March 2024: a major core update, three new spam policies and INP
Covers March 2024. Part of our search timeline: a month-by-month look at the changes that shaped SEO, AI search, paid ads and social media, written in November 2026 for local businesses with the benefit of hindsight.
Quick answer: In March 2024 Google launched one of its largest core updates, merged the helpful content system into its core ranking systems and brought in three new spam policies. These covered expired domain abuse, scaled content abuse and site reputation abuse. In the same month, First Input Delay was retired as a Core Web Vital and replaced by Interaction to Next Paint.
For local service businesses, this was a month that rewarded the real thing. A heating engineer with genuine know-how stood to gain, while sites that had churned out hundreds of near-identical “plumber in [town]” pages had good reason to worry.
What changed in March 2024?
According to Google, the aim was to reduce unhelpful content in search results by roughly 40%. The fresh spam rules went after content mass-produced to rank, third-party content taking advantage of a host site’s reputation, and expired domains bought and reused. INP officially became the responsiveness metric on 12 March.
Why did it matter to UK businesses?
Sites that relied on sheer volume of content, AI-written or otherwise, saw heavy losses. UK businesses with real expertise had an opening to move up. How quickly pages responded on mobile also came into sharper focus.
What to do about it now
- Review any content made in bulk, such as town-by-town location pages, for originality, accuracy and genuine usefulness.
- Look at INP in Search Console and fix sluggish interactions caused by heavy scripts.
- Do not let outside parties publish content on your site just to ride on its reputation.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as scaled content abuse?
Publishing large volumes of unoriginal content mainly to manipulate rankings, whatever method is used to create it.
What does Interaction to Next Paint measure?
It is a Core Web Vital that tracks how fast a page reacts to clicks, taps and key presses across the whole visit.
Sources and further reading
Want help with this? Our local SEO service audits location pages and site speed for trades after core updates. Get in touch.
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