Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – April 2024

As we head into Spring, it’s time of us to take a fresh look at some of the latest updates from Google and the world of digital marketing. As ever, the only constant, is constant change!

Completion of Google’s March 2024 Core Update

On the 19th of April, Google finally announced that their March 2024 core update was complete, taking a mere 45 days to roll out. The focus of this update was to reduce the amount of low-quality and unoriginal content on search results, ensuring users were directed to helpful, high-quality content instead. They have reported a reduction of 45%, which is up from their earlier estimate of 40%.

 

 

Poor Performance Permits Pausing States Google

Over on the PPC side, there is news that starting in June 2024, Google will pause any low-activity keywords. This means that any keywords which have had zero impressions in the last thirteen months will automatically be paused. Google has stated that in making this change, it will help advertisers to simplify their accounts so that they can instead focus on specific keywords that get results. But fear not, if you want to give your keywords a second shot at life, you can unpause them, however Google will pause them again if they receive no further impressions over the next three months.

 

The Battle Heats Up 

As we shift our focus away from search and into the world of social media, there has been a recent report that Threads has surpassed X in the amount of daily users from the US. The stats reported from the 23rd of April reveals that Threads receives an average of 28 million daily active users, which relates to users who have opened the app once in a 24 hour period. Compared to X, which only has an average of 22 million active users, a reported 21% reduction in usage rate.

 

 

Whilst X still shares a substantial audience in various other markets, it does hint to Threads gaining momentum which doesn’t look good for the future of X, especially with X losing a reported 71% of its value at the start of the year.