March 2025: What's new in the world of digital
Posted on 9th April 2025 at 11:22
Read Time: Approx. 8 Minutes 42 Seconds
Author: Joe Weatherill
Welcome to the March edition, where we share the updates in the world of digital.
Google March 2025 Core Update Rolling Out Now
What is it?: The Google March 2025 Core Update refers to a broad algorithmic update rolled out that can affect how websites rank in search results. Core updates typically involve adjustments to how Google evaluates and ranks websites, focusing on factors such as relevance, quality, content, user experience and other ranking signals.
Why is it important?: Changes in Search Rankings: Core updates often lead to significant shifts in how websites rank in Google's search results. Some websites may see their rankings improve, while others may drop. This can directly impact traffic and visibility, which are critical for driving business, especially in affiliate marketing.
Search Intent Refinement: Google continually improves its ability to understand user intent and match it with relevant, high-quality content. This update is likely aimed at better aligning search results with user expectations and enhancing the overall user experience.
Algorithmic Shifts: These updates often target specific content types, content quality, and website optimisation factors. Keeping up with these changes helps ensure your site remains visible and competitive in search rankings.
What action should you take?: Focus on Content Quality: Google’s core updates often prioritise high-quality, useful, and authoritative content. Ensure that your marketing website content that answers user queries comprehensively, is well-researched, and offers real value to the audience.
Evaluate User Experience (UX): Google emphasises good user experience, including site speed, mobile-friendliness, and ease of navigation. Ensure your site is optimised for mobile devices, fast-loading, and provides a seamless experience for users.
Monitor Traffic & Rankings: After the update, monitor your site’s traffic and keyword rankings. Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you assess any changes. If you notice a drop in rankings, investigate which pages or keywords were affected.
Update and Optimise Content: If certain pages or posts have dropped in ranking, analyse them for areas of improvement. Ensure that the content is up-to-date, relevant and aligns with the intent behind search queries. Adding more detailed and informative content could be key in regaining rankings.
Low-Quality Backlinks: While Google’s core updates don’t focus exclusively on backlinks, poor-quality links can still harm your rankings. Make sure your backlink profile is healthy by disavowing harmful or spammy links.
Stay Updated on Industry Changes: Core updates can sometimes target specific industries or content types. Stay updated on how the update may impact affiliate marketing websites in particular and adjust your strategies accordingly.
Your affiliate content must be authoritative and provide genuine value to your audience. Avoid thin or overly promotional content that doesn’t answer user needs. Google is placing more emphasis on user-centric content that solves problems.
Keyword and User Intent: As an affiliate marketer, understanding keyword intent is crucial. The March update may refine how Google interprets user intent behind search queries, so aligning your content more closely with those needs will help improve rankings.
How Google Gemini’s New Canvas AI Workspace Will Supercharge Influencer Marketing
What is it? Google's Gemini Canvas AI Workspace is a new tool designed to integrate advanced AI capabilities directly into content creation, allowing for more streamlined and intelligent workflows. It’s built to enable users, whether they are marketers, content creators, or influencers, to leverage AI for generating, editing, and optimising content more efficiently. It combines artificial intelligence with user-friendly design tools, making it easier to create visually appealing and highly engaging content, often with minimal input.
Why is it important? Enhanced Content Creation: Canvas AI allows influencers to rapidly create high-quality, personalised content, which is critical for staying relevant in the fast-moving world of social media. For affiliate marketing, this means that influencers can quickly generate promotional materials, product reviews and content that resonate with their followers.
Increased Efficiency: The tool automates various aspects of content creation, from image design to copywriting, allowing influencers to focus more on strategy and engagement rather than spending excessive time on the technicalities of content production.
Data-Driven Insights: With AI-driven insights, Canvas can help influencers identify the most effective content formats, tones, and themes that align with their audience’s preferences. This helps in crafting campaigns that deliver better results, which is essential for maximising affiliate revenue.
Personalisation: Google’s AI workspace can analyse vast amounts of data to tailor content to specific audience segments. For influencer marketing, this means that the content can be finely tuned to address the interests, behaviours, and preferences of different audience groups, improving engagement and conversion rates.
What action should you take? Leverage AI for Content Optimisation: Use Google’s Canvas AI to create more dynamic and engaging affiliate content. Whether it’s product demos, tutorials, or review content, the tool can help you generate more visually appealing and relevant materials that will capture attention and drive conversions.
Personalise Your Campaigns: Use the AI’s data-driven insights to segment your audience more effectively and create personalised content. For example, if you're marketing a tech product or an e-commerce affiliate offer, Canvas AI can help tailor your message to different audience interests to increase relevance and boost affiliate commissions.
Streamline Collaboration: As an affiliate and influencer marketing business working with multiple influencers, Canvas AI’s collaborative features can streamline this process by allowing influencers to co-create content with minimal effort, aligning their efforts with the broader marketing strategy.
Test and Iterate Quickly: With Canvas AI’s rapid content creation capabilities, you can quickly test multiple versions of promotional content. A/B testing becomes easier as you generate variations of images, copy and designs.
Optimising Influencer Collaborations: By using AI-driven tools to create and customise content, influencers in your network can work more efficiently and produce high-quality posts that resonate with their audience. This could lead to better affiliate conversions, as the content will be more authentic and appealing.
Scaling Campaigns: As your business grows, you’ll likely collaborate with more influencers across various niches. Canvas AI can help scale these efforts by making it easier to create consistent, high-quality content across different platforms. Instead of managing each influencer individually, you can quickly generate tailored content for a large group of influencers, optimising affiliate links and calls to action.
Data Insights for Better Performance: With AI-driven analytics and content optimisation features, Canvas can provide insights into which types of content are performing best for each influencer and affiliate campaigns.
Affiliate Industry Reacts to Google’s New Browser Extension Policy
What is it?: In March 2025, Google announced new policies surrounding browser extensions for Chrome, focusing on improving security, privacy, and user experience. The new policy limits the ability of extensions to track user data across sites, reduces the use of intrusive ads or pop-ups and enforces more strict guidelines for what extensions can do with user data. The policy aims to make browsing safer and more transparent, particularly by ensuring that extensions are not misusing data for marketing or other unethical purposes.
Why is it important?: Changes to Tracking Capabilities: Browser extensions often play a significant role in digital marketing, including affiliate marketing. Many affiliate marketers rely on tools like browser extensions to track user behaviour, manage affiliate links, and gather insights for optimisation. With the new policy, these tracking methods could be restricted, limiting the ability to track conversions, clicks and other important metrics that help optimise affiliate marketing efforts.
Impact on User Experience: Google’s new policy focuses on improving the overall user experience by reducing the number of intrusive ads or pop-ups that some extensions rely on. While this benefits the end user, it could potentially affect how affiliate marketers and their partners use these tools to drive conversions or promote products.
Increased Focus on Privacy: The policy emphasises user privacy, which could impact affiliate marketing practices that involve gathering detailed user data. Marketers may face new limitations on collecting sensitive information or tracking user behaviour, which could force them to rethink their data collection strategies.
Industry Shift: As Google tightens its rules around extensions, many affiliate marketers, influencers, and content creators may need to adjust their practices. The affiliate industry could see a shift toward more transparent, privacy-compliant methods for tracking, reporting, and marketing as well as a greater emphasis on organic content and less reliance on tools that violate these new guidelines.
What action should you take?: Update Tracking Strategies: Given that browser extensions might face limitations under this new policy, you’ll need to explore alternative ways to track conversions and user behaviour. Shift to using Google Analytics, first-party data, or server-side tracking methods that comply with privacy standards. It’s important to make sure your affiliate marketing strategy is robust without relying heavily on extensions.
Optimise Content for User Experience: As extensions that are intrusive face restrictions, you’ll need to focus on providing content that doesn’t rely on these tactics. Ensure that your website’s user experience is fast-loading, mobile-friendly and designed to keep visitors engaged without using aggressive marketing techniques.
Prioritise Privacy Compliance: Since Google’s new policy is focused on privacy, it's a good time to reassess how your affiliate marketing practices handle user data. Ensure that you’re following best practices for privacy, such as using consent banners, offering clear opt-in and opt-out options for data collection, and being transparent about how you use tracking tools.
Adapt to New Marketing Tools: With browser extensions being affected, it might be time to explore new marketing tools that comply with Google’s policies. For example, consider utilising affiliate networks, or optimising your email marketing and social media strategies, which might be less impacted by these changes.
Stay Informed on Policy Changes: Google’s policies tend to evolve rapidly, and it's important to stay updated on any further changes. Being proactive will help you stay ahead of potential disruptions in your affiliate marketing campaigns and allow you to pivot to compliant alternatives quickly.
Refocus on Organic Traffic: With stricter policies around extensions, it might be beneficial to double down on organic content and SEO. By focusing on high-quality, helpful content, you can build trust with users without depending on tools that track browsing behaviour. Content that naturally attracts visitors (through SEO and social media engagement) will become even more important.
Emphasise Transparency: Influencers and affiliate marketers in your network will need to be transparent about their data practices. Build trust with your audience by following Google’s emphasis on transparency—be clear about your affiliate relationships and what data you collect, if any. This can help differentiate your brand and make your affiliate content more appealing to privacy-conscious users.
Evaluate Affiliate Networks and Partnerships: Some affiliate networks or platforms may still use browser extensions to track conversions. Consider exploring new affiliate partners who align better with privacy standards and are less reliant on browser extensions, which will give you more control and ensure compliance with Google’s updated policies.
Engage with Influencers Effectively: With the restrictions on browser extensions, you can work closely with influencers to develop more creative and authentic campaigns that don’t rely on tracking extensions. Encourage influencers to share honest product reviews, tutorials, and organic content that engages their audience without relying on extensions to drive performance.
Bonus Update
Google has added YouTube Shorts to search results, in attempt to keep evolving and not just remain as a traditional search engine. Google have onboarded the ever-growing short-form video content to provide users with a more relevant and user-focused search experience. As social searching continues to grow, with social media becoming more and more valuable, things such as recommendations by people’s favourite creators and video tutorials have proven to be much more effective, especially amongst Gen-Z’s.
As a result of the growth of YouTube Shorts, 66% of marketers have stated that they will consider the YouTube strategy in the near future.
You should ensure you partner with the right creators, who resonate best with your brands, ensuring you prioritise transparency and trust to your audience.
Our final thoughts ...
With the increased adoption of AI, we now have a number of tools and techniques at our disposal, to streamline and enhance the creation of content. The development of Canvas’ AI solution provides creators of all knowledge levels and capabilities another opportunity to expand their creative skillset and create content that would have traditionally would have been more difficult for them to achieve. The latest Google Core Update however still provides a stark reminder that AI is not the panacea and content creation still needs the human touch.
At Customer First Digital, to ensure we keep thriving and growing, we will continue to take a hands-on approach to influencer marketing by curating partnerships that align with brand goals and were possible are measurable and monetised, via a brands affiliate marketing programmes.
For further information on any of the latest product updates or anything new that is on your mind, get in touch with our team of digital experts today.
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