Google began rolling out its highly awaited August 2024 core update on August 15.
Google says the update will demote SEO-focused content and promote smaller independent websites that create helpful, high-quality content relative to searches.
Full rollout completion is expected within a month.
What is the Google August 2024 Core Update?
The August 2024 Core Update is a long-anticipated change to Google’s search algorithm. It focuses on understanding and meeting user search intent by improving the relevance and quality of search results.
Google has been promising an update to help sites affected by the September 2023 Google Helpful Content update after the March 2024 Google core update had little effect.
The tech giant says the August 2024 core update will help small independent site owners and publishers by rewarding high-quality content while penalizing content lacking user value.
Google announced the update on X:
Not your average update
According to Google, this update is different from your average core update.
Google Search Advocate John Mueller said the August core update continues Google`s work to improve Search quality by showing relative content that meets readers’ intent rather than content created to perform well on Search.
John Mueller wrote on Google Search Central:
- “Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”
Mueller added that Google designed it after considering months of publishers’ feedback to the March 2024 core update that had little effect in solving the ranking volatility many small site owners and independent publishers have been experiencing:
- “This latest update takes into account the feedback we’ve heard from some creators and others over the past few months. As always, we aim to connect people with a range of high-quality sites, including small or independent sites that are creating useful, original content on relevant searches. This is an area we’ll continue to address in future updates.”
Mueller finished with what many publishers have been waiting to hear, saying:
- This August 2024 core update “aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to surface the best of the web.”
Google rewards positive changes by independent sites
Mueller states the update considers the feedback from publishers and content creators and will implement changes to help those who have made positive changes to their websites.
If that’s accurate, content creators might believe Google’s promise to showcase high-quality content from smaller, independent, diverse sources rather than unauthenticated Reddit content, as was the recent case with AI Overviews.
Mueller confirmed this by posting:
- “This update also aims to better capture improvements that sites may have made, so we can continue to show the best of the web.”
Google update guidance
Google updated its help page to include the latest changes and provide in-depth guidance for publishers who experience ranking issues during and after the rollout.
The Google Search Status dashboard says the core update will take a month to complete, which is in keeping with major updates.
Site owners hope for recovery
Site owners, publishers, and SEO professionals hoped the March 2024 core update would help solve the ranking volatility issues many have been experiencing since the September 2023 helpful content update.
For most, that didn’t happen; if anything, the problem worsened when Google launched AI Overviews in May 2024.
Many site owners are now asking whether the August 2024 core update will solve those problems and when their sites will recover.
