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]

SEMrush showing a bit more fluctuation today... all seems stable here so far, but not counting any chickens! The 'up to two weeks' would be today, right? * continues to watch & wait *

[robzilla]

Something's definitely showing on the volatility trackers. Rollout should be just about done by now.

Traffic's up +20% today but could be unrelated.

[RedBar]

It's gone extremely quiet across all my sites this past couple of hours especially in the UK. I wonder how much of this is to do with reports on the Queen's health?

[javelin]

@Redbar I am seeing the opposite for today. It is halfway through the day at this point and I have surpassed my historical daily all time high in traffic. I noticed that volatility across the serps is higher today than the past week or so. At this point I still have not made any site updates as I am still looking for what I am calling a technical curve in the trend that indicates the need for it.

Note that Bing is more than double the volume of traffic over G. Thus the source is heavily dependent upon something other than the big name.

[EditorialGuy]

Mostly the same as usual for our travel information site, although we're up a bit compared to the peak summer season. Normally we'd see the beginnings of a seasonal decline after September 1. (This probably has less to do with Google than with pent-up travel demand.)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Sept 8th and a mega group of sites, each with 250k auto-generated pages of mostly scraped content receiving between 2 and 5 million monthly visitors from search.... have not been affected yet. C'mon Google!

[ichthyous]

It's gone extremely quiet across all my sites this past couple of hours especially in the UK. I wonder how much of this is to do with reports on the Queen's health?

My traffic was very strong until noon EST, then dropped off a cliff until 3pm EST...so I think yes it's all about the Queen's passing.

[rustybrick]

Done rolling out today [developers.google.com...]

[RedBar]

Done rolling out today

Thanks, the last couple of days I have seen lower traffic levels however if it is now complete we know we can see more precisely its effect.

[javelin]

Im curious what the next couple of weeks will bring once the dust settles. As for initial impact I can see a clear shift on my end. G traffic as of about exactly a week ago from today has doubled daily. What is really odd to me is Bing traffic has more than doubled... and they are not a part of the update clearly.

Whether or not the update itself has had any impact on my traffic is questionable due to increased results from platforms outside G. Needless to say it hasnt hurt me.

[aristotle]

This update introduces a new site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages.

Because this new signal is only one among many others, my guess is that this update will have very little effect on the rankings of well-known high-authority websites, most of which are already near the top anyway due to the strength of their other signals.

In fact, most sites that are already near the top of the rankings may have other "older" signals that are strong enough to keep them near the top even if this new signal has a negative effect.

On the other hand, for low-ranking sites, even if this new signal has a positive effect, it might be enough to overcome the negative effects of the other signals.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Is anyone experiencing "page is unknown to Google" for new articles longer than in the past? I've got new articles ranked in DDG/Bing from up to 10 days ago that search console says are still unknown. Traditionally Google has been faster than other engines to index content, but not right now.

Related to the update?

[robzilla]

Traditionally Google has been faster than other engines to index content, but not right now.

This has been going on for a while now unfortunately, so no, probably unrelated.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

This has been going on for a while now unfortunately, so no, probably unrelated.

Probably unrelated, but is it? If Google is waiting for user experience signals before ranking anything new it might not be.

A possible test. In search console > Core Web Vitals > Mobile > Good URLs you can click on the URL groups example and Google plainly shows you which pages have "URLs with not enough usage data". If you remove all advertising, tracking and other stuff to get those pages the best possible web vitals score and then get some INTERESTED traffic to the page (via a social media profile or forum or ad or internal link) you can get generating "useage data" and get the pages going.

They'd fall off that list if you do and possibly rank faster? This would work on smaller sites with exceptional content that isn't getting ranked where you feel it deserves. On larger sites there is already immediate traffic to most freshly published pages, enough to see if its worth ranking.

[oldog]

"Is anyone experiencing "page is unknown to Google" for new articles longer than in the past? I've got new articles ranked in DDG/Bing from up to 10 days ago that search console says are still unknown. Traditionally Google has been faster than other engines to index content, but not right now.

Related to the update?"
Same here, usually G picks up new articles in a couple of days, but, I have published articles 2 weeks ago and are not indexed yet. I bet G bot is overloaded.

[JesterMagic]

Great... the update finished on the 9th and on the 10th I see a 10% drop... what gives... (I don't see the queens death affecting my niche much at all over hear in North America)

[RedBar]

Just a quick note that my global site traffic for week 36 has dropped back to my average since my May drop of week 20 ... Hmmm ...BUT realworld enquiries are up:-)

Our UK hotel site on a Sunday has just had its busy PVs day of the year with accommodation enquiries going nuts!

[oldog]

It makes you laugh the way a "fandom" User-generated content ... children's game website ...over ranks wikipedia... in thousands of keywords.....

[System]

The following 11 messages were cut out to new thread by engine. New thread at: google/5072624.htm [webmasterworld.com]
10:24 am on Sep 13, 2022 (utc +1)

[engine]

For Google's new Core Update September 2022, see this thread [webmasterworld.com...]

Keeping this thread on topic for the "helpful content update", thank you

[Atomic]

The results I'm seeing in the SERPs can't be what Google's striving for. For a while the HCU seemed to be at least partially successful, though far meeker than anticipated.
Today I see more scrapers than ever and the "stay in your lane" targets appear stronger than ever.
Just about any search result set includes at least 2 pages of scrapers and pages upon pages of sites that have zero expertise in the content they rank for. Dog training sites that rank well for finance terms? Great. Good job.

[westcoast]

Crappy results in my vertical too. The top 10 positions are mostly large domains that threw up keyword heavy / content-light pages totally unrelated to their business or target niche, which increasingly dominates our niche.

Google has seemingly given up on the whole concept of niche experts. If you are a large player like Buzzfeed, you can just create pages on thousands of topics and rank high for all of them. The end result is that you have absolutely awful results.

Google needs to demote large sites that are playing "out of their niche", and promote those sites that are focused on the topic at hand and also have good content.

Contrary to Google's claims, content simply doesn't matter. Ever since the pandemic core update, the "domain size / authority" signal just totally dominates everything else by an order of magnitude. This is another reason why the HCU didn't really do much. It is dominated by the "large domain" problem.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Expectation = HCU came in like a wrecking ball!
Reality = HCU did little more than anxiety levels, for now.

[Brett_Tabke]

continued here:
[webmasterworld.com...]