#Core Algorithm

[techsavvy-agcy]

Decoding the Google Core Update, March 2025

Decoding the Google Core Update, March 2025

On March 13th, 2025, the constantly changing and unforeseeable digital world felt another major shakeup with the release of Google's newest core algorithm update. Just like before, the official explanation of the update was typically unclear, highlighting the continued focus on "rewarding top-notch content" and "enhancing search accuracy." Still, the impact was evident, causing a lot of worry and hurried changes in the SEO field.

This piece explores the effects, some educated guesses, and the best ways to handle the Google Core update from March 13th, 2025. It aims to clarify how the algorithm is changing and what that means for those who run websites and create content.

The Aftermath: Search Results in Flux

Right after the update, the search engine results pages (SERPs) saw some major shifts. Tools that monitor such volatility showed huge jumps, pointing to big changes in rankings across different sectors. Initial reports zeroed in on a few key areas:

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Google has always cared a lot about E-E-A-T in how they judge website quality, but the update in March 2025 seemed to turn up the volume on it. Websites that showed they knew their stuff, had proven expertise, were authoritative, and were super trustworthy did a lot better.

Content Authenticity and Originality: Google seemed to get much stricter about content that AI just cranked out without much original thought or real value. Sites that used a bunch of rehashed content, rewritten articles, or stuff that looked like it came straight from an AI template saw their rankings take a nosedive.

User Experience (UX) and Page Experience: Things like how fast your site loads, if it's easy to use on mobile, and overall how user-friendly it is were way more important after the update. Slow websites, had annoying pop-ups or were a pain to use on phones got dinged.

Contextual Relevance and Semantic Understanding: Google's update appeared to fine-tune its capacity for grasping the context and purpose embedded within search queries. Sites that provided comprehensive, in-depth content that addressed the nuances of user searches saw improvements.

Data Driven Content: Websites that used first party data to personalize and improve user experiences, and that used data to back up claims, saw significant improvements.

Analyzing the Algorithm's Evolving Priorities

The Rise of "Human-Centric" Content: The update reinforced the notion that Google is prioritizing content created by humans, for humans. This goes beyond simply avoiding AI-generated text; it emphasizes the importance of genuine insights, personal experiences, and a conversational tone.

Emphasis on Real-World Experience: The "Experience" element of E-E-A-T took center stage. This suggests that Google is placing greater value on content creators who have real-world experience in the topics they cover. First hand accounts and demonstrations of real world product usage were rewarded.

Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation: In an era of rampant misinformation, Google appeared to be strengthening its defenses against unreliable or misleading content. This involved stricter scrutiny of sources, a greater emphasis on fact-checking, and a preference for content from established authorities.

The Importance of Contextual Understanding: The upgrade demonstrated Google's developing capacity to understand linguistic nuances and the context of user enquiries. This shows that semantic SEO and topic clustering are becoming more important.

Privacy and User Data: With growing user concern about privacy, Google's algorithm appears to be rewarding sites with clear data-gathering policies that prioritize customer privacy.

Video and Multimedia: Video content, especially content that is original, well produced, and engaging, got a large boost in rankings. Long form, well edited videos, that are not just re-purposed content, were very well received by the algorithm.

Emerging Best Practices for the Post-March 2025 Landscape

In the wake of the update, website owners and content creators were forced to adapt their strategies. The following best practices emerged as essential for navigating the evolving search landscape:

Prioritize E-E-A-T: Focus on increasing your brand's authority and trustworthiness. Display your knowledge through author profiles, credentials, and real-world experience. Seek expert contributions and endorsements.

Create Original, High-Quality Content: Invest in original research, in-depth analysis, and distinctive opinions. Avoid using AI-generated content that lacks originality or value.

Optimize the user experience:  Make sure your website is speedy, mobile-friendly, and simple to navigate. Address Core Web Vitals concerns and prioritize a consistent user experience.

Embrace semantic SEO: Create content that takes into account the complexities of user intent and search query context. Topic clustering and semantic keywords can help you develop topical authority.

Build Authentic Backlinks: Concentrate on obtaining high-quality backlinks from credible sources. Avoid using black-hat link-building strategies.

Focus on Data and Transparency:  Show users how data is gathered and used. Ensure that privacy policies are explicit and user data is secure.

Invest in Video Content: Make high-quality, engaging videos that add value to your viewers. Optimize videos for search and make them accessible.

Monitor and Adapt: Stay up to current on algorithm updates, and regularly monitor the performance of your website. Prepare to adapt your strategies as needed.

Focus on First-Party Data: Collect and use first-party data to tailor the customer experience. This enables more targeted content and a better experience.

Create a Community:  Create a user community centered around your brand. This can be accomplished using social media, forums, and other online channels. Strong communities generate social signals, which Google values.

The long-term implications

The Google core upgrade on March 13th, 2025, marked a substantial shift in the algorithm's objectives, emphasizing the significance of human-centric information, genuine expertise, and a user-first approach. As Google improves its comprehension of language and user intent, website owners and content providers must adapt to the changing standards.

The update is likely to have the following long-term implications:

A More Level Playing Field for Smaller Websites: By emphasizing E-E-A-T and original material, Google may level the playing field for smaller websites that can demonstrate actual expertise and offer distinctive value.

A Decline in Low-Quality, AI-Generated Content: The crackdown on AI-generated content is expected to result in a decrease in low-quality, spammy content that clutters the SERPs.

A Greater Emphasis on User Experience: Google's continuous emphasis on UX is likely to result in overall improvements in website design and performance.

A More Contextually Relevant Search Experience: Google's improved semantic understanding is expected to result in a more relevant and fulfilling search experience for users.

A renewed focus on the human element of content creation: The value of real people, and their real-world experiences, will only continue to increase.

In conclusion, the March 13th, 2025, Google core update served as a stark reminder of the dynamic nature of the digital landscape. By prioritizing E-E-A-T, originality, user experience, and contextual understanding, Google is pushing website owners and content creators to embrace a more human-centric and value-driven approach. Those who can adapt to these evolving standards will be well-positioned to thrive in the years to come. The future of search is focused on genuine human connection and genuine human experience.

[digiligodigital]

Google Algorithm Updates 2023

Product Reviews Update (February 2023)

Google’s recent product reviews update, rolled out over 14 days in February, expanded language support to ten languages, including Dutch, Vietnamese, Spanish, Italian, Indonesian, Russian, Portuguese, French, German, and Polish. This modification aims to enhance Google’s product review mechanism, optimizing the ranking and display of product quality ratings on SERPs. The goal is to provide users with more reliable and beneficial product quality reviews.

Core Update (March 2023)

Released on March 15, the major update by Google stirred the web community, focusing on page speed, mobile-friendliness, and content quality. Faster-loading websites are favored in SERPs, while slower-loading pages may experience a decline in ranking. Additionally, websites inaccessible to mobile users risk lower rankings. Google aims to boost high-value websites across all languages and geographies.

Reviews Update (April 2023)

In April 2023, Google introduced an update to the “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) content quality pattern, adding an “E” for “experience.” This update emphasizes the importance of firsthand experience when producing review-based content. Web administrators and editors are encouraged to use terms like “from my experience” and “as per my personal experience” in their topics.

Core Update (August 2023)

The second modification to the search engine’s “broad core update” in 2023, revealed on August 22, aims to enhance Google’s overall evaluation of content. Google suggests that this modification could have a reverse impact, with previously uncredited sites performing well in search outcomes.

Helpful Content Update (September 2023)

In September 2023, Google added guidelines to its Helpful Content Platform records, including reducing restrictions on AI-produced content, allowing content from third parties on subdomains, and providing additional suggestions regarding decreasing site traffic. Google also offered a set of queries to help determine if a website was affected by this algorithm change.

Spam Update (October 2023)

October’s Spam Update extends detection for various spam categories and languages, covering languages like Hindi, Turkish, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. Therollout is expected to take two to three weeks, and users are encouraged to provide feedback through Google’s spam reporting service.

Core Update (October 2023)

The third core update of 2023, announced in October, aims to improve search quality by reducing offensive, low-quality content in SERPs. This targeted effort spans various languages to enhance overall search outcomes.

Core Update (November 2023)

On November 2, Google introduced another broad core update, focusing on delivering more trustworthy and relevant search outcomes. The completion of this update is expected to take a few weeks.

Reviews Update (November 2023)

November’s Review update aims to recognize and credit excellent reviews, emphasizing articles, blogs, and other works that offer unique research and incisive remarks. Website owners are encouraged to consult the Google help portal to write reviews that showcase expertise, provide evidence, and examine topics in detail. The update is set to conclude in two or three weeks.

To know more about Google algorithm update

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[togamicchi]

Hellooo :3 could i request pink and black scene pixels, please and thank yew ^_^

I HOPE THESE ARE GOOD i looovee (check my reblog for more)

[hexxed-angel]

i get obsessed 📺🚬

[thealogie]

sorry to be mean, everyone should have whatever feelings they want and as someone who walked out of good omens s2 a big winner but also knows it sucked on many technical levels i totally get people not liking it. But these posts really ARE so lacking in media literacy to me. Like it’s the end of act 2 buddy. The story is still gonna be about rejecting the rigid system on both sides and choosing earth, just not right now. The side character from the book is a main character now so he can’t be done with character development by the end of s1. He might even have motives for saying/doing what he did that aren’t 100% clear to us yet like. Can’t believe you all have me even indirectly defending Neil here

[lullabycurses]

E-Gothic Conformity: The Horror of the Algorithm (Part ??/??)

(x)

Hey Ghouls! Been a While!

Today I'm going to talk about something I've been telling my friends about (though with no nuance, so they always look at my like I've got three heads! Arguably not a bad thing...) for probably the last year. That is... This new, almost obsessive behavior... with conformity. I've mostly seen this on "The Tiktoks" and "The Reels", so this is totally connected with structurally oppressive preferences of the Algorithm.

This may need to be in two parts; Here I know I want to write a big regretfulesc love letter to my community, which even though I adore... I cannot help but feel afraid for the future. I also don't feel like finding sources this time

TW for mentions of ED and Racism

It's no secret that the algorithm pushes videos with thin white people who (seemingly!) overconsume off of websites like Dolls Kill and Shein, or even sites like Depop. There's obviously nothing to feel guilty about with buying things that you need (I've covered this in a past post).

But, I worry about the future of the community. I've seen baby bats ask if they are still goth if they don't wear a white face, I've seen creators tight-lace their corsets so tightly that they could receive bodily damage. I worry about those who develop eating disorders to fit this standard. I also worry about those who believe they have to hide their skin color to be apart of our extremely diverse community. I worry about people who feel that they need to buy into this mass amount of overconsumption to feel "goth enough".

The truth is, this is an arts-based subculture- you can do anything you want with it. It is necessary that we keep our fondness of Life as a cycle, all aspects of death are within that. Within life there is death and within that, there is death, in an endless cycle. But IMO it's more of a prompt than anything, Goth is The People.

But enough of that talk, I mean, I have a whole post (which I should probably update as new information comes to light) about it!

I think that a lot of this prioritizing looking as thin and as pale as possible is really dangerous. I know that it's under this guise of looking "dead, sickly, or ghoulish", but that's honestly such bull. We can look at gothic artist Tim Burton's reasons for his exclusion within his "aesthetic".

Not to mention this criticizing article on Wednesday! (From the Independent)

So, "Get on with it!" I hear you say.

Alright, alright. What does this mean for the future of the goth community? I mean, the culture of each social media garbage app is entirely different. Tiktok is kind of a deep pit that I avoid like the plague for how addictive it is (only for myself to replace it with reels). Instagram reels is honestly the place i have the most beef with.

There's this huge uptick in people minimizing what goth is (some of these people aren't even goths!).

They're the ones who are lowkey hierarchal assholes who think that Trad goth is the only form of gothic expression. (Like these dudes haven't read any gothic literature, written any annoying poetry, contemplated religion, spoken to a goth, or even been to a cemetery!)

So, TLDR, if we are not anti-white supremacist about this whole thing, we could see the next generation fall into consumerist patterns favoring whiteness over the beauty of gothic art.

As always, Thanks for reading!

Let me know if I'm missing anything, or if I should spend more time researching this topic!

Song recommendation; I have been obsessing over this band recently! Genre is like darkwave-alternative rock I suppose.

-Cat (Catofthenine)

[ange1w1ngs333]

𝄞 ๋࣭⭑

[pumpkinwastaken]

My worst mistake so far this year is looking up stuff about ATS on youtube cuz it has completely ruined my feed. I'm not some southern texas trucker in his 50s that likes to watch bigotted "libs get owned" videos. i wanna get recommended good music mixes pls n thank you

[orcelito]

Got jumpscared by my own full legal name showing up in my email notifications bc I forgot I emailed my code to myself today just in case my VM ends up stopping working again (I got nervous & didn't wanna lose my progress lol)

Goldfish level memory retention

& the funny thing is that the email itself is just. This

Full Legal Name code • hi

[meowsalooot]

art base !! me and me lolololol

[fyeahnix]

as a society, we really need a better understanding that just because something is labeled as AI does NOT mean it's generative AI. AI has existed for a LONG TIME before generative was a thing....like bffr

[aconstantstateofbladerunner]

Tumblr has started throwing random posts from blogs and tags i don’t follow but are semi-related into my feed, so I’m suddenly seeing bizarre takes from corners of fandom i blocked years ago.

[togamicchi]

idk if i requested already but... shark/ocean themed pixels please? :3

HAI

[digiligodigital]

Google Algorithm Updates

Early Algorithm Updates (2003–2006) Florida (November 2003) Nofollow (January 2005) Jagger( September 2005) Big Daddy (December 2005)

Mid-2000s Algorithm Updates (2007–2010) Universal Search (May 2007) Vince (February 2009) Caffeine (December 2010) Panda (February 2011)

The Penguin and Hummingbird and Pigeon Era (2012–2013) Penguin (April 2012) Hummingbird (August 2013) Pigeon (July 2014)

Updates to Mobile-Focused Algorithms (2015–2018) Mobile-Friendly Update (April 2015) RankBrain (October 2015) Fred (March 2017) Mobile-First Indexing (March 2018) Recent Algorithm Updates (2018–2023) Medic (August 2018) BERT (October 2019) Broad Core Update (June 2021) Link Spam Update (December 2022)

To Know More About Google Algorithm Updates