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...]

[RedBar]

I find it odd he appears to always be on vacation during these recent updates.

Don't you remember years ago the entire Plex went skiing, a major update went disastrously wrong and staff had to go scurrying back to The Plex on a weekend to try and sort it out?

[BigKat]

@RedBar

Back then Google did not employ a person carrying the title "Search Liaison" responsible for communicating with the public. By it's very definition, a liaison is responsible for "communication or cooperation which facilitates a close working relationship between people or organizations." Whether DS is fulfilling his duties in this capacity is something I'm sure everyone has an opinion on...

[RedBar]

We had Matt Cutts surely however not with that title.

So, 18.00 arrived and my increased traffic day almost came to a halt ... Yuck :-(

[pawas]

No change in traffic or rankings for my main site.

[ichthyous]

Also saw a drop off in the later half of the day but nothing major. My UK traffic was down 50+% today though, and from the beginning of the day...

[dijojackson]

Our traffic is hit badly. The drop comes around 50+ per cent. Today it's worse across our domains.

[n00b1]

Update officially confirmed as having started - [developers.google.com...]

[edited by: phranque at 8:31 am (utc) on Aug 25, 2022]
[edit reason] fix url [/edit]

[saladtosser]

Link doesn't work?

[phranque]

Link doesn't work?

it does now...

[sk7411]

As i guessed, the updated started two days ago itself. Algorithm trackers were all calm till now but i am sure they will manually inflate the numbers tomorrow lol!

[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.