The March 2024 Core Update was one of Google’s most consequential algorithm updates in years, rolling out over a 45-day period from 5 March to 19 April 2024 — the longest rollout window Google had ever announced for a core update. Accompanied by new spam policies targeting scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and site reputation abuse, the update was notable for the breadth and depth of its impact: Google stated it was targeting a 40 percent reduction in unhelpful, low-quality content in search results. Many sites that had survived the Helpful Content Update of 2022 saw significant ranking drops, including established affiliate and programmatic content publishers. The update also incorporated the Helpful Content System directly into the core ranking algorithm rather than running it as a separate classifier, meaning the signals were applied more granularly at the page level rather than site-wide.