verified and this is why it offers users such poor experience!
Just think of a situation where you are looking for suggestions on how to make money in life or medical advice. Then you stumble upon a website where a teenager without any experience in these matters is answering these questions. It needs to be asked if this is the direction that the founders of search engines envisioned all those years back. There is no certainty if this is in alignment with what ChatGPT intends for search-related activities. The thing with Google, however, is that it is always looking for ways to provide its users with the best possible results for their queries.
Which sites have been affected the most and how has that happened?
The sites that the March 2024 Core Update has affected are low-quality websites that have been created using AI. These are the ones that had been manipulating search results earlier. This update has led to a lot of such websites being deindexed which means that the affected website owners have lost a lot of advertising revenue along with organic search traffic. The deindexed sites were immensely dependent on using AI to generate their content. In some of these sites, the entire content has been created using AI!
This update has had a substantial impact with at least 40% of SERPs (search engine result pages) being deindexed totally from the search results of Google. This is only the early stage we are talking about over here. This is a massive stat no matter how you look at it! There is no way it can be underestimated especially when you are a website owner who depends a lot on money that you get from ads running on your website.
So, you may be wondering how you can save the content on your website from suffering the same ignominy. Well, you can always start by prioritizing ethical AI. You can do so by creating fact-checked and vetted content by using tools that offer you such content. You should also use the likes of ontology design for knowledge graphs. When you invest in such content it makes sure that your users get information that is accurate and, therefore, worthy of their trust. This is the new era where misinformation is always proliferating. As such, you need to establish yourself as credible and reliable so that you can build trust with your audience.
The thing is that such a status is not that easy to accomplish but if you are using the right tools and agencies it becomes a whole lot easier. This is because they know how to deal further with these issues. You can integrate said AI tools into your content strategy and get several benefits out of it. Doing so will provide your content with structured semantic makeup and data and thus enrich it. It will also help search engines understand the relevance and context of your content a lot better.
