The Google August 2024 Core Update is being rolled out and is one of the most awaited algorithm modifications that is seriously bringing a shake-up with respect to the way the content ranks in the search results. Google continuously revises its mission, directing priority to quality and authoritative contents’ sources while it apparently contrasts with practices focusing more on SEO and being less valuable to the user. Few of those are the important impacts to be seen on this update for the bigger old websites and also for the newcomers.
Was your Website SEO Affected?
Has google Killed or Revived your blog?
A few of the key changes we know about are as follows:
A Move Toward Domain Authority and Ranking Weight
With its most recent Core Update in August 2024, more power has been bestowed on the role of domain authority. Websites with proven rich history in the fields of health, finance, and law have had their rankings further strengthened. The update seems to favor these sites and lends them more weight in the ranking process, which makes it harder for newer or smaller websites to break out into competitive markets. This can be seen as Google’s moved measure meant to ensure the information reaching users comes from well-established and reliable sources, cutting off the level of visibility for sites that may not have a good track record.
One of the most significant shifts in this update concerns the advanced filters around targeting AI-generated content. The updated ranking system will be on very high alert to recognize content purposely designed or heavily influenced by the use of AI tools. This was in response to the increasing volume of AI-generated content that, while technically fine, often lacked the nuance and depth of human-written material. In that way, a lot of sites might have to start “humanizing” their content that may have been AI-generated in order for them to be able to retain or even increase their rank. By this, I mean the content should have personal touches, depth, and expertise that would get the reader—and that is one area AI often fails to replicate.
Unexpected Surge in Search Rankings for Replicated Images
Interestingly, this update has also led to a peculiar side effect in Google’s image search rankings. Organic search results show that websites that are simply copying and then republishing images from other websites and, in many instances, are performing better than the original creators of the images. This is going against the general trend of Google, preferring original content. Probably this is a byproduct of the general tendency of the surrounding algo updates. This has been a considerable nuisance to content creators who watch their original works be outranked by those of others who merely plagiarized them.
If you open google images and search for “Dubai AI“ you can actually see in the red highlighted box, that google is giving precedence to the images subject to Copyright Violation and Plagiarism over Genuine search results !!!
It appears to us that on 6th May 2024 this website had indeed taken one of our high ranking AI Generated Images and added their logo on it then used it as feature image for their article which was posted on 7 March 2024. The original post from where the image was taken is https://raiday.ai/blog/general/ai-dubai-to-raiday/ an article we had published on 21st January 2024. We did not grant permission to this third party to use images created by our creative team as per our terms and conditions of usage, however google search 2024 August updated decided that copied unoriginal content must rank higher than the original one discrediting the effort of content creators.
One reason we believe this may have happened is that in the google core update 2024, google has decided to also prioritize local business compared to global ones, yet we obtained the same result even while running the image search from abroad or using a VPN to other countries in incognito mode.
Unfortunately this is just an example there are many other cases like this one we described above where we believe the search experience has got much worse that it used to be, we really hope google will revise their ranking bugs and do the right thing!
How to Survive the Update
If your site was hit by any of these changes, you are now going back to the drawing board. Build up domain authority by great content. You may also want to take another look at any AI-produced and add more of a human touch. Those who rely heavily on imagery will want to pay attention to how their top visual assets are faring. This is just one more reminder of why it’s so important to be nimble and able to think on your feet when it comes to the requirements of the Google search algorithms.
Such understanding will let you optimize such changes and thus position your website in the best possible way to survive under the new rules set by Google’s Core Update, August 2024. Thanks god, Microsoft Bing Search remains unaffected, we believe Bing as of today to be the best alternative to google search and we recommend using that more and more.