The 1,000 biggest losers in Google’s march update

In March, Google rolled out one of the biggest algorithm updates in a long time. In fact, it was two updates at once — a so-called Core Update and a Spam Update. We’ve evaluated the 1,000 websites that lost the most traffic due to the update and can draw some clear conclusions about how it’s affecting sites in Sweden. Here’s what we know.

Let’s start by looking at what Google itself is communicating. Often, it provides at least some indication of what they aim to achieve — even if it’s rarely very precise or actionable.
In March, they mainly focused on two things:

• Low-quality content that is not original
• Spam in three main forms: scaled content, reputation abuse, and expired domain abuse.

To understand what’s happening, it’s worth looking at the background.
You’ve probably realized that there are opportunities with AI-generated text. You’re not alone in that.

One of the sites in Sweden that took a hit in the update had scaled up its content.

It has taken various forms, but what has happened is that Google’s search results—especially in the U.S.—have become filled with very low-quality content, and Google needs to address this to avoid losing users’ trust. Every beginner in SEO has realized that if you have a strong domain, you can fill it with thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of landing pages. All with “unique” text. The three types of spam that Google addresses are therefore:

Scaled content

By “scaled content,” Google means publishing content on an entirely new scale on an existing, reputable site—like your company website, for example. I’ve seen cases where sites that had 200 pages of content before 2023 suddenly ballooned to 700,000 pages and multiplied their traffic from Google. A rapid increase like that carries the risk of a real pancake crash (see image above).

Reputation abuse

When a site with a very strong reputation—a good example in Sweden might be a daily or evening newspaper—starts adding large amounts of third-party content, for example with affiliate links. I can’t help but think of all the discount code pages that have popped up on media platforms in recent years. Google sees this as using the site’s good reputation to make easy money from the search results.

Expired domain abuse

Buying an expired domain that still has backlinks pointing to it and filling it with content designed to rank for a wide range of keywords is the third tactic Google aims to crack down on.

As you can see, the differences between these tactics are minimal—it’s really just about how one obtains authority for their content so it can perform well in search results. The core approach is the same: flooding a site with content that doesn’t really add value, targeting large volumes of keywords with that content, and then monetizing the traffic, often through affiliate links.

What does the data say?

We have reviewed the 1,000 websites in Sweden that lost the most traffic during the month. After filtering out those that made other major changes—such as switching domains or platforms—it becomes clear: websites that added a large amount of questionable-quality content have taken a significant hit. There are plenty of examples of sites that are essentially just a domain linked together with other similar domains, featuring an almost endless number of pages.

Some such examples:

• mylunch.se (-90%)
• popularaplatser.se (-65%)
• popularagym.se (-63%)
• oppettider.org (-58%)

We see some that are more legitimate businesses but have scaled their content — two examples:

• playpilot.com (-65%)
• campadre.se (-44%)

We see a number of e-commerce businesses:

• temu.com (-27%)
• tyngre.se (-36%)
• mathem.se (-27%)
• cellbes.se (-37%)
• eurosko.com (-40%)

Has anyone won?

So it is, without a doubt — playing in the search results is a zero-sum game; there always has to be someone in the top spot. The truth is, as with all of Google’s updates, it’s murky, because it’s hard to get the algorithm exactly right. It’s difficult to say that any of the other lunch sites that have popped up to replace mylunch.se are actually better (because they’re not); it’s just that they didn’t send quite as clear signals to the new algorithm (which, by the way, shows many signs of being similar to the Panda update).

What can I do?

So far, we haven’t seen any sites that have recovered, and my guess is that it’s not going to happen — at least not in the sense that you’ll get back to the traffic levels you had with your scaled content. If you know you’ve been walking a fine line with your content and are now just back to the traffic you had before, you should probably be thankful that this update is kinder than the aforementioned Panda update — that one would have kicked you out completely.

If you’ve lost more traffic than you feel you deserve, then you probably have a long and rather painful cleanup process ahead of you. You need to remove all the junk from your site — and you’ll need to cut deep, until it hurts. After that, it’s time, high-quality content, and building authority that will lead you forward.