Google Just Dropped A Massive Algorithm Update

Welcome to issue #001 of Marketing Mondays. Each week, I send you an essay to help you become a better digital marketer. I will also give you a digital lead gen audit for free.

Google just released a massive core update. This is big news and anyone who generates traffic from Google needs to pay attention.

In today’s issue, I will break down the details of the update and give you a perspective on what this means going forward for content that ranks in search engines and how you can use this update to your advantage.

Understanding Google’s Intentions

To understand this recent core update, you must understand where Google has been going the last few years. A lot of Google’s new ranking factors have centered around 3 core ideas.

It is not just about the content that gets published, but the reputation of the brand and the person writing the content.

1. E-E-A-T (Pronounced Eat, like I want to eat a cookie)

This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

In short, it is no longer enough to simply have great content. Now, Google factors in the reputation of the brand writing the content, and even the author whose name is assigned.

2. Stronger Core Web Vitals and UX

Google wants your website to be technically sound and provide a good experience for users.

• Fast load speed

• Clean architecture

• Pogo sticking: When a user clicks on your site and then instantly hits the back button.

3. Smarter AI Detection

Google does not care if you use AI to write and publish content. They care if you are lazy about it. The detectors look for key signals such as:

• How your content relates to other content on the same subject

• Penalizing sites that are mass publishing hyper optimized content with the intent of overwhelming the algorithm

• Rewarding AI assisted sites that personalize the content to meet EEAT criteria

Now that we understand those three foundational goals, we can understand this core update much better. Google is simply doubling down. They want to reward web pages that are authentic, useful, and solve a specific problem.

But here is where the game truly changes.

The Paradigm Shift Of These Most Recent Core Updates

The biggest takeaway from this update is that Google is no longer evaluating your web pages in isolation; they are measuring your content against competing results.

To truly understand this, you must look at it from a distant vantage point.

Let us imagine you have two pages of content.

Page 1 is 3500 words, is perfectly optimized and meets all the criteria.

Page 2 is a short essay that is written from a personal vantage point and quickly solves the problem of the user.

Now let us imagine that page 2 has better user signals, meaning that people stay on the page longer, the page has citations and testimonials on different sites, and the page is written by an author that also has strong brand signals from across the internet.

In theory, page 2 would outrank page 1 by comparison.

It is not that page 2 is inherently better, it is that Google puts pages in competition with each other to match them up specific to that query.

You do not have to be the best page anymore, you just need to be better than your competitors. It is a bit of a shift in mindset, but it is a critical point.

So, if your site rankings dropped this week, it does not necessarily mean you were penalized. It most likely means that Google found a competitor whose content demonstrated higher value, expertise, and trustworthiness.

The Death Of Geo Spam

My SEO focus is primarily on local businesses. I have written extensively on why I think local search is still the biggest SEO opportunity right now, and why I think it will continue to be the case.

(I created a video on why local search is AI proof. Click below to watch)

As such, the goal posts have moved for local search. It is no longer feasible to create 50 location based pages with AI or cheap writers to try and rank for every suburb and township in the area (for example, dentists in Centennial, dentists in Aurora, dentists in Highlands) with almost identical text.

Now, these location based pages must hold their own against the competition.

Meaning each location page should have unique context.

The March Spam and Core updates are absolutely brutalizing those lazy sites. Google systems are now heavily penalizing topical sprawl and thin, repetitive local pages.

Local pages now must offer unique, hyper localized value. For example, each page should have photos of jobs done in that location, or local reviews, or localized pricing.

If these pages do not stand out from the rest, Google is dropping them from the index.

Conclusion: This Is Such A Huge Opportunity

For some reason, whenever there is a core update from Google, SEO companies and businesses that generate traffic get nervous. I have never seen it this way. Every Google update is an opportunity to dominate the search engines even more.

Google traffic remains the most valuable and highest intent traffic on the internet. When a user visits your website from a search engine, it is usually because they typed in a query matching your exact services.

For example, if someone searches for the best hormone clinic in Denver, there is a very high probability they are actively looking to book an appointment today.

If you are smart, you will invest in separating yourself from your competition simply by executing at a higher level.

That is what makes these updates so great. You do not need to be a genius marketer to get rich, you simply need to create content that is better, more useful, and more helpful than your competition.

It has never been simpler to build a big business through SEO.

I hope you enjoyed the first issue of Marketing Mondays.

Talk to you Wednesday with the next AI update.

Love you guys.

Tim