The Google March 2024 core update finished a week ago and Google did not tell us until today. It finished officially on April 19, 2024, and took 45 days to roll out after starting on March 5, 2024. Google also said this helped reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45%, which is up from their estimate of 40%.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Google's core update is still rolling out over 7 weeks later and yes we are seeing more fluctuations and chatter. Forbes blocked its coupon directory in preparation for the Google site reputation abuse policy. Google said splitting and merging sites takes longer than normal site migrations...

Google has removed the feature to add publications manually to the Google Publisher Center. Instead, publications will be automatically added when Google's algorithms decide to.

Google is testing placing the date in the snippet on the same line as the URL in the snippet. This is instead of placing it before the snippet's description section.

Google is now sharing the Googlebot IP ranges for the User-triggered fetchers. User-triggered fetchers are from Google tools and product functions where the end user triggers a fetch.

Google and Microsoft both reported very good earnings, driving both stock prices up after hours. I like to dive into the ad revenue side, and it looks like Google Ad revenue was up 13% from last year and Microsoft Advertising revenue was up 12% from last year.

Google Ads is showing yet another new and fun notice to some advertisers. This one shows an impression issue for "Low keyword quality." As a reminder, as for diagnostic insights, quality score is not used in the auction.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...