023 – Google’s Latest Update: Tackling SPAM!

00:00.00
peteeveritt
Hello and welcome to this episode of the wp seo show I am Pete and I’m joined by my co-host my brother from another mother. Mr. Jeffrey patch all the way from the us of a hey Jeff how’s it going allah crakey.

00:13.24
Jeff
Um, Ola Pete How’s it going That’s I’m gonna teach you some some American vernacular now.

00:20.71
peteeveritt
Ah, really is that but that that’s not American that’s spanish.

00:24.43
Jeff
Well we say it here. Okay, we say it here we were adopting it. Ah.

00:29.70
peteeveritt
So this week where this week is you know we we are the wp seo show and some of our shows are very much more Wp than Seo but this isn’t one of them this Week we are very much in the seo camp of the ah of of what we do because we’re going to be talking about. Google’s releases to do with their March Twenty Twenty Four al go update which we’ll be rolling out over well March although it does reference certain dates in may as well. So at some point between now and the beginning of may um and we thought it be good topic for a show. Thanks.

01:04.48
Jeff
Yeah, so this is one of those algorithm updates that all the seo people on Facebook and Linkedin groups and everything start freaking out about and losing sleep over right? It’s one of those.

01:14.18
peteeveritt
Yeah, that’s that’s basically the one. Yeah, you’ve you’ve heard about it. It’s at least.

01:19.36
Jeff
I’ve been like traumatized by responses to that over the years and that’s how I feel every time I hear about a Google out. Ah I’ll go up I cannot say algorithm all the time. So I’m just gonna say I’ll go but every time I hear about I’m like oh no, it’s going to happen and it’s that’s never bad.

01:31.42
peteeveritt
I mean look that there’s a few things that that we need to point out with this firstly the world will keep on turning it doesn’t matter what happens and how this rollout goes and how it affects certain parts of the world and the internet and everything else the world will keep on turning. It isn’t going to. Drive the world to a halt I Promise. Um.

01:54.97
Jeff
Um, no I think it’s going to make the world turn better there. Go ahead, please please.

01:57.33
peteeveritt
Ah, well sorry gone. Okay, so the the reason that we we’ve picked this and and let’s look. There’s I’ll go updates very very regularly and we don’t mention all of them on the show and we never will mention all of them on the show because some some of them. Um. Um, exceptionally dull. But the reason we’ve decided to pick this one is because this I’ll go. Update isn’t just an al’ go. Update. That’s affecting the way that Google looks at websites. This is actually a policy update particularly to do with spam policies. There are other things involved in it. You know it’s not It’s not just about span policies. But actually when you read between the lines. The policies don’t say this when you read between the lines. It’s very much seems that part of the driving force behind this is cleaning up some of the. Repetitive ai content that is appearing on the internet now for full transparency. The policies themselves do not mention ai content that is my read on it that is the way that we’ve been talking about it and it’s the way that other seos have been talking about it online? Um, but yeah that that seems to be the just behind it which is why we thought it would be a good. Good topic to speak about on the show. Thanks.

03:15.13
Jeff
Yeah I mean in Google’s own words in there at least in their you know blog post update is they’re reducing low quality, unoriginal results and like just for me because again I I look at these things I freak out about them a little bit when I see everybody freaking out about them then I actually read them and I always walk away going. This is great. I’m so glad this is actually being put into place and maybe that’s because we’re not doing these spammy things that they want to get rid of or you know, maybe that’s just never been my prerogative or yours I know um I look at it from a user standpoint I use google all the time I want it to work. Well I want it to give me good results. I do feel. It’s gotten better over the you know years? Um, even with Ai lately. You know you find those in there but I still feel like Google’s results have gotten better and with these latest updates. They they say that their analysis is they’re expecting. Basically you know, spammy and unoriginal content in results to go down like 40% like that’s all. Lot. That’s a lot.

04:12.53
peteeveritt
Well, yeah, and you know there are there are uses of Ai content that is becoming quite annoying. We we went and got a recipe off Google within the last week and it was very obvious. The a I had been used to write. Let me put it this way. Nobody gets that passionate about a steak pasta bake. Um, ah and and it really doesn’t transform life in the way that it was advocating. It would um and it was just very obvious that you know. It was it was you ai was heavily used in the writing of that of that recipe and it didn’t add anything to it. It actually made it harder to follow than it should have been and um, yeah, it just wasn’t it wasn’t a good use of of. Ah, Google’s resources so I fully understand why they are um, approaching this. Um now as I say the the use of Ai isn’t specific isn’t categorically mentioned and basically the update the updates to the spam policies fall into 3 sections and the 3 sections of these. Firstly expired domain abuse so that is where you buy up old domain names which have authority or have a big backlink profile or already have good rankings and then you change the content on those um ah on that website in order to basically manipulate the serps.

05:47.49
peteeveritt
Because of that the second is scaled content abuse. Um, and then the third is site reputation abuse and really, it’s the scale content thing which is a is where it is looking at how Ai content is going to be used.

06:03.18
Jeff
I think I mean even removing the concept of Ai from this I feel like it still is focused on a lot of kind of semi-abbusive I will refer to them as that techniques that people have used and. I mean like scaled content. Yes, Ai makes that a lot easier but people have been doing that and it’s been a problem you know again from the user’s standpoint like how many times have you just dug through search results even on sometimes the same website because they have 27 articles about the same topic and just rehashing the same things and doesn’t make any sense. Well.

06:32.85
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah.

06:35.23
Jeff
If it’s you know if it’s if if Google can index it and see that there’s different topics and it helps people different ways. Great. But when it’s just the same thing over and over again. It’s not beneficial to anybody.

06:45.10
peteeveritt
No no and you know it’s it’s interesting that Google is having to pick up on this In fact, there’s a section I’m just ah I’ve got it open on the other screen There’s a section in it which says what’s different from the old policy against automatically generated content. Um. And the updated policy against scaled abuse and it says our new policy is meant to help people focus more clearly on the idea that producing content at scale is abusive if done for the purposes of manipulating the search rankings. So that’s exactly what you’re talking about.

07:14.54
Jeff
Yeah I mean you could definitely and you should be putting your content out there at scale but not not the rehashing this stuff you know I mean we’ve talked about it before content Pillars. You know categories. I mean there’s ways to organize your Stuff. There’s a way to put out. A lot of info in quality matter.

07:35.90
peteeveritt
So well. Yeah I mean look let’s let’s look at it this way you know if you’re ah if you’re an author and you’re trying to write a book about a particular topic. You don’t write the book with the same chapter in 6 times just worded in different ways to show that you’re an authority on the chapter. Ah an authority on the topic. You know you that that’s that’s not nobody had write a book like that. So why people were writing websites like that I think that’s that’s kind of the the crooks of it there. No absolutely not. But.

08:00.90
Jeff
Yeah, that’s not going to make me keep reading your book. It might make me keep reading your website but only because I’m in a loop of hell and I can’t find what I’m looking for your book I have thrown away by now.

08:14.33
peteeveritt
Ah I’d I’d still give up on the website I’ll be honest.

08:17.44
Jeff
Ah I’m I’m both easily distracted and extremely persistent. It is a quandary. Let me tell you.

08:22.90
peteeveritt
Well, the I think the second part of this that’s quite interesting is that it it’s they’ve linked the use of generated content automatically generated content to the scale. So yeah, that’s It’s another interesting point that you can read into this which is Google in these new policies aren’t saying you can’t use Ai to help you with content but what they are saying is that you can’t use Ai or automatically generated content to produce the content at scale in order to manipulate the search results. So. If you are stuck with something if you are using Ai to to do a bit of background research or to give you a structure for something that’s still absolutely fine if you use it to produce a single piece of content I’d argue that you nobody should ever really just take something out of. Out of Ai and lift it and put it straight on the internet but that’s still not a problem in Google’s terms what they are trying to move away from is essentially these content farms that have been scaled up beyond I mean all human recognition now that ai is so readily available Ai tools are so ready.

09:36.34
Jeff
Yeah I think they’re probably I’m totally speculating but Google’s using Ai internally they they’re not shy about it. They use Ai for analytics and and all this kind of stuff but I wonder if they’re going to start distancing themselves from a blanket anti-ai statement and.

09:36.55
peteeveritt
Readily available.

09:47.76
peteeveritt
So.

09:55.61
Jeff
You know to mean fine tune. What really is the problem and I hopefully that’s overall positive the concept of Ais is fine with me but you know in use. It’s like you mentioned that recipe I had the same thing I think I talked about it on here before but I had the same experience with like a wordpress tutorial you know, just something I looked up to how do we? you know. How do we do this and like I kept looping back to the same like same step over and over again and I realized there was just a flaw in this logic and it made no sense and if I actually looked at the whole tutorial it was completely bonkers and it’s like this is literally doesn’t work. It’s just Ai generated isn’t it. Okay, all right. You guys got lost in that thought process.

10:35.10
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely and you you know I I’m amazed how many people generate content or think they can generate content without it adding that value or purpose to the to the user you know without without thinking that. Look the the whole purpose we generate content for in the first place is to get real human eyeballs on it. You know views sessions. So how can you produce something like that and actually put it online without considering what it actually looks like to the real human eyeballs that are going to be reading it at the other end because to tell you what.

11:14.10
Jeff
Well no, but to be to be fair think about just ah I mean a couple years ago right it wasn’t uncommon for quote unquote seos to be publishing content that was like obviously for seo.

11:14.73
peteeveritt
Bot traffic doesn’t make your sales.

11:29.70
Jeff
You know the just the keyword stuffed articles you go to? Ah, we always talk about Joe plumber down the street right? The hypothetical small business client and they’d have you know 5 posts about? do you need a plumber in such and such city and they just rehash the same keywords over and over again. But if you actually read it. You’re like this is this is ridiculous.

11:42.56
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah.

11:48.70
Jeff
Whereas and the Guinness is just like from my personal day-to-day experience. I First noticed really good content on dental websites websites from dentists and um, not all of them most of them are same thing. They’re just brochure sites with like you know, an appointment or lead gem form or something. But. Some of them have a lot of really good detail and it’s unique content about you know the various procedures and all that stuff are you are people looking for info on that and trying to learn that from a dentist in their area. No probably not but they Google types of things like that they find out their dentists. You know has a bunch of content on it and they oh hey you’re an authority and you probably got some boost in the search rankings because of that so I’m now a customer of yours. That’s not what they thought but that’s what happened.

12:36.14
peteeveritt
Yeah, well and that’s you know that we we work with a lot of legal firms and that that is exactly the exactly the same um and there are certain certain niches certain niches where that does seem to work better than others. Um, but yeah, yeah, you know you, you’re dead right? that.

12:57.80
peteeveritt
In the last episode we talked about keywords being like picking up a sheet and ah how kind of the sheet around it moves around the point that you pit all the points that you pinch and it you know you? that is how you should think about your content. It is about filling in the gaps filling in the jigsaw. About whatever the the topic is that you are you are wanting to um, ah you wanting to rank for and if if you take that’s room with the analogy of the jigsaw a jigsaw doesn’t work if all the pieces are the same piece right? You only have one of each piece of the jigsaw. Because when you put them all together. It gives you the authority of the the full on photograph or whatever it is that you the jigsaw’s about and your content is a bit like that they it needs to be like stepping stones that are building towards a bigger picture simply rehashing the same thing about you know. And let’s take Joe the plumber as the example about you know these are the boiler. The typical boiler repairs and then how we fix your boiler and how often your boiler needs to be serviced and what are the typical fixes we have when we service boilers. And yeah, it’s it’s all just It’s all the same piece of the jigsaw over and over again that the real danger I think with this and I came across this with a client the other week. Um, we had a client. It was a white label client. So it was another agency approached us to write some.

14:07.22
Jeff
Um, but it works.

14:22.61
peteeveritt
Copy for 1 of their clients websites they were building a new website for a client and the you know we knew that they needed to have a whole load of extra pages so that they asked us for a quote to copyright those pages fast forward five or six weeks and I’m talking to the agency owner about something else and say hey what about this copyrighting quote that we did weeks ago has anything ever happened with that and they came back and said and oh yeah, the the client took a look at that and decided that and it was a bit too expensive so they’ve written the yeah, they’ve written the pages with chat Gpt and. Instantly my heart sank ah knowing full well that the plan eventually is for this client to become a ah client of Seo hives actually um, we are going to end up having to unpick that piece of the jigsaw. Ah I haven’t been and looked. To see what the ai content is but that is yeah and obviously no names because we are Goingnna have to so sorry to tell you that this this podcast now become an internal briefing meeting. But yeah, we’re gonna have to un pick but unpick that little conundrum. Yeah.

15:31.50
Jeff
Yeah I’m learning about this for the first time right now so I’m oh great okay now I know what we got to do work on next week ah

15:37.26
peteeveritt
Yeah, well we’re we’re gonna have to unpick that little conundrum as ah as time goes by. But yeah, and and that that that’s partly the danger. It’s partly the danger of commoditizing anything I think you know you you make something so accessible to people. Who literally think that copy is words on a page and actually this is this is what you’re going to get um whereas you still need ah a friend of mine. Bob Gentle who we’ve mentioned on the on the show in the past he had he he. He likes to have his eighty twenty rules he applies eighty twenty rules to everything and he he did this ah can’t whether there’s a podcast he was on or a session that I was in that he was leading or something and he he mentioned that ai is still an eighty twenty rule but Ai does the 80% but the thing is that the 20% has to come after. Ai. You still have to have the squidgy organic human bit that goes on the the other end now I maybe don’t agree with the percentages there. But I do agree with the philosophy ai tools are not bad. We’ve said this before as long as they are used in moderation and the copy that you are generating is. Primarily designed to give value to the user. The user gets the end of it. What have they learned what have they got out of it. You know, rather than just hey it’s a webpage.

17:01.75
Jeff
Well I’ve I’ve learned that Bob and I are kindred spirits because I feel very very similar with the whole eighty twenty thing I apply that to everything in life and it’s like well we got about 80% of it done so you know with this so that was easy the last 20% if it’s going to be hard all right. It’s only 20% or you know, um, same concept with Ai absolutely and the same concept back. You know in the old days when you would order you know content from like upwork or something for a good deal. It’s like well it’s hopefully 80% more like 60 but you know you know what you’re getting and then you’ve got to take it across the finish line I mean that’s not a terrible concept. But.

17:39.19
peteeveritt
I would challenge that there are areas in life where the eighty twenty rule shouldn’t but it be applicable like haircuts. For example.

17:40.92
Jeff
Um, you know.

17:47.39
Jeff
Um, I would without even knowing what you’re going to say I’m going to agree. There’s definitely some areas in life that it shouldn’t be applied by but I’m curious what you’re thinking.

17:52.94
peteeveritt
Well I’d like like I I never want to leave the shop with only 80% of a haircut because the last twenty percent I was just it was too much hassle I needed to get off early. So yes I’m only doing 80% of it. Um, you know heart surgery.

18:04.72
Jeff
You could. You could tell pete’s not losing his hair in his old age because I would I’d be lucky to only get 80% of a haircut like I would kill to only get 80% of haircut I only get about 66% of one if you know what I’m talking about.

18:12.87
peteeveritt
Well I just said I’ve also just said heart surgery actually any surgery for that matter a surgeon should never apply the to eighty twenty rule when he’s in the the the operating theater so there are certain parts of life that it it shouldn’t be applied to just.

18:26.11
Jeff
Agreed.

18:32.29
peteeveritt
Just to throw that out there in our general but you know view of the world I agree it can be applied to most things. But um, yeah, don’t don’t don’t take it as a as a life lesson.

18:42.96
Jeff
Hey you know your surgeon probably does only do 80% of the work and you know and then there’s the the other staff that does the cleaning and the sewing and so maybe it does apply just have to get a little creative with your thinking there pete. Ah.

18:53.89
peteeveritt
Okay I I I I sit corrected but I mean thank that Thank God Touchwood I don’t need a heart surgeon at the minute So I’m ah I’m gonna I’m gonna just ah yeah I’ll I’ll mention it to next time I speak to him which hopefully won’t.

18:56.15
Jeff
Discuss it with your heart surgeon. Okay, let me know what they say.

19:12.13
Jeff
Um, yeah, hopefully never.

19:12.27
peteeveritt
Won’t be for a very long time. So her right? Okay, well that that diverted the ah diverted the topic. Um, ah a little so but yeah, that’s I think it’s interesting that Google is having to make this move. Um. You know and one of the reasons that seos are getting concerned I should say about this particular update is that when ah when I’ll go updates happen. Google’s a data company so they don’t normally like changing too many variables at any 1 time you know you’ll get. You do get your big updates like I can’t remember all the names you know when we used to have pen penguin and panda and thistle and whatever. Um.

19:55.23
Jeff
Yeah I’ve lost track of those just like I did the mac os systems I don’t know are they still on cats or are they on California cities now I don’t know.

20:04.63
peteeveritt
Yeah I don’t know I don’t know either anyway. But that’s normally you you have these big landmark ones that kind of planned well in advance and then other than those generally the Algo updates are. A tweak here and a tweak there and that’s where you get some many of them because they’re they’re just little like course corrections in different places that that of course over a period of maybe twelve months add up to some significant changes. But um, they you know they’ course corrective movements whereas this one even Google has openly said. Before it’s applied them that this is an update to multiple parts of the algorithm. So this is like a I’m not gonna say unscheduled because they they’ve known it’s coming I guess but it is a bigger than normal update than you would get with this kind of warning. But this time here.

20:58.13
Jeff
I was just going over some of the site reputation abuse things and I noticed that they specifically mentioned they basically paid advertising. You know if you’re publishing content like guest paid guest posts and stuff I mean I don’t know how. They know that unless it’s clearly stated but same thing you know you’re right? if you’re paying for that content out there I would I would definitely like that to maybe not get the same credit. Um I don’t know.

21:25.45
peteeveritt
Well and you know this is there’s another interesting point with that as well isn’t there because we we used to engage in that side of things a little bit through through Seo hive when we had our link outreach pathway and so for those users that.

21:36.10
Jeff
Here.

21:42.43
peteeveritt
Ah, listeners that haven’t used our service or didn’t use our service back in the day we used to have a link outreach pathway whereby we we couldn’t guarantee links. We weren’t running Link farms or anything like that which is it’s always awkward if people are guaranteeing you links always organic outreach.

21:53.98
Jeff
Um, you know it was always organic outreach.

21:59.92
peteeveritt
And when we started it I don’t have the exact numbers but my gut feel is somewhere between 40 and 50% of the opportunities we got through asked for some form of payment so you can have a guest post it’ll cost two hundred and fifty bucks and you’ve got to provide the post. Um. Or you you can have a link and it’ll cost you $30 or whatever I might my gut says the lower side of half was where when we started the the number that actually asked for some form of payment by the time we.

22:31.92
Jeff
Yeah, it it was It was a lot. There was a lot.

22:36.49
peteeveritt
Yeah, it was. It was a significant percentage but you could still as as as a provider that was trying to gain links for clients you know, of course we could present the ones that had ah had a fee but we could also offset it with a number of ones that didn’t carry a fee so there was you know look we’ve got these free ones and we’ve got these ones over here that have also replied. But. They’re going to cost you some extra money fine by the time we closed the service down one of the reasons why we closed the service down um, was because it was like 99.9 percent of opportunities that came through required a payment and when we were then trying to. Approach our agency partners with this. You know we’d sign them up for a monthly fee for us to go and do the outreach. We’d go and do that we were actually quite successfully at at the outreach we were getting opportunity rates of around about 30% which was you know? fantastic? Um, but. Of those 30% of those opportunities that came through you could probably count on one hand the number of opportunities in a month would get across all clients where they said that there wasn’t a payment involved they you know and our agency partners. They weren’t going to foot the Bill. We didn’t have the.

23:39.13
Jeff
Um, yeah.

23:46.84
peteeveritt
You know we didn’t have the the profit to to foot the bill for for all the opportunities the client, the end client their opinion was well. We’re paying you to source us links. So why would we pay for more links you know more for the links now that you’ve found them. So hence the the service just kind of cranked to a bit of a halt really because this was ah a. An abused process that was going on I think the the real irony here is Google probably has some Ai at work finding patterns in websites that have types of content that are generated. Maybe if the writing styles are very different between.

24:08.20
Jeff
Yeah.

24:24.77
peteeveritt
The blogs that are posted or maybe they have you know the that they so they have really random topics on the same blog. You know they don’t really fit together in terms of what would be class as an organic keyword structure or whatever it might be. They’ll have loads of signals that they’re feeding into their data centers which will give them a fairly good idea that a domain is paying for guest posts or being paid for guest posts and um, it’s all a bit sad. Really it just makes makes life harder for everybody.

24:44.83
Jeff
Oh yeah.

24:51.90
Jeff
Yeah, don’t call me on the you know legalities I I feel like I should probably know specific but varies too much and locations and stuff. But I mean you’re supposed to be disclosing that anyway. So that’s the easiest way for them to know you know Obviously it’s paid at paid content or whatnot and.

25:03.40
peteeveritt
And.

25:10.73
Jeff
You know, even as a reader you’ll see it at the time you know this post has been a sponsored post and you kind of lose credibility and instantly go huh. Maybe I’ll read it. Maybe not depends on the content but you know if you’re having that if that’s a common thing that people are reacting to this type of content and I think Google is on the right path with it. So.

25:29.20
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, so it’s you know that they they just seem to be doing a whole load of cleaning up at the minute a good good bit of housekeeping. Do do you have the um, the expression life laundry your side of the states.

25:30.10
Jeff
You know.

25:45.12
Jeff
Life laundry. No but I think I want to start using that because it makes perfect I get it instantly I love it I need to do some life laundry today I’m good as ah I’m I’m so taking that one.

25:56.51
peteeveritt
Right? Well that you you can put what that is on your other podcast. Um, but yeah, we. So so why the hell did I start with life laundry. It feels like Google is is ah is doing that a little bit at the moment. It’s getting its house in order. And it’s going to be really interesting to see how this affects some of our client sites over the course of the next few weeks and months now I should should add that although they’re calling it the March I’ll go update. Um, they are giving 60 day notices of some of the changes to the.

26:32.21
peteeveritt
Ah, policies that they’re having to enforce so some of the pages even though they’re included in the March algorithm update aren’t actually in effect until the fifth of May Twenty Twenty four so this is going to be something that’s going to affect us over the next two or three months as different things get rolled out. So.

26:45.40
Jeff
And even then I imagine it’ll be a process to even detect this type of stuff and start making those decisions and whatnot. But you know real fasto you you said something I want to I want to argue with you about it. You said you’re interested to see how this will affect our clients and I’m not because I don’t think it will because we’re not doing most of this stuff.

26:55.83
peteeveritt
Go for it.

27:05.10
Jeff
But we do know plenty of folks and we know plenty of websites and I think we will see some changes just not with our clients.

27:09.97
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, although I also know that we’re not the only source of content for some of our clients. So I you know so so whilst they’re getting very good, high quality content from Seo Hive on our content plan which you can find out at as your hi dot co forward slash content hyphen plan. Um.

27:15.80
Jeff
That is actually that is true that is true.

27:28.74
peteeveritt
I do know that a number of clients have content coming in from various various places and some of that will also be based on um, Ai content so it will be very interesting to see how that’s gonna how that’s gonna look at.

27:45.53
Jeff
We we can make our recommendations and suggestions. That’s the best we can do. Ah.

27:50.60
peteeveritt
Yeah, we definite. We definitely can. We definitely can so you know that’s ah that’s said that’s that’s what’s happening and what we’ll do is. We’ve got a I’ve got a couple of links that we can put in the show notes through to the. Ah, the initial release that Google did on the fifth of March Twenty Twenty four to do with um the the bloggers entitled new ways we’re tackling spam and low quality content on search and then there’s a couple of supporting pages that that page links to but I’ll try and get all 3 in the show notes. So that if if you want to know more. By all means you can go and click around Google’s search central blog and um, you know it’s the information that’s coming direct from them.

28:36.00
peteeveritt
So I think that brings this show to a bit of a wrap unless you’ve got anything inspirational. We should have like ah a Jeff’s closing inspirational section to the show we need it’ll need a jingle I think ultimately. But ah.

28:47.31
Jeff
No, you you put me on a spot but I got one for everybody today. Be serious about life but don’t take life seriously.

28:51.89
peteeveritt
Okay, okay. So there. We go what one needs to be said.

29:02.79
Jeff
Ah I’ll have one prepared for next week

29:06.53
peteeveritt
Ah I’m going to have a Jingle prepared for next week ah ah so yet. Thanks for listening everybody. We hope this rambling has been ah has been informational for you are useful for you and as I say there’ll be links to the blogs that we’ve been talking about in the show notes. If we don’t see you in our inbox we will see you in the next show.