It is now four weeks and one day since the Google March 2024 core update started rolling out, 29 days since it started and yes, it is not done rolling out yet. Google's Danny Sullivan and John Mueller both confirmed that yesterday, even though Google's search status dashboard says the same thing.
Danny Sullivan said on X, "It's still rolling out" and referenced material from its earlier blog post on the topic. Here are those posts:
"The March 2024 core update is a more complex update than our usual core updates, involving changes to multiple core systems. It also marks an evolution in how we identify the helpfulness of content....
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 2, 2024
As this is a complex update, the rollout may take up to a month. It's likely…
It's still rolling out.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) April 2, 2024
John Mueller said on Reddit, "No, it's not complete. It'll be labeled complete when it's finished rolling out."
He then offered some advice saying that you should always work to make things better on your site, while also trying to diversify traffic beyond Google organic search. He wrote:
Regardless, if you have noticed things that are worth improving on your site, I'd go ahead and get things done. The idea is not to make changes just for search engines, right? Your users will be happy if you can make things better even if search engines haven't updated their view of your site yet.Also, while I don't know your site, one thing you can do regardless of anything is to work out how you can grow alternate sources of traffic, so that when search engines revamp their opinion of your site, you'll have less strong fluctuations (make things more independent of search engines). And, once you go down this path, you'll probably also notice that you focus more on building out value for users (because you want them to come & visit & recommend on their own) - which is ultimately what search engines want too.
As you saw, I covered there have still been zero helpful content recoveries while also seeing there were core update recoveries. Here are our previous stories on these updates:
- Google March 2024 Core Update Rolling Out - It's A Big Core Update
- Google March 2024 Core/Spam Update Early Reversals (It's Far From Done...)
- Google March 2024 Core & Spam Update Movement Today
- Still No Google Helpful Content Update Recoveries But Yes Core Update Recoveries
- Report: No Site Hit By The September Helpful Content Update Recovered Yet
- Google: Fixing A Helpful Content Site Isn't About Where Measuring Against The Previous Version Of That Site
- Google Urges Patience As The March 2024 Core Update Continues To Rollout
- Google Will Collect Feedback After The March Core & Spam Updates Are Done
- Google: We Still Try To Avoid Overlapping Algorithmic Updates
- ~80% Feel Google's March Core & Spam Updates Won't Reduce Low-Quality Search Results
The Google search results are still somewhat turbulent, according to the ranking tools. I will say that the SEO chatter around these updates and movements around these updates has calmed a lot, despite the tracking tools showing movement.
Here is what the tools have shown over the past month or so:
Have any of you seen any recent movement?
I suspect the update will be done very soon, since I just posted that it is still rolling out - that is what normally happens. :P
Forum discussion at X and Reddit.
Update: I am now seeing some chatter pick up later this afternoon. Chatter both at WebmasterWorld and comments here. Here is some of that chatter:
Something is rolling today!
Yes, something is rolling today. Drop on all my sites in all niches...
The same here, the whole day is bad, visibility index down, but since 8 pm the traffic from Google has risen sharply, which is very unusual. The update is probably in its final stages and now Google has to shake things up again.
I'm probably the odd one out here. My sites numbers are returning to pre-March figures somehow just in the last couple of days, still no where near pre-May 2022. I don't why yet. My sites visitors are in the low thousands so nothing to write home about.
Also:
Google explained we would see more volatility during the March 2024 core update based on multiple systems being updated and reinforcing each other. Overall, I have seen sites impacted move in the same direction (either surging more or dropping more). But, there are some sites… pic.twitter.com/Vgn1vsqDdt
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 3, 2024
