Google has unveiled updates aimed at enhancing the quality and relevance of its search results. Among these updates are algorithmic improvements to its core ranking systems, designed to prioritize the surfacing of the most useful information available online while concurrently minimizing the presence of unoriginal content.
Additionally, Google is revising its spam policies to more effectively exclude low-quality content from its search results. The updated policies target specific types of undesirable content, including websites that have expired and been repurposed for spam, as well as the proliferation of obituary spam.
These measures are part of Google’s broader strategy to maintain the integrity of its search results and protect users from irrelevant or malicious content, thereby enhancing the overall user experience on the platform.
“This update involves refining some of our core ranking systems to help us better understand if webpages are unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries,” Elizabeth Tucker, director of product management for Google, wrote in a blog post. “We believe these updates will reduce the amount of low-quality content on Search and send more traffic to helpful and high-quality sites. Based on our evaluations, we expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.”
Google is enhancing its policy to tackle abusive content creation practices aimed at manipulating search rankings through scaled content production, regardless of whether it is generated by automation, humans, or a combination of both.
This update aims to target and mitigate the impact of low-value content created en masse, such as webpages that appear to provide answers to common searches but ultimately fail to offer useful information. This initiative reflects Google’s commitment to improving the quality of content surfaced by its search engine, ensuring users receive relevant and valuable information, according to Google.