Google To Release Core Update From 21 August

Helpful or Cleaning up Spammy Serps?

[engine]

Google is to roll out a "helpful content update" next week, which it says is "to better ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, rather than content made primarily for search engine traffic." It' says it should take around two weeks to roll out.

Google makes it clear that publishers should avoid creating content for search engines first, and to focus on the people-first content.

This update introduces a new site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages. Our systems automatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.

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.

Just looking at the description of this, we could see some significant shifts in the SERPs.

[developers.google.com...]

[mzb44]

Here is johnmu being asked if this update means that now big newspapers and media sites will finally be hit for churning out random content about 26475 irrelevant niches.

He says he sees no problem with it. Apparently in contradiction with their own guidance and blog post.

Seems like these guidelines will only apply on "regular" sites, and all the big sites will be protected by their high "root authority".

Link: [twitter.com...]

[Kratos]

Hopefully this update will get rid of those "Best Of" #*$!list articles that spam the internet without even testing the products.
It's ridiculous, the products weren't tested and the freelancer hired to do the #*$!list article has browsed other websites to steal real reviews.

It's impossible these days to find a website that isn't owned by a media company churning out #*$!list review articles by the hour with freelancers making up their credentials.

The Forbes example of best tire trucks is a classic example. Would you trust your life with something so important in your truck to some sh*tlist article posted by some random freelancer who is not an authority in the field (and who has made up his/her credential) and who is only interested in getting paid by Forbes or the media company who employs his/her?

Google, do something for a change.

[robzilla]

Here is johnmu being asked if this update means that now big newspapers and media sites will finally be hit for churning out random content about 26475 irrelevant niches.

He says he sees no problem with it. Apparently in contradiction with their own guidance and blog post.

No, you're twisting it. All he's saying is not just niche sites deserve to rank for niche topics.

And the Forbes example is a bad one. The article is part of Forbes Wheels, a niche sub-site dedicated to automotive, and is written by someone experienced in that industry. It's not "random content", and it's not ranking where it is solely on the authority of the Forbes platform. I don't know if it should rank #1 (in fact CNET was #1 for me just now), I'd have to analyze all the top pages (and know a bit more about trucks maybe), but it certainly should not be excluded or demoted for not being on a site solely dedicated to automotive.

The takeaway of the tweet, and this update, is "it depends on what they write". If someone here posts a terrific recipe, I see no reason it would not deserve to rank; if it's good content, people need to be able to find it.

[robzilla]

It's ridiculous, the products weren't tested and the freelancer hired to do the #*$!list article has browsed other websites to steal real reviews.

Say you're in the market for some truck tires. You could do your own extensive research, spending numerous hours reading expert and user reviews of the various tires on the market. Some will be long, others short, some will be well-written, others not so much. Now, how great would it be if someone had already done that research for you, gathered all those opinions and test results, and summarized them so you can make an informed decision in about 15 minutes?

There's a reason people search for phrases like "best truck tires". They don't want to review all the tires on the market, they quickly want to know which tires are considered the best so they can purchase those and get on with their lives. Arguably, an article like the one on Forbes Wheels does a pretty good job of meeting the query intent.

That's all there is to it, really. Whether you agree with the content strategy or not is irrelevant, the content is helpful.

(Except when it isn't, and that's the sort of content this update is targeting.)

some random freelancer who is not an authority in the field

You don't need to be an authority in the field to write good content. In fact, someone with authority in the field can write poorer content than someone who's not but has enough knowledge and experience and is a better researcher and writer. Not to drag anyone into this, but if you were referring to the author of the Forbes article then she easily passes the smell test by having a decade of experience writing on automotive for numerous publications.

some random freelancer [...] who is only interested in getting paid by Forbes or the media company who employs his/her

That's a dangerous and very short-sighted presumption.

[edited by: robzilla at 12:35 pm (utc) on Aug 21, 2022]

[mzb44]

And the xxxx example is a bad one. The article is part of xxxx Wheels, a niche sub-site dedicated to automotive, and is written by someone experienced in that industry. It's not "random content"

That page is literally using dark patterns by only showing conversion-focused content to real humans while hiding all the "text body" content that obviously only exists to tick off search engine ranking signals and checkmarks.

If you or me did that we'd get penalized for spam, deceptive content etc

[robzilla]

That page is literally using dark patterns by only showing conversion-focused content to real humans while hiding all the "text body" content that obviously only exists to tick off search engine ranking signals and checkmarks.

If you think search engines still only see text and process and value it all equally even when, for example, much of it is hidden behind a "Read More" link, you have a lot of catching up to do.

[mzb44]

Has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with what I have said.

[robzilla]

And "dark patterns" have no relation to what we were discussing above.

So be more specific. Where's the spam, the deception, and how does it relate to this update or the helpfulness of content?

[mzb44]

So be more specific. Where's the spam, the deception, and how does it relate to this update or the helpfulness of content?

If any other site were to do that, most here would immediately call it out for being affiliate spam that's only interested in showing CTAs down visitors' throats.

But because it's hosted on a "big and trusted" site, suddenly you're trying to find justifications for it.

Also, specifically, in regards to this update:

"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?"

"Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you'd get search traffic?"

All these big news sites and dictionaries that according to this forum's rules shall not be named go against all of these.

They write about best toothbrushes, best tires, best jewellery for weddings, best X for Y for anything that keyword research shows has potential traffic and conversions.

So, what's the point of having the above guidelines if there are exceptions to it?

[longjohnbronze]

I would concur that the Forbes example is not the best representative for this issue because Forbes Wheels apparently *is* a sub-site focusing on cars. That said, the article has zero evidence (and doesn't outright claim) that the author or anyone else at Forbes has actually tested these tires, as opposed to just picking products based on conversion likelihood and then piecing text together from their specs. (Perhaps that then leads to the conclusion that Forbes Wheels isn't a reliable authority on cars at all?)

[mzb44]

That said, the article has zero evidence (and doesn't outright claim) that the author or anyone else at xxxx has actually tested these tires

I'd like to point out the fact that the product descriptions on that page are straight just copied from the manufacturers' sites. Sometimes some words are replaced with synonyms to avoid blatant 1:1 copying and content theft.

Were any other site doing this, everyone here would call is pure-spam and junk.

But because it's on a "big, trusted publisher", people actually do mental gymnastics to justify how this is good for user experience.

Meanwhile this page is outranking legitimate industry sites that have unique reviews including actual videos showing how they legitimately review and test the products.

Let's not kid ourselves that those news sites don't just ride on their "root authority", regardless of whatever they are posting.

[EditorialGuy]

IMO, it's a bit premature to complain about Google's Helpful Content Update giving a pass to major news sites when the HCU hasn't even begun to roll out.

[aristotle]

Actually many "best lists" are useful in that they can give a good initial overview to people who are just starting to search for information about a particular subject. And Google's current algorithm already does a generally good job of picking out the best pages to show at the top of its search results.

But to return to the main topic of this thread, several earlier posts have noted the strong similarity between the goal of this new update and the goal of the original Panda update in 2011. That original Panda update destroyed millions of poor-content websites, both large and small. In fact Panda had a bigger effect on the web than any other update in Google's history. (Evidently some of the newer members of WebmasterWorld weren't here at that time and aren't aware of the enormous impact that the original Panda rollout had.)

Since Panda has already eliminated most of the web's mediocre content from the top of Google's search results, then what is the purpose of this new update? Apparently Google believes that it has found a new signal that will eliminate some of what Panda has missed. So most likely the effect will be much smaller this time compared to what happened in 2011.

[tangor]

So far, most of the above appears to be speculation, and most of it negative, before we have results---and those won't be truly known for another six months after roll out. THEN we can see what the update DID, not what it MIGHT do...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

So far, most of the above appears to be speculation, and most of it negative, before we have results---and those won't be truly known for another six months after roll out. THEN we can see what the update DID, not what it MIGHT do...

It's like a forest fire. You know it's out there are are worried it might burn down your house but you can only wait, hope, and discuss.

Keeping it positive, I did read a few good ideas that might be helpful with this particular update and are generally good ideas anyway.

#1 - If you offer guides and reviews you should see about adding original images you took of your testing/review process. It would immediately tell a reader you did indeed test the product and would let AI see that you did. Stock images or, worse, stolen images, probably won't help much in an AI ranked world.

#2 - if you have a site with fewer than 1000 pages you can visit your search console's sitemap section, see your index coverage, click on "view data about indexed pages", sort by "last crawled" so you see pages that haven't been crawled in months(if any) and see if you can improve them.... then re-submit them for indexing(improve them first!).

The reasoning on #2 is that if Google didn't see fit to crawl it in months it may not be deemed all that "helpful". Not recommended on sites with more than 1000 pages because the delay in crawling is influenced by crawl budget.

[longjohnbronze]

#1 - If you offer guides and reviews you should see about adding original images you took of your testing/review process. It would immediately tell a reader you did indeed test the product and would let AI see that you did. Stock images or, worse, stolen images, probably won't help much in an AI ranked world.

The sentiment is definitely good but I'm willing to bet that you could outsmart an AI if you auto-generate such content by rotating existing images by 1 degree, cropping, and adding a watermark and/or a frame of some sort. Not that AIs in general *couldn't* catch on, but that would cost CPU budget and thus money and why waste money if your agenda (as a search engine) isn't *actually* to present the most helpful content?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

The sentiment is definitely good but I'm willing to bet that you could outsmart an AI if you auto-generate such content by rotating existing images by 1 degree, cropping, and adding a watermark and/or a frame of some sort.

Not anymore, really.

Test for yourself. Go to google image search and pick any image you want that has been used on many sites. Pick something that gets shared a lot for this test, like a tattoo or puppy image.

Photoshop it, tilt it, watermark it, flip it etc and save it. Next drag and drop it from your desktop to the image search box and Google will tell you what it thinks it is and will tell you which other pages the image appeared on. You might be surprised!

Now imagine a review that uses images Google has seen before on a page with no unique images showing the testing process... an AI might not trust that any more than a human would. Fake reviews meant to generate affiliate clicks is probably a dying business model at this point, and it should be.

Even if you do legit reviews and take your own images its probably a good idea to darg and drop the images onto Google's image search box to see if it makes a good guess at what the image is about.

** Check your images **
If you open up a google image search window and your website in a window right next to it you can also drag and drop your own images right from your site to the search box to see if anyone's been copying them, Google knows!

[JesterMagic]

It's ridiculous, the products weren't tested and the freelancer hired to do the #*$!list article has browsed other websites to steal real reviews.

That's all there is to it, really. Whether you agree with the content strategy or not is irrelevant, the content is helpful.

@robzilla It's helpful to a point and may have saved you time doing the exact same thing but I would think most people would rather have the point of a view from an expert who has actually tested the products and has in-depth knowledge of the industry. A layman researching a subject may not know what questions to actually ask about the product to figure out if it is good or not and go beyond the marketing hype.

[Alex_1729]

I would agree that just by cropping an image or changing anything on a small scale doesn't really fool Google Search. What I'm interested in are the AI-generated images people have been using recently. Do they count as something new and original? I've seen people concerned that these images may cause issues with the upcoming "Helpful Content" update, but I can see this going either way. Generating an AI image could count as something new. Granted, most of them are probably not as good as the real shot, but they could be.

[MayankParmar]

A new update means more spam, indexing issues, low-quality results.

[SteveWrz]

It's a little *too* quiet today. Feels lile the calm before the hell storm.

[frankleeceo]

Anyone seen meaningful changes yet?

[Pjman]

Nada, but all the sites I run are super useful, so who knows?

[Alex_1729]

I don't think the update rolled out, and I can't find anywhere where Google said they're going to roll this out on 21st or 22nd. They just said "next week", so that could be Friday, or even the weekend.

[engine]

Indeed, it could be any time this week. Google did indicate it would notify.

[oldog]

If you work hard, writing rich content and give the reader all that he wants to know using your own content and knowledge without stealing other websites content, you don't have to afraid any update.

As an old dog I survived all Google updates, Penguin, Florida, Cognac, that old one that was created because of JCPenney ( forgot the name of that one ) all updates anyway, you name it...I survived..
Many of my websites have .edu .gov newspapers and wiki links..

Why ? Simply because of my content , thousands of scrapers have scrap my content and newbies they just copy paste whole pages content , pictures ...you name it ...not a problem
I still rank for one or two word keywords on top 10 within millions and billions of results in my niche for ages without any ups and downs..

Conclusion
Write like a journalist use many words to explain your subject, cross examine your sources, read books and not the odd Tom Dick and Harry publisher of wikipedia...that is the gravy train that will bring you high quality links and top rankings
My two cents..

[oldog]

Oh and another thing....just mark my words .....
If that update rolls eventually...some German guys who spend that summer millions of $ in adwords...offering ...guided tours;. a new idea for lazy travellers ..finally they will see the first fruits of their efforts in the travel niche...
I bet they will hit trips advisors , lonely planets...and the rest of the gang..
My 2 euro....!

[RedBar]

It's a little *too* quiet today. Feels lile the calm before the hell storm.

Traditionally, and this includes pre-Net days, the last week of August and first week of September has always been unpredictable in my global widget industry therefore whatever they have done / intend to do, I would say we may not see any meaningful signs until w/c 5th September ... Then again it could all kick-off tomorrow!

[renatovieira]

Over here.... It's a little *too* quiet today... too

[RareBit]

"Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?" That's all sales sites done for then...what a stupid statement!