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...]

[Kratos]

Jellyfish, you're not alone. High impressions only because one's website search result is under the 4 to 5 vertically listed Youtube videos, so even though no one really gets to see your search result and will click instead on a YT video, the impression still counts.

This update at the moment all is doing is making it worst with the stacking of YT videos.

Here's the kicker though, if you move to YT to "make content", you're making content on someone else's platform (Youtube) and that same platform recommends your competitors content, so it's a losing proposition.

Plus no one clicks on website links/affiliate links on Youtube especially with how Youtube has also a while back shortened the description of videos so you have to click on the description to expand it.

And no one makes decent money off Adsense on Youtube unless they're commanding hundreds of thousands of views on a weekly basis.

Youtube is only interested in recommending you more videos to remain on Youtube longer. Building one's business on Youtube is shooting yourself in the foot, not to mention it's so much easier for competitors to spy on the content produced (stats, reactions etc).

Either way, one is f*cked unless you're a media agency with millions to invest in content production. The same media agencies posting generic 'Best Of' sh*tlisticles with products they have never even used. CNN, Cnet, Gear Patrol, NYtimes, they're all guilty of running content mills with sh*t quality 'Best Of' content but since they post so much sh*t, eventually some sticks to the wall.

[Kratos]

Also I'm finding it quite amusing how all black hat forums aren't talking of this new update.

All those spam forums are pretty silent so far which means their spam websites aren't doing bad so far.

In previous G updates, you knew G hit the right spots when you'd have dozens of threads and comments every day on these black hat forums.

But with this update, it's zero so far aside from a few complaints and others saying they're gaining.

In the past and without fail, when a G update has targeted spam in a meaningful way, those forums go crazy with threads and comments.

We're now one week into this G update and nothing.

[OldFaces]

Well...I think I can say that we are noticing a decrease in traffic. It's a trickle decrease (2-7% comparing the day versus day last week). Our problem is historically INDEX and not SERPs.. Looking at Search Console our SERPs are relatively consistent so perhaps it's unrelated. Although, this decrease DID start on 8/26.

Our issue is that we have LOADS of pages - all necessary given the service we provide. Some pages are 'stubs' that exist for people to update, other pages are truly the best resource available about the subject.

[mosxu]

I am under attack by scam algos regardless what improvements I make

[RubicCubed]

That's a very US-centric perspective. Google is a global search engine and most of the traffic (and possibly revenue) comes from outside the United States.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of Google's updates released in the USA first before they release them globally? Though this new helpful content update is global, it impacts English queries which in itself I would think largely target USA searches.

I recall a Google core update last year that was released right around the Black Friday shopping season. That update was followed by a product review update on December 1 that ended on December 21. That product review update targeted English language pages which also largely smacked us in the USA. Both these updates were highly disruptive to those of us selling goods during the busy holiday season. So I agree with the other poster that Google tends to release updates around USA holidays and they have been bad updates too! We lost so many sales last year because of Google pushing updates out right before Christmas.

[robzilla]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of Google's updates released in the USA first before they release them globally? Though this new helpful content update is global, it impacts English queries which in itself I would think largely target USA searches.

It depends, but they prefer global rollouts: [youtube.com...] "This [helpful content] update impacts English searches globally", they wrote in the blog post linked above. Does that target mostly US searches? I don't have that data unfortunately, but if I had to guess then no, probably not. The number of English users in countries like Nigeria, India, Pakistan and the Philippines is huge (plus Canada, Australia, UK, of course), and in countries like my own (The Netherlands) the vast majority is skilled in English and likely to use English at least for some of their searches.

It does beg the question, when is a search an English search? Is it any query that returns English results, or any query that returns only English results? If I search for a movie title, for example, I get a mix of Dutch and English web pages. Since it is a site classifier, I would expect those English results to be affected by the update, but not the Dutch results. Then I would certainly expect the number of affected searches to be much bigger outside the US.

[...] and they have been bad updates too! We lost so many sales last year because of Google pushing updates out right before Christmas.

Bad for you, unfortunately, but other merchants will have benefited from that.

[javelin]

For my non commerce information based site traffic has increased over the past week since the update. G still waffles and is as biased as it ever has been but the shining star has been Bing. Bing seems to be loving me LOL!

G has improved yet still underperforms by comparison. If I were to combined Yahoo and Bing traffic together since the latter owns the former, it would on most days tower over G in terms of performance.

I am not seeing declines since about a month ago. After the May update I stopped adding new content to the site and just let it sit doing nothing. By August performance began to return and now is daily outperforming where it was before... albeit I still have not updated it in three months. Go figure.

Soon it will be time to begin updating and adding content again yet I am waiting to see the curve I am looking for to tell me that time.

[ichthyous]

Interesting @Javelin...Bing and Yahoo combined have referred <10% of my search traffic for a decade. Nothing ever seems to change that one way or the other...I wish it would

[JesterMagic]

@ichthyous Same here. In days of old Yahoo was a good chunk of traffic (can't remember exactly but maybe 1/4 to 1/3). Now days I get more from Bing, but both together are probably about 5%.

[Kratos]

So my wife was legit searching in Google for a Brand machine or a (any other) widget machine. You know, Labor day sales.

In the first page, after navigating through numerous vertical Google shopping ads, then Youtube videos, then one or two manufacturer websites, the first shop listed in the first page was the one below (1st image) with titles of the products as "best widget machines", "10 best widget machines" and other spam titles.

These spam titles were for the ACTUAL PRODUCTS, they aren't even reviews or best anything:

<snipping images of generic widget machines>

And of course when you click on any of the products with the spam titles, you get to the product for which you don't even know what model it is or anything about it:

<snipping images of generic widget machines>

This is an online store, it's not even one of those disgusting affiliate Amazon websites spamming Google.

I'm amazed sh*t like this is making it to the first page. This is ridiculous. I've tried other keywords and I get similar spamming shops and comparison websites like <snip>.

My wife is not internet savvy but was shocked with this misleading shop appearing in the first page when she wanted to know more about Brand machines available and which to buy.

She was also shocked with the new trend now of Google stacking the shopping ads and Youtube videos vertically to take all real estate on the 1st page. It has accelerated with this 'helpful content' update.

Like I said before, all I am seeing in this 'helpful' update so far is the stacking of even more YT videos with timelines to take even more real estate in the first page. Combine that with all those vertically long Google shopping ads and, yeah, helpful content my *ss.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:15 pm (utc) on Sep 5, 2022]
[edit reason] No site reviews, please see Charter [/edit]

[Soulofmonk]

The latest version of Google Analytics Android seems broken. Annoying "was this answer helpful message," lag, and wrong figures.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Some movement data straight out of the Search Console of a 17 year old informational site that has been ultra-stable from the start. Data is from Sept 1st thru 3rd

- Search Impressions down 18%
- Clicks from search remained unchanged, sitewide.
- CTR up roughly 20%, as you'd expect with the same number of clicks on fewer impressions
- Avg position of pages up 1.2 spots on average for pages over 30 days old

A granular look at the pages with the most impressions lost shows that many queries previously ranked from 20-99 stopped appearing completely.

This may or may not be update related but the site hasn't changed much and the shift was dramatic(for this site). If you see the same happen I'd suggest having a close look at the queries lost, they may be a goldmine for improving content and/or creating new related content.

edit: About youtube videos ranking above serps, I do not have videos appearing before regular results for the majority of topics. I suspect sites more focused on products or reviews or even travel will only see more and more videos over time as people create the videos. If you google "best widget" you get a best of with several widgets in natural serps but review a specific brand and youtube dominates.

[ichthyous]

I don't get it, my traffic has been much higher since Friday. Strong, consistent all day traffic all weekend from every location....during a US holiday weekend. That's while I just ended a partnership with a very high DA site and am in the process of losing 600+ backinks from their site. It actually almost seems as if the loss of the links is helping rather than hurting. I suspect it's temporary and when Google calculates the loss of the links I'm going to get hammered. Could also be that the fact that the content is no longer available on their site means the traffic is switching to mine? I know that is magical thinking and this is just the calm before the storm...

[Martin Ice Web]

@kratos, we see this kind of pages all over our vertical. Amazon is the winner. Consumer are the losers.
And with every update more of this site are on page one. Realy good shops are burried on page 3.

[RedBar]

Ok, a couple of weeks of data in now and some noticeable effects:

Global Site 1/8 - 21/8 v 22/8 - 4/9 +45%, daily traffic back to May 2022 levels.

Furthermore many genuine realworld widget enquiries are being received.

Hotel function site August traffic 143.3% v average and its busiest month of the year.

The hotel is full until mid-November at the moment, normal trading years would suggest a slowdown however nothing is normal at the moment!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

@Redbar - are the visitors simply happy to be free of lockdowns? It's hard to compare 2022 to previous years.

@ichthyous, it's doubtful 600+ backlinks from a single domain were helping much. Regardless, it's nice to see some progress isn't it.

[RedBar]

are the visitors simply happy to be free of lockdowns? It's hard to compare 2022 to previous years.

I assume you are referring to the realworld hotel?

Bear in mind all lockdowns were different in many ways plus the hotel accommodation was allowed to remain open throughout the past 2+ years for keyworkers etc. In fact August 2021 food etc was busier than 2022 since we had a Govt backed scheme called "eat out to help out".

More people are on staycations for various reasons however I feel one of the main reasons has been the mixed-messaging from many destinations regarding masks plus many Brits refusing vaxxes. For instance England has a population of about 55-60 mil yet in 2022 in the last 6 months only 3.5 mil vaxxes have been given as 1st, 2nd and 3rd doses. 3rd doses are now being given at the rate of less than 25,000 per week.

These are official Govt figures, not mine, therefore for many people contemplating vacations and having seen the mixed-messaging from many different countries, would appear to have decided early on in the year that a staycation was their option.

We'll see what the next few months brings however the website's accommodation pages are still running at a much higher level than previous years which is obviously a very good indicator.

[Martin Ice Web]

@redbar, it is good to read that some see positiv movements.
I hope it will last for you.

[RedBar]

@MIW - Thanks however let's bear in mind going back to May 2022 traffic is still 60% of 2021 traffic levels.

The really noticeable thing so far is more multiple page views. When I see single PVs going to solely the index / contact / legal pages etc I immediately smell bots, a single PV to a specific-widget.html page is fine, multiple specific-widget.html pages could indicate serious research for all manner of things business, knowledge, education etc.

For my widgets it is very rare that I know what or when and from whom anything may be requested therefore the less junk traffic we all get has to be welcomed.

[engine]

As is normal, i've been monitoring various sectors and i've not seen much movement at all. No major shifts, and a lot of stability.

I'm now wondering if this was more about Google removing content from its index.

[EditorialGuy]

As is normal, i've been monitoring various sectors and i've not seen much movement at all. No major shifts, and a lot of stability.

Is it possible that Google's Helpful Content Update "classifier" needs a couple of weeks to do its classifying, and the impact of the HCU won't be felt until that stage is complete and the HCU is ready to be turned loose as Panda was in 2011?

[Atomic]

A few if the sites I've been monitoring began declining sharply Sunday followed by more Monday. They appear to have lost more keywords and traffic overnight.

I expected this update to work It's magic sooner, but better late than never. No one would dispute the need for these domains to disappear if I shared them. Their loss is everyone's gain.

I'll try to post some screens of what I'm seeing Friday after two full weeks have gone by. Hopefully, the trend will continue and they will be as dramatic as I'm expecting.

[RedBar]

Whilst my global site's increase in traffic is continuing what is also noticeable is that USA and West Europe traffic is average but Africa, East Europe through the Middle East and all Asia are all up. We've never been strong in South America.

[robzilla]

Is it possible that Google's Helpful Content Update "classifier" needs a couple of weeks to do its classifying, and the impact of the HCU won't be felt until that stage is complete and the HCU is ready to be turned loose as Panda was in 2011?

Could be, we're a little light on details. Considering how little the SERPs have shifted overall I am inclined to think much or what is reported here in this thread may well be unrelated to this update. Multiple other updates have probably been implemented in these two weeks (see monthly Google thread for evidence that SERPs are always shifting), there's no way of knowing, but it's obvious that the impact of the HCU, if in full effect by now, is very small, compared to, say, Panda.

[OldFaces]

Just a quick update from my end as I said earlier that we *could* be seeing an impact with this helpful content release. It's an indexing issue and not a ranking issue on our end. Same old for us :)

[shadowlight]

I mean what's to stop Google from adding Twitter posts

They were actually adding twitter posts to the SERPs not so long ago, cant remember exactly what they called it maybe 'Popular on Twitter' or 'Trending on Twitter' something along them lines. Just one one of the many 'SERP Features' (clutter) they have used.

They seem to have disappeared as I haven't come across any for a while. Maybe they decided it wasn't helpful content and removed it before the helpful content update :)

[engine]

They seem to have disappeared as I haven't come across any for a while.

They are still there, and provide helpful content, imho. Having said that, i'd probably go to straight to twitter. Most people wouldn't necessarily do that, and, of course, we're not "most people."

[RedBar]

Since 17-18.00 hrs UK time yesterday (Wednesday) I have seen a noticeable reduction in traffic to my global site returning so far to the levels of July and the first 2 weeks of August.

[Martin Ice Web]

@redbar, confirmed, we see a big trop today about 40%.

[RedBar]

@MIW - Agreed, about -40 to 50% at the moment.