The update on helpful content aims to remove articles that have been published solely to boost their search engine rankings but do not educate or assist readers. According to Google, this upgrade will “address content that seems to have been generated mainly for ranking well in search engines.” According to Google, the change will “help ensure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn’t rank prominently in Search.” Therefore, if you write material intending to increase search engine exposure and traffic, this could affect you.
From my perspective, this upgrade will alter how SEOs approach content tactics moving forward, much like Panda and Penguin did a decade ago about content and link strategies.
Updated Google Helpful Content Short Facts
The key details that we currently know are listed here in the succinct form:
- Name: Google Update with Useful Content
- Launch Date: TBD, but most likely during the week of August 22.
- Rollout: The full rollout will take around two weeks.
- It prioritizes content made to serve humans over content intended to score highly in search.
- This solely affects Google Search and does not affect Google Discover or any other Google surfaces. However, Google might eventually add Discover and other services to this.
- Google did not mention a penalty, but the update does feel like one to the sites affected by it.
- Sitewide: This upgrade will impact the entire site because it is a site-wide algorithm.
- Many people will likely claim this is a core upgrade, but it is not.
- This is now only looking at English-language content globally, but it will probably expand to other languages.
- Google refused to say how many queries or searches were affected by this modification. But it did say it would be “significant.” Google added that this will be more noticeable for online entertainment, retail, and tech-related content.
- Recover: If you were affected, you should review your content to see if you can improve it using the tips provided below by Google.
- Google continuously updates these values, but there is a timeout period. A validation period may take many months for the numbers to stabilize after an update.
Helpful Information
Google’s recommendation for this upgrade is consistent with their long-standing advice:
- Focus on material that puts people first
- Stay away from writing content with search engines as your main focus.
Why is Google Content Updating Helpful?
If Google’s classifier determines that your website has a lot of duplicate content. Then, your website will not rank well in search. It doesn’t matter if you have some helpful content on your website. Classification affects all content on your website.
The problem is that this guidance is frequently so general that it leaves content creators with more questions than answers.
