Google Core and Spam Updates Unleashed...Here's What You Need to Know

Welcome back to the Niche Pursuits News Podcast, everyone!  This is the podcast for SEOs, content creators, webmasters, and entrepreneurs looking to understand the latest events and get inspiration for their businesses. It’s been a crazy week in SEO news, so let’s get right into it! And, as Google suggested, you better buckle up as it’s going to be a wild ride! The first (and only) topic Spencer and Jared dig into is Google’s very big news. It’s rolling out the March 2024 Spam Update, which will take 2 weeks, as well as its March 2024 core update, which will take about a month. It’s also worth noting that the Helpful Content system is now part of the core updates. Spencer and Jared discuss this news at length, covering the main aspects: scaled content abuse; site reputation abuse, or parasite SEO; and expired domain abuse. Google’s stated goal is to reduce the amount of low-quality, unoriginal content by up to 40% and send search traffic to helpful and high-quality sites. What does this all mean? And what does it mean for AI content? Who is Google targeting specifically?  What cryptic sentence from Google’s announcement does Spencer consider the most interesting? What sort of behavior is Google cracking down on in particular? What types of penalties is Google doling out, and who’s getting hit? What step did Google announce that leads Spencer and Jared to suggest Google is biased? And what kind of practices are they cracking down on when it comes to expired domains? They also talk about how Google might start to use a page classifier as opposed to a site classifier. What implications would this have? Tune in to hear Spencer and Jared discuss Google's latest news and share their thoughts on what's going on. The next portion of the podcast is Shiny Object Shenanigans.  Spencer goes first with an update on his Amazon Influencer side hustle. He reports a rough number of his videos and his earnings this month to date. The good news is that he is officially in the black. He also announces that he’s going to do an in-depth presentation about his Amazon Influencer side hustle for the Niche Pursuits Community, his new, premium membership group, which launched at the beginning of March.  Spencer will be sharing just about everything, from his storefront to his earnings to his secrets for hiring people. If you want to check it out, join the community before Monday! When it’s Jared’s turn, he provides a brief earnings update on his Amazon Influencer side hustle, and then digs into another project: using paid ads to drive subscribers to his Weekend Growth newsletter. He explains how he set it up through ConvertKit, how he’s going to try different ad ideas, and how he is about to go live with the ads. He will be providing more details and results as they come in, so watch this space! As for Weird Niche Sites, Spencer reveals that his site is getting 2 million organic visitors per month and 6 million visitors in total. Random lets you generate random things, such as numbers, and they do it using a very unique method. Listen to hear what it is! This DR83 site is making some money. Tune in to hear how they do it. When Jared’s up, he shares the website for the Stinky Candle Company, which sells unique candles with scents like chlorine, gasoline, and bacon.  This DR30 site is not getting much traffic, but Jared does reveal a few interesting tidbits about it. It looks like they could be getting 30k visitors a month. With targeted traffic like that, how much might the site be earning? Tune in to hear what they think. And that concludes another episode of the Niche Pursuits News podcast.  There’s a lot going on right now in Google’s world, so come back next week to hear Spencer and Jared break it down all over again. Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links? Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper Get SEO Consulting from the Niche Pursuits Podcast Host, Jared Bauman: https://www.nichepursuits.com/201creative