Google launched the March 2024 spam update on 5th Mar. That was the same day as the March 2024 core update.
The Search Status Dashboard marked it complete on 20th Mar 2024, after 14 days and 21 hours.
The launch post also brought in three new spam policies:
- expired domain abuse
- scaled content abuse
- site reputation abuse
As Google defines them, expired domain abuse is reusing an expired domain. The aim is to exploit its past reputation with low-value content.
Scaled content abuse is mass-producing pages to manipulate rankings "no matter whether content is produced through automation, human efforts, or some combination of human and automated processes," expanding the old automatically-generated-content policy.
And site reputation abuse is publishing third-party content with little first-party oversight. The aim is to trade on the host site's ranking signals.
That last policy did not take effect until May 5, 2024, to give site owners time to get ready.
Search Engine Land reported a swarm of pure-spam manual actions right after the policies launched.
If your site dropped in the 5th to 20th Mar window, review Google's spam policies. Remove anything that violates them.
The spam update itself was algorithmic. So recovery comes from Google's systems checking the cleaned-up site again over time.
A manual action, by contrast, shows in Search Console. It needs a reconsideration request after cleanup.
