On Thursday, 08/18/2022, Google surprised website owners with a brand-new algorithm update set to be hitting this week. Dubbed the “Helpful Content Update,” it’s designed to help provide their users with more original and helpful content that’s “written by people, for people, in search results”.
In general, Google has always rewarded helpful content. However, in recent years, this has led to people focusing on what’s particularly dominant in the top search results, and making sure their content is the best.
This does not necessarily mean that they have satisfied all the requirements of Google’s latest update, and that they have created a truly original and unique piece of content.
Yes, the main point of Google’s latest update that they provide is “avoid creating content for search engines first.”
They explained in the latest update on their developers blog about this:
How do you avoid taking a search engine-first approach? Answering yes to some or all of the questions is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content across your site:
- Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
- Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
- Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
- Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
- Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
- Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
- Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).
- Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
- Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?”
When Does the Update Roll Out?
Google explained that the update will be rolling out this week. However, they have not been more specific than that.
They also said that this update could end up taking close to two weeks to be fully rolled out.
In addition, they also explained that this update introduces a new site-wide signal that Google considers among a number of signals they use for ranking web pages.
This is what they said:
Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.
A natural question some will have is how long will it take for a site to do better, if it removes unhelpful content? Sites identified by this update may find the signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this update runs continuously, allowing it to monitor newly-launched sites and existing ones. As it determines that the unhelpful content has not returned in the long-term, the classification will no longer apply.
This classifier process is entirely automated, using a machine-learning model. It is not a manual action nor a spam action. Instead, it’s just a new signal and one of many signals Google evaluates to rank content.
This means that some people-first content on sites classified as having unhelpful content could still rank well, if there are other signals identifying that people-first content as helpful and relevant to a query. The signal is also weighted; sites with lots of unhelpful content may notice a stronger effect. In any case, for the best success, be sure you’ve removed unhelpful content and also are following all our guidelines.
This update impacts English searches globally to begin with and we plan to expand to other languages in the future. Over the coming months, we will also continue refining how the classifier detects unhelpful content and launch further efforts to better reward people-first content.”
What Does the SEO Community Say?
There have been many comments about the new update. Ranging from satirical to serious. Among them is the assumption from many SEO professionals that “there is nothing wrong with our content so we don’t need to do anything.”
If things have been proven wrong time and time again about Google updates, it’s that one should not assume anything about these updates too soon.
No word of the helpful content update rolling out yet. And the @Semrush sensor is quiet.
There's a lot of discussion online anticipating what the update will be like. Here's a thread with the most interesting (helpful😂) tweets I've seen so far.
🧵 pic.twitter.com/w1EYtRw8vJ— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) August 22, 2022
Google's Content Quality & Helpfulness Questions 🙋🏻♀️ – A Checklist with Questions to Ask in English and Spanish: https://t.co/z3rZXt3feJ
I have expanded the Checklist that featured E-A-T related questions to include also Helpful Update related ones to assess your content 👌 pic.twitter.com/47FAPEnsrG
— Aleyda Solis 🇺🇦 (@aleyda) August 19, 2022
It sounds like the helpful content update will be very similar to the old days of Panda in how it acts.
In this SEL article I speculate on what we are in for with this update.https://t.co/0EbOpzwaTA
— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) August 22, 2022
SEOs writing articles explaining what content is considered helpful or unhelpful – before the helpful content update rolls out – is the definition of unhelpful content.
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) August 21, 2022
Poll says many SEOs are not concerned with the upcoming Google helpful content update because they know their content is helpful https://t.co/HQIHRiO4pp via @aleyda pic.twitter.com/qumkhSdMqQ
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 22, 2022
Google's helpful content update simplified with these quick facts – and if you want a lot more, I get into the details at https://t.co/V2yir5bPz2 pic.twitter.com/7DGinjBkT2
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 19, 2022
If you're a business/publisher/site owner concerned/curious about Google's Helpful Content Update, this is the advice I would give for the next 1-7ish days…👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/SLhgQdcaJI
— Dan Shure (@dan_shure) August 22, 2022
Possibly the best teardown article you'll see on Google's new algo update:
"Google's Helpful Content Update: Predictions & Hypotheses" by @wilreynolds
Will be great if Google reduces rankings of cookie-cutter SEO content like Forbes below. We can dream!https://t.co/Mqy1eLfK1V pic.twitter.com/1BNx3THa6Y
— Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) August 21, 2022
It will be ongoing. Google mentions they'll be refining the helpful content classifier and will launch further efforts to "better reward people-first content".
We are in for a ride🎢.
(Also, there's a new product reviews update coming out soon too.)https://t.co/OLR8aJf2w7
— Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 (@Marie_Haynes) August 22, 2022
SEOs feel content ahead of Google helpful content update https://t.co/LYyIG0L1sK
— Angel Niñofranco (@A_Ninofranco) August 22, 2022
I think I've cracked the code on what Google's Helpful Content update will aim to solve next week.
The Panda algo seems to rely on signals once you're ranking to judge that your site is substandard.
My guess is these AI writing tools have captured an exploit in that idea. pic.twitter.com/e1V2S27RG4
— Ross Hudgens (@RossHudgens) August 20, 2022
Google has a big update coming, I got a chance to sit with their team & get a feel for what this means. Here are a few of my thoughts, with an example of the kind of non helpful content I've seen ranking and will be looking out for as this update rolls outhttps://t.co/hfzIsLhYr6
— Wil Reynolds (@wilreynolds) August 18, 2022
When the first version of Google's helpful content update rolls out, it might be that a lot of content that you think should be hit by it, is not hit – more details in my mega post at https://t.co/V2yir5tqXC https://t.co/2QJm3ghw51
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 21, 2022
So @JohnMu has been saying your content needs to be "valuable" too, not just good, and I have been wondering how that would be measured…
Pretty sure this is what he meant 🟥👇https://t.co/9SjvFoFylO
John will tell me if I am wrong however LOL #SEO #SEOTips #SEOTip #SEOReads
— Kristine Schachinger (@schachin) August 18, 2022
