The March 2024 Google core update took 45 days to roll out and involved multiple core systems that reinforce each other.
The transition of Google’s helpful content system into the core ranking system has been a major point of confusion for site owners and SEOs.
With the transition to core, the old HCU classifier, which was applied when Google’s helpful content system determined that a site had a significant amount of “unhelpful content” based on a site-level evaluation, is supposed to be gone.
Instead, multiple systems in Google’s core ranking systems now assess the helpfulness of content.
Each system, represented by a small factory, might come up with a score based on its evaluation, and these systems could support or counterbalance each other.
Site owners cannot think of the helpful content system as a separate system; it is now part of the overall calculation between systems that are part of Google’s core ranking system.
Google’s site-level quality algorithms are extremely powerful and can cause a site to surge or tank dramatically during a broad core update.
With the helpful content system now baked into core, the “helpfulness of content” contributes heavily to these site-level quality algorithms.
Most sites that were heavily impacted by the September 2023 HCU update saw significant drops with the March core update, even after being down 80%+ based on the September helpful content update.
During the March core update, it was expected that some sites would recover while others might drop further based on their improvements or lack thereof.
However, the transition did not yield the anticipated movement.
Sites impacted heavily by the September HCU continued to drop, and not one site showed any type of recovery.
It is unclear if the old classifier is still being applied, but the transition has been far from smooth.
Google is now actively collecting feedback based on the March 2024 core update, and site owners can supply sample queries and landing page combinations for sites that wrongly dropped or continued to drop with the update.
If a site has been heavily impacted by the September HCU and has worked to improve but hasn’t seen any movement in the right direction, submitting feedback is highly recommended.
