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...]

[Neohippy]

Everything looks pretty normal here (focusing on UK traffic only); and indeed UK SEMrush is low today. Slow burn, or just not made it over here yet?

[robzilla]

If it's just now rolling out and could take two weeks, it might still be a little too early. Would be interesting to know the percentage of queries affected that they sometimes announce with larger updates.

Presumably it can take two weeks because core updates require thousands of servers to be taken out of rotation for updating without affecting Search availability/responsiveness? Probably a little more complicated than a git pull.

[Pjman]

@robzilla

Totally get your point, but I have been at this for about 20 years now.

I have never seen a site hit heavily in any direction (up or down) by a change that google has made, on their end, that wasn't pretty evident 12-hours after their announcement.

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed ... So far today, after 15 hours, my global site is at 106% with traffic looking like 18 months ago with many 5-10 PVs and several big hitters of 50+ PVs plus and this is usually significant for me, plenty of image downloads of different but comparable widgets.

Has G actually got something right? One swalllow doesn't make a summer!

[SteveWrz]

This one feels like if you're unsure whether or not it's out yet, it's definitely not out yet.

[RedBar]

18.00 and already my busiest day of August and if it continues at this rate it will be my busiest day of 2022 ! In fact, realistically, I'm going back to early 2021 levels which I would be most surprised about and especially so since it is usually my second-lowest traffic month normally.

There's a good oxymoron, GoogleNorrmal or NormalGoogle :-)

[RedBar]

And thereafter 18.00 it fell into the G Abyss and died ... In 6 hours, 25% of my day, I had 9.6% of my 24 hours' PVs ... Bear in mind USA this is PEAK US traffic time ... NEXT !

[MayankParmar]

They haven't announced the rollout via their liaison and other handles yet. Weird

[engine]

>liaison

liaison is on holiday right now.

[Martin Ice Web]

As expected this update vanished all sales again. Traffic was up till yesterday and toke a deep dive tonight.
For several search phrases we get only 5 pages (50 entries). google might have an index issue again.
Big companies that were present for this search phrases are gone. Even amazon toke a deep dive.

[Alex_1729]

"They haven't announced the rollout via their liaison and other handles yet. Weird"

Maybe it's not an update at all. Maybe they just tweaked something minor and it's all a mind-game (the naming of this update and the rest). Because I didn't see any change, nor is the SEMrush sensor showing anything. But there are still 2 weeks to go, so I guess we wait.

[Neohippy]

This isn't CWV all over again, is it? Pre-announcement = teeny tiny tweak? Maybe they're just getting started...

[saladtosser]

"The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience" = Replace more top spots with Youtube videos by the looks of the serps today?

[oldog]

"Replace more top spots with Youtube videos by the looks of the serps today?"
That looks to be the case, in my keywords though are on the second page..but still on top 20...you see youtube needs monetising....since the experiment to antagonise Netflix and Amazon prime didn't work..
BTW ( this is irrelevant with the discussion) but if you want to watch a video in youtube without a storm of adds set your VPN somewhere in the middle east or eastern Europe..)

[RedBar]

So far today dead, back to the former single page view visitors most of which are bots. 18 hours of yesterday proved real traffic does still exist when it is seemingly not manipulated.

[robzilla]

None of the volatility trackers reporting anything indicative of a major update so far.

[mzb44]

liaison is on holiday right now.

In all fairness, when isn't he on vacation? :D

Also, either this update is toothless or it hasn't really started to roll out yet.

Historically, these things used to be visible after the first 24 hours, even if the full rollout took 2 weeks.

[engine]

What's odd is something happened earlier in the week. I wonder if they rolled it back straight away. Specifically, Google said

"August 25, 2022
Released the August 2022 helpful content update. The rollout could take up to two weeks to complete. "

[Martin Ice Web]

Also, either this update is toothless or it hasn't really started to roll out yet

my verical has been shaked up heavily.
But it seems that they switch fore and back.
Today is even worse.

[westcoast]

Totally normal traffic. Totally stable SERPs. It simply isn't doing anything in our vertical yet.

[swright]

Has anybody figured out how this update is supposed to be different than Panda? G says it targets low-quality, non-unique content. Seems like what Panda is targeting, which is supposedly integrated into the main algorithm now. Why did they need to come up with a new update for this type of content?

[aristotle]

Has anybody figured out how this update is supposed to be different than Panda? G says it targets low-quality, non-unique content. Seems like what Panda is targeting, which is supposedly integrated into the main algorithm now. Why did they need to come up with a new update for this type of content?

Evidently Google believes it has found a new signal that will identify mediocre-quality websites that Panda has missed, especially sites that mostly contain "content made primarily for search engine traffic", rather than "original, helpful content written by people, for people".

[Atomic]

After reading Google's questions you should ask yourself, I get the feeling that very good content can be negatively affected by this algorithm. And why not? Google created conditions for a SERPS land grab and now they are full of CRAP that needs to go. You have tech sites with finance content. And why not? It makes money and since it will rank since you have a 25 year old domain for a now defuncted magazine or whatever. And some these sites have plowed millions into this content. Some it's very good. But they couldn't be bothered starting a new website. Too hard or whatever.

In the SERPS I am currently making my fortune, a solid quarter of the sites are recently purchased domains with massive DA that have nothing to do with the Niche. They just throw on some new widgety section and don't touch the rest of the site. And then the section is just content scraped from the actual content creators. Such a massive problem for Google. Every few months another one of these has appeared. Google has absolutely been turning into Alta Vista bit by bit. I haven't seen this much garbage in over a decade and it is high time it was cleaned up!

I can't wait for ax to fall. Probably next weekend during the long Labor Day weekend in about 7 days it will. By then a good nickname for this update might be the Red Wedding Update. I sure hope so.

PS. For fun anyone want to guess how many other algorithms are updated? 5? 12? All of them?

[Kyle0]

Traffic has been up 10-20% since this update, and I see some SERP improvement. But sales are same.

[tangor]

Traffic has been up 10-20% since this update, and I see some SERP improvement. But sales are same.

I suspect this will be the norm for a few more weeks. G's updates can appear immediate for some, but take longer for the rest of us to see them. Too many data centers, so much traffic, and so much chaff to be removed.

Some of us, in niches which are not generally "spun" or monetized will likely seen little to no change at all.

That said, anything that truly reduces the noise of hucksters is something to cheer. Though I suspect the hucksters will protest their innocence loudly!

[watesh]

Already down 25%. My content is on a niche that I was first to start writing about. Ranked in the top spot for years and this year half of my keywords are on page two right in the middle of the irrelevant search results.

[renatovieira]

Over here, huge drop since yesterday...

[shadowlight]

Yes converting traffic non existent today

[renatovieira]

A very huge drop right now. Anybody else?

[pawas]

Clicks have slowly dropped by 12% since 16 August in Search Console, but impressions are the same. Doing keyword research, I see that youtube videos are increasingly showing in top 5 spots.

[westcoast]

After seeing nothing for the last few days, our vertical is suddenly seeing lots of movement.

Appears to be some A/B testing going on... the top 3 results for our main keyword keep switching orders from search to search.

[jmorgan]

Too early to tell what the effect of this update will be for my site, but I'm not optimistic, to be honest.

My site has a decent following, so I think it will eventually get to a point where I'm relying almost exclusively on direct traffic. At this stage though, Google still sends many one-time visitors (i.e. those who only search for my niche once and never come back), so it'll take some adjusting to not have that free traffic anymore if it ever gets to the stage where I'm "disappeared" by Google.

[ichthyous]

@Renato you're scaring me...where your site goes, mine generally follows...and v.v. I actually saw a drop on August 17th...direct traffic dropped 40% and has not returned at all. Search is higher so the net effect has been a wash.

[martinibuster]

renatovieira: A very huge drop right now. Anybody else?

Without revealing specific details, what can you say about competitors that may have gained in rankings?

Are they helpful?

[BigKat]

I see that youtube videos are increasingly showing in top 5 spots.

I'm seeing the same. Figures Google would push more of their own properties under the guise of an update. Internally we are calling this the "Unhelpful Update" since days into this we see it only helping Google and hurting us. Not really surprised because I expected Google to do something along these lines to boost their profits.

[shadowlight]

I'm seeing the same. Figures Google would push more of their own properties under the guise of an update. Internally we are calling this the "Unhelpful Update" since days into this we see it only helping Google and hurting us. Not really surprised because I expected Google to do something along these lines to boost their profits.

They will get to a point that the only people who listen to their ‘recommendations’ & ‘guidelines’ etc will be those who spend money on ads, because why continue to do as they say / suggest when you actually get little or nothing in return unless you pay them top dollar for a ‘chance’ to acquire traffic that converts.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Have a gander at the images of pages in flux, there's some interesting stuff happening right now.

[Martin Ice Web]

Traffic down 39%. Sales as expected down 95%.
Amazon sales as expected up 80%.

Our google ad spend now and in future ZERO

[Nutterum]

Traffic is up 14% in the last 3 days. And Im talking a website that averages 1500 concurrent users (12k sessions daily) in the light hours of the day. I did make an update on the essential category content a month ago, as well as some technical improvements but did not expect that bump. Also can confirm its not because of seasonality.

[londrum]

after the big build up it feels like a damp squib in my corner of the internet. i’m not seeing any changes at all, either up or down

[ichthyous]

@Martin Ice Web You've been a long term member here...when you post a 39% decline in traffic and 95% decline in sales that worries me.

Yesterday my UK, AU and CA traffic all ended sharply higher...+73%, +13% and +20%...USA was down 9%. Today USA starts down 63% and again UK, AU and CA are sharply higher. It's only 10am so we'll see where it ends up...

[Martin Ice Web]

@ichthyous it is far to early to say anything. The last "quality" updates allways hit our vertical quiet hard. They pushed all the high authority sites on top. Wether they have good or bad content. It reverted within the folloowing weeks. Unfortunatelly google throws every 4 weeks another silly update on the road.

our vertical right now:
-Since sunday amazon took over our vertical.
-i don't know if this is new but there are only 8 organic links ( it was 9 ?)
-lots of vpn and tor traffic
-lots of foreign traffic
-sites with very very simple and less content

what we see in other certiclas (mostly high competiutive and expensive items
-all the 10 best "items" spun test pages are gone
-only manufacturers and known big sales stores are left - very bad
-all the affiliate amazon sites ared gone - very good

I guess this update reverted the panda update which favored long (spun) content.
But it seems that this is now a little bit to strong, so google can´t distinguish between good and spun content.

[EditorialGuy]

No changes here, as far as I can tell. (Information site, travel.) Of course, there's still plenty of time left before Google's estimated two-week "rollout complete"date.

[londrum]

mine’s infiormation travel as well, and no change either

[Atomic]

Not seeing any changes in finance. I'm not going to sleep well this Wednesday night, though. I am expecting an exciting weekend.

[mhansen]

The only anomaly I've noticed thus far, is that search traffic seems to be coming at a different time schedule. Up through last week, our traffic was generally spread throughout the work day from 6-7am through 11pm USA and slowed during late evening hours. (Server time is set for UTC-5, eastern time zone USA) Since Friday, it seems that the morning hours are dead, then suddenly coming alive at around 11-12PM ET. That trend continues throughout the day and into the later evening hours before dying off around 12am ET.

Traffic is just as strong overall, conversions seem OK, etc. It's just coming at a different time schedule than normal.

Note: I also found a very high number of bot visits suddenly coming from several foreign countries in the last 2-3 weeks. (Seychelles, Czechia, Netherlands, etc) Since we cater to USA only, I've blocked those via CloudFlare but still curious as to what/why they were so suddenly there. In July and early August, there were no visits at all from these locations, it all began around Aug 4th with a few visits, then ramped up into the thousands per day before I blocked them. (I used the CF Captcha human challenge versus complete block and it reduced them by 99%).

[DTP_Rodan]

Note: I also found a very high number of bot visits suddenly coming from several foreign countries in the last 2-3 weeks. (Seychelles, Czechia, Netherlands, etc)

This is very interesting, which means a bot is likely enumerating from new locations, or a new bot is out there. We had the same beginning in very late July, but the crawls ramped up to steroid-level rage on the 4th and 5th of August. We also blocked via CF.

As for the Google "Helpful Content Update", assessing its impact for us is very tricky. So far, we have not really noticed a significant change, but the rollout is still just getting started.

We are a toll road travel site that gets seasonal and cyclical traffic surges and dips. Typically, at this time of summer, and this stage of August, most of the kids are back in school and traffic is slowing, but still higher than, say, February. However, this has been a tricky summer for us.

Last year, we had a summer surge that was out of sight! It was precipitated by a mass reopening travel surge, coupled with the fact we had cheap gas, few airline flights and a real demand to get the heck out of the house. This year, however, with gas prices going up, our traffic increases through the late spring fell flat, rising less than would be typical for that time of year. With more airline flights (cancellations aside), many travelers were taking planes and not trains and automobiles. ;-)

However, as gas high fresh highs, over $5.00 per gallon, we saw roadway travel - especially on toll roads - eschewed. Trips did not happen or were shorter, and FHWA roadway data bears out a tick down in personal travel, whilst an uptick happened for larger vehicles (read: haulers). We cater more to business travelers and family vacationers, and this has been a summer for neither.

However, Google's May 25th update did hit us. Overall, our traffic across Bing, Yahoo!, AOL (yes, AOL), DuckDuckGo and direct nav are all down 28% to 30% this year versus last, but Google traffic is down 45%. We noticed, after May 25, that our ranks did not change much, but some were teetering on the "edge" of the page, as it were, ranked #9 or #10 for results, and lost JUST enough position that our IMPRESSIONS fell dramatically, but about one-third!

On any given day, we now struggle to get 6K or 7K visits, when last year we would EASILY surpass 9K and 10K. I'm just keeping fingers crossed on this "helpful content" update ... so far, the Google updates have not been terribly helpful for the content developers. ;-)

[RedBar]

My global site has definitely seen an uptick in PVs the past few days with yesterday being 98.3% of average which was a very pleasant surprise.

Our localised hotel functions site has, as expected, been very busy the past few days with Saturday the busiest day of the year at 210% with traffic for the month so far at 136.9%. From this week onwards we are not making any predictions until we see just how general trade goes.

I actually only have a couple of other local sites now since all the rest have had enough, decided to retire and not even bother to sell their businesses, plus I know one of the remaining ones is seriously considering similar. All these businesses were operated by 60+ and some 70+ with direct family gone and not interested and ALL specialist / trained trades.

Yeah, let's send everyone to university!

[longjohnbronze]

I can confirm significant bot traffic among (supposedly) organic search traffic from the Seychelles. What surprised me there is that I can't imagine bots being physically located in the country, considering the remote location and thus likely bad and/or expensive internet connections.

[robzilla]

How are the bot visits related to this update, though?

Still very quiet, nothing significant happening. Volatility trackers not supporting the noted uptick in video results so far.

In general, try to stay away from simplistic and unhelpful explanations like "Google's pushing their own properties". It's easy to call foul play and put yourself out of the equation that way, a helpless victim of a greedy company, but really YouTube would rank no different if it wasn't part of Alphabet. People like video results and YouTube is the premier video platform. That perspective is far more actionable (and realistic).