Since the March 2025 Core Update, the landmarks change, but without any apparent break. What Google seems to be refining is not so much its mission — to offer useful, reliable, and relevant content — as the means to do so.
According to Google, the algorithm would now be more nuanced, more sensitive to weak authority signals, and especially more demanding in terms of proof of experience and the overall consistency of sites.
This article provides a critical reading of this update by our SEO team, based on concrete observations, well-founded hypotheses, and strategic adaptation options for SEO and content professionals.
Google wants you to nest your expertise
Links from general blogs with a high Domain Rating (DR), but not very thematically relevant, seem to be losing value.
On the other hand, editorial links, integrated into authentic content and aligned with the subject at hand, show a better resistance to changes in the algorithm.
This trend is not a total break, but rather a continuation of what Google has been seeking to reinforce since the introduction of Penguin in 2012. The difference in March 2025 lies mainly in the refinement of their ability to more effectively distinguish artificially woven relationships from real recommendations.
Why the tightening? According to several industry testimonies, Google could be looking to curbing the growth of backlink buying platforms, which sell backlinks that are not very contextual on a large scale.
In addition, the proliferation of guest content generated by AI, combined with the emergence of over-optimized affiliate blogs, could have triggered a response aimed at sorting out legitimate content and algorithmic noise (irrelevant content, with an unoriginal point of view and without depth).
In practice, this means that backlinking strategies need to evolve. It is becoming essential to prioritize links from relevant and credible sources, integrated with original content. Local, specialized or community publications are gaining in importance. Conversely, artificial patterns like link wheels, expired domains, or over-optimized anchors become riskier and less effective.
Google wants you to offer a greater part of your content experience
In a context where search engines are saturated with similar content, the ability to share a genuine human experience is becoming an increasingly decisive advantage.
Google, in its March 2025 update, seems to confirm this trend: what matters today is not only the right structure or the use of the right keywords, but the proof that a real person is behind the content.
Why is experience valued?
Since the democratization of generative AI in 2023, an immense amount of content has been produced at high speed.
Although well-written on the surface, these texts are often constructed from general data, but lack personal perspective, experience or nuance. This type of content can generate traffic... but also frustration. When a user clicks on a link and then immediately returns to the search results without interacting, Google interprets this as a failure (pogo-sticking); a signal that the content is neither useful nor trustworthy.
Google seems to value the human experience
Faced with this loss of trust, Google seems to want to give more weight to content that reflects a real experience. This can take the form of testimonies, concrete stories, photos taken in the field, or comparisons based on essays made by the author himself.
This type of content is more difficult to generate automatically, and that is probably what makes it more valuable, in relation to the intentions attributed to this Core Update.
It is necessary to bring a new perspective, based on experience. For example, an article that compares different software will be much more credible if it explains why the author chose one over the other, what limitations he encountered, and how he used it in a concrete case. A beauty blog that tells about a skincare routine can stand out by adding personal photos or a test journal over several weeks.
Programmatic SEO: the easy way
What this evolution suggests is that it is becoming more and more risky to rely exclusively on an automated SEO approach or based on programmatic models.
With us, we always recommend that you review each piece of content to ensure that it provides real value to Internet users. This advice seems simple, but it is still difficult to apply for many SEO professionals who still favor large-scale production strategies, often motivated by ease or speed.
Certainly, this type of content may still offer marginal value in the short term, maybe even survive a few more algorithmic updates. But Google's sense of priorities is clear: it is a question of gradually reducing the visibility of unoriginal content, without a distinctive angle or without a real contribution to the understanding of the subject.
That doesn't mean you have to abandon tools like artificial intelligence—quite the opposite. AI can be an excellent tool, as long as it is used wisely. In fact, at the time of writing this article, the Google policy Explicitly cite not discriminating against content generated by artificial intelligence, under the pretext that the primacy remains and will always remain to promote quality content in search results.
It's all about intention, the ability to review with critical perspective, and the addition of a genuine human touch that gives meaning and depth to the content. It is this human intervention that makes it possible to transform an automatically generated database into content that is truly relevant, credible and engaging for the user. The absence of this step is one of the most common pitfalls observed among those who are new to AI in SEO.
This finding is particularly true when examining the criterion ofExperiment, at the heart of the E-E-A-T evaluation framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). This is undoubtedly the element that artificial intelligence, even the most advanced, still has the most difficulty in reproducing in a convincing way. This is why we do not recommend, especially for SEO novices, to use 100% automated content production in the hope of permanently improving the positioning of their website.
Basically, you have to go from a vision of a content informative to a content Incarnate. Information is still important, of course, but it must be based on authentic elements. Showing that you have really experienced what you say, that you have tested, observed, compared, changes the way in which readers (and Google) perceive the value of content.
This requirement requires more time, more involvement, and often more collaboration between editorial teams and business experts. But it also opens up an opportunity: that of standing out from the crowd in an increasingly uniform universe. Because basically, what this update is telling us is that the web doesn't need more text. It needs more truth.
For the moment, web communities are popular
In its 2023 annual report, Alphabet, Google's parent company, officially recognizes for the first time that AI represents a risk to its own activities. In particular, it can read:
“Our artificial intelligence efforts, which are constantly evolving, can lead to risks related to the distribution of harmful content, inaccuracies, discrimination, violations [...] or even damage to our brand image or reputation.” (Free translation, Alphabet, p. 16, 2024)
This late, but important, recognition sheds light on Google's content and SEO strategy. And it may in part explain why some types of community platforms, like Reddit, are now taking up more space in search results.
For some time now, we have observed that major public forums — Reddit in the lead — are gaining visibility in Google. Trend that has solidified since the signing of a partnership between Google and Reddit in February 2024.
Why this return to web 2.0?
Google is facing an explosion of content generated automatically by artificial intelligence. While these texts are sometimes well-written, they often lack depth, nuance, or human interaction, not to mention the potential factual errors associated with AI “hallucinations.”
By highlighting content from real discussions, such as those found on Reddit or Quora, Google can offer answers that are more human, more diverse, and often perceived as more useful. In other words, to bridge the last section of this article; It's a way to promote the experience.
Concretely, for those who work on the visibility of a site — entrepreneurs, content creators, marketing managers — this means that it is no longer enough to “post on forums” to position themselves well on Google. You should aim for platforms where exchanges are rich, relevant, and moderate. A genuine and well-explained answer in a relevant Reddit thread can now be more valuable than a message left on an old inactive forum.
Google seems to be telling us that it's not the fact of publishing that counts, but Where And How we are doing it. In a context where AI generates a lot of noise, human, credible and well-placed voices take on a new value. Participating in an online discussion is good. Doing it with intention and added value is what will really make a difference.
Is SEO dead in 2025?
The March 2025 Core Update did not shake up the basic principles of SEO. He refined them.
What we are seeing today is a greater ability of Google to distinguish weak signals: content written out of obligation, links inserted automatically, pages generated to fill out a calendar.
These are the signals that are losing value.
On the other hand, anything that shows real effort, human intention, consistency over time... is gaining in importance. It is a natural evolution in a context saturated with generative tools. And it's an opportunity for those who choose to focus on the human experience.
