The Google helpful content update is now rolling out. It can take up to two weeks to fully roll out. I'm currently typing this on my mobile phone but I wanted to get this up while I am out on vacation.
Google’s helpful content update is live and can take up to two weeks to rollout https://t.co/LRkpoQTg9E pic.twitter.com/r54mzCWdnd
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 25, 2022
Note, we also covered some early fluctuations we saw yesterday that Google would deny as being part of this update, but it is worth nothing.
The helpful content update looks to weed out content written for the purpose of ranking in search engines that do not help or inform people. Google said this update will "tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines." The update will "help make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn't rank highly in Search," Google added. So if you are writing content with the purpose of driving search engine visibility and traffic, you might be hit by this.
Google Helpful Content Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google helpful content update
- Launch Date: It began to rollout on August 25th
- Rollout: It will take about two weeks to fully roll out
- Targets: It looks at content that was created to rank well in search over help humans
- Search Only: This currently only impacts Google Search, not Google Discover or other Google surfaces. But Google may expand this to Discover and more in the future.
- Penalty: Google did not mention penalty but this update does seem to feel like a penalty for sites that will be hit by it
- Sitewide: This is a sitewide algorithm, so the whole site will be impacted by this update
- Not a core update: Many are going to say this is a core update, it is not.
- English Language but will expand: This is only looking at English-language content globally now but likely will expand to other languages.
- Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update but Google did tell me it would be "meaningful." Also, Google said this will be felt more for online-educational materials, entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content.
- Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google's advice below
- Refreshes: Google updates the scores constantly here but there is a timeout period, and a validation period and it can take several months to recover from this update.
You can learn more at the helpful content update story from earlier.
I'll share the impact and more tomorrow or in the next few days depending on what I see.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
