eCommerce Express Digest - March 2024

March turned up big time in 2024 – with Google announcing the first official updates for the year and a bunch of other initiatives rolled out in other sectors of Digital Marketing. Didn’t have time to keep up? No stress, we’ve got a quick rundown for you of all of the major events for March. 

First up – Google

March 5th saw the Search Engine released a statement on their Blog about a Core and Spam update which had commenced being rolled out. The Core update ran for almost 5 days and was, ‘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.’  Even though there have been specific updates around ‘helpful content’ in the past, it seems that this is becoming more and more a part of Google’s basic updates.

They’re pointing webmasters to an FAQs page which we highly recommend marketers adhere to if they want to avoid being negatively affected by this and future updates.  

What did we experience? We saw some fluctuations in rankings starting in the last week of February (prior to 05/03/2024). We have also seen large sites (large online stores and marketplaces) whose rankings had been slowly decreasing since August 2023 have a major increase post this update.  

The Spam update came with its own statement on the Blog, stating that this is to ‘reduce low quality, unoriginal results’ and that there are ‘new ways that we’re tackling spammy, low quality content on search’. The rise of AI has increased the ease in which webmasters can quickly create content (and spammy sites scrape, scramble and post) content and backlinks. 

Some webmasters received the message below in their Search Console to alert them that they had been hit with this update

Google has also issued a warning that there will be another update in May 2024 and referred webmasters to their Spam Policy.

In other Google news….

Google replaced the First Input Delay (FID) metric with the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric as part of the Core Web Vitals report on March,12, 2024. The Search Engine had warned that this was going to happen and it wasn’t out-of-the-blue. For more information on this change and implications, see the Google Developers Blog. 

Despite ongoing anticipation, Google has yet to unveil a launch date for the Search Console Enhancement (SGE), leaving website owners awaiting further updates on this anticipated tool’s release. There has also been some speculation that SGE may become a paid service. Stay tuned on this one!

Onto some other topics!

YouTube rolled out a few updates in March – they introduced new audience retention analytics, empowering content creators with deeper insights into viewer engagement and retention patterns, potentially aiding in refining content strategies to maximize audience engagement. They also offered guidance on optimal content posting times to enhance reach, advising creators on peak hours for audience engagement, aiming to assist in maximising content visibility and audience interaction. Lastly, the video platform cautioned content creators against deleting videos, highlighting the potential negative impact on channel performance, suggesting alternative strategies such as private or unlisted settings to manage content without affecting viewership metrics.

What’s the absolute best time to post your video on YouTube? I asked @hitsman and here’s what he said! pic.twitter.com/fsVkmnUMDP

— YouTube Liaison (@YouTubeLiaison) March 25, 2024

It was a busy month in March 2024 for TikTok. Despite President Biden expressing support for a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the United States, the social media site is going from strength to strength. 

 The platform has expanded its Effect Creator Program to more regions, allowing creators to earn money by designing and promoting effects for videos. This move aims to foster creativity and reward creators for their contributions to the TikTok community. Whilst not available in Australia yet, is it in New Zealand so they’re possibly testing in a smaller market prior to rolling it out here. Watch this space.

They also unveiled Creator Search Insights, a new tool that provides advertisers with detailed information about creators on the platform. This tool allows advertisers to search for creators based on specific criteria such as demographics, content genres, and engagement metrics. It aims to help advertisers identify suitable creators for their campaigns and enhance collaboration opportunities.

As it was a mega month, if there’s anything noteworthy that you think we’re missed or would like any further information – get in touch today. The Megantic Team is always up for a chat about SEO or any other digital marketing topics!