Natural referencing in 2024 no longer operates in cycles of occasional updates that we wait for to correct the course. Since the core update of March 2024, Google has integrated the Helpful Content system directly into its main algorithm. Signals related to content quality are now evaluated continuously, at each core update, without a separate update. This structural change alters how sites must think about their SEO strategy.
Helpful Content absorbed by core ranking: what this changes for SEO
For several years, the Helpful Content Update functioned as a standalone filter. A site affected could wait for the next wave to hope for a re-ranking. This mechanism no longer exists.
Google has officially removed the Helpful Content System as a distinct component. Its signals (user-oriented content, originality, real usefulness) are now continuously evaluated in core updates. Recovery trajectories after a penalty often span several months, sometimes without a full return to previous visibility levels.
In practice, this means that a site publishing mediocre content can no longer rely on a specific moment of “reset.” Editorial quality becomes a structural criterion, not a one-time fix. To delve deeper into SEO on Lordy’s, the available analyses detail the concrete impact of this evolution on different types of sites.
Field feedback diverges on one point: some high-authority sites have recovered their traffic after the March 2024 core update, while more modest niche sites remain durably affected. The strength of the link profile seems to play a role in the speed of recovery, but the available data does not allow for a definitive conclusion on this isolated factor.
Google’s new spam policies and AI-generated content
The March 2024 core update comes with three new anti-spam policies that redefine the boundaries of SEO. Google now explicitly targets:
- Abuse of large-scale content, including AI-generated content without editorial added value
- Site reputation abuse, where a high-authority domain hosts low-quality third-party content to exploit its ranking
- Abuse of expired domains, purchased solely to benefit from their backlink history
These three axes show that Google now distinguishes between useful AI content and filler AI content. An article written with the help of AI tools is not penalized by default. However, the mass production of pages without human proofreading, without added expertise, and without coherent editorial structure falls within the spam scope.
For site publishers, the boundary is clearer than before: automatically generated content must be reworked, enriched, and verified. Publishing fifty pages a week without editorial supervision exposes one to gradual deindexing.
SEO and AI Overviews: the measured decline in organic clicks
The other structural change during this period concerns Google’s AI Overviews, these AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of certain search results pages. Their deployment alters user click behavior.
The citations displayed in AI Overviews capture only a marginal fraction of clicks compared to traditional organic results. Traffic from these snippets remains low for the cited sites, raising the question of the profitability of specific optimization to appear there.
In contrast, short informational queries (definitions, factual answers) are the most affected by this traffic capture. Transactional intent queries or those requiring in-depth analysis maintain a better click-through rate to sites.
This distinction has a direct consequence on content strategy: investing in long and analytical content better protects organic traffic than racing for short answers that Google can summarize in a snippet.
Adapting editorial format to complex queries
Pages that combine multiple dimensions of a topic (comparisons, documented feedback, industry data) remain difficult to summarize automatically. This type of content retains its ability to generate organic clicks, whereas a definition page loses ground.
Technical SEO in 2024: Core Web Vitals and user experience signals
The Core Web Vitals remain a confirmed ranking signal. Google has updated its metrics by replacing First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as an interactivity indicator. This change, operational since March 2024, measures the overall responsiveness of a page throughout the entire browsing session, not just the first interaction.
Sites whose pages display high interaction times (slow forms, menus that take time to respond, choppy carousels) are directly affected. Optimization no longer solely relies on initial loading speed but on the smoothness of each interaction throughout the visit.
Three technical points deserve particular attention:
- Reducing the size of the DOM and limiting third-party scripts that block the main browser thread
- Prioritizing lazy loading of off-screen elements to improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- Testing real user journeys via data from the Chrome User Experience Report, not just lab tools
These technical adjustments do not produce spectacular effects in isolation. Their impact accumulates with content quality and link profile to determine the final ranking.
E-E-A-T and trust signals: what Google values concretely
The E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is not a direct algorithmic ranking factor. Google uses it as an evaluation grid for its quality raters, whose feedback informs algorithm training.
Sites that clearly display the identity and qualifications of their authors achieve better results in sensitive sectors (health, finance, legal). Editorial transparency (author pages, source mentions, update dates) contributes to building these trust signals.
SEO in 2024 relies on a cumulative logic. Content quality, technical robustness, compliance with new anti-spam policies, and editorial transparency do not function as independent levers. It is their combination that determines a site’s visibility trajectory on search engines.
