Google is about to launch a new massive search algorithm update called the Helpful Content Update.
Helpful content updates are intended for websites with relatively high levels of unsatisfactory or unhelpful content, where the content is written for search engines rather than humans.
The update, which is rolling out soon, will have a big impact on search results, Google told Search Engine Land.
What are Google Helpful Content Updates?
Google’s new Helpful Content Update targets “content that appears to have been created primarily to rank high in search engines, rather than to help or inform people.”
The purpose of this algorithm update is to make it easier for searchers to find “high-quality content,” Google said. Google wants to help users by rewarding better, more useful content written for humans.
Content written for the purpose of ranking in search engines, so-called “search engine-friendly content” or “SEO content”, is frequently written and discussed on social media these days.
In short, searchers get frustrated when they land on unhelpful web pages that rank high in search because they are designed to rank high.
Google’s new algorithm is designed to downgrade these types of websites and help search engines rank more helpful websites designed for humans.
Google says it’s “an ongoing effort to reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find content that’s authoritative and useful in search.”
When will Google’s helpful content updates begin?
The update will start next week. According to Google, it can take up to two weeks for helpful content updates to be fully rolled out.
The rollout has started and once it’s complete, I’ll post a new story on Search Engine Land. Google will also post to the update page at launch and when the rollout is complete.
What types of content do helpful content updates affect?
While these algorithms don’t specifically target any particular niche, Google says these types of content are likely to be most impacted.
- online teaching materials.
- arts and entertainment.
- shopping.
- technology related.
This is because content written in these areas has historically been written more for search engines than for humans.
Based on our analysis, these areas are likely to be impacted more than others by this helpful content update from Google.
We asked Google for specific examples of searches impacted by useful content updates. Here’s what Google told me:
- “When searching for information about new movies, you may have previously come across articles that aggregated reviews from other sites without adding perspective beyond what is available elsewhere on the web. This won’t help much if you’re expecting to read something new, as this update will show more results with unique information, so you’ll be able to see more of what you’ve seen so far. You’re more likely to read something that doesn’t exist.”
Google search executive Danny Sullivan was asked on Twitter to elaborate on what Google means by “online education.” Sullivan’s reply:
“Generally a tutorial, something that is meant to teach something and is not really a formal course. It’s just one example of an improvement, but there are others, and queries about anything can be useful.”
Helpful content updates are a site-wide algorithm
Unlike many Google algorithms, which apply on a per-page basis, this new helpful content update applies to your entire site.
In other words, if Google determines that your site generates a relatively large amount of useless content, your entire site will be affected if it’s written primarily for ranking in search.
This doesn’t just affect individual pages or sections of your site, it affects your site as a whole.
Google doesn’t say exactly what percentage of your site’s pages must be helpful or unhelpful to trigger this classifier, but if it’s your entire site and you have a lot of helpful pages It even states that it affects the entire site.
Again, if you have helpful pages but relatively much unhelpful content, even helpful content and sections of your site will be affected by this update.
Google states that “Removing unhelpful content may help rank other content.”
How to create people-first content – advice from Google
As with previous updates such as the Panda update, core update, and product review update, Google provides a list of questions you can ask yourself about your content to build content that is rewarded with helpful content updates. .
Google shared the following questions about building people-first content:
- Does your business or site have an existing or intended audience that you think would benefit if the content came directly to you?
- Does your content clearly demonstrate direct expertise and depth of knowledge?
- Does your site have a main purpose or focus?
- After reading your content, does anyone feel they learned enough about the topic to help them achieve their goals?
- Do people who read your content feel they had a satisfying experience?
- Have you heeded our guidance on core updates and product reviews?
Also, regarding avoiding search engine first content, Google posed the following questions:
- Is the content primarily intended to attract people from search engines, not for humans?
- Do you create a lot of content on different topics in hopes that some content will perform well in search results?
- Do you use extensive automation to create content on many topics?
- Do you mainly summarize what others have to say without adding much value?
- Are you writing about things just because they seem to be trending, not because you’re writing for an existing audience?
- Does your content make readers feel like they need to search again for better information from other sources?
- I’ve heard/read that Google has a recommended word count, so are you writing to a specific word count?
- Decided to jump into a niche topic area, primarily thinking you could get search traffic without any real expertise?
- Does your content promise to answer unanswered questions, such as suggesting that a product, movie, or TV show has an unconfirmed release date?
Recovery can take months
Google says the algorithm runs automatically. Scores or classifiers are constantly updated.
However, if your site is hit by this helpful content update, it may take months for your site to recover.
Sites have to take the time to prove that they no longer publish content for the sole reason to rank in search engines – being the search engine’s first content experience – and that takes time. increase.
So there seems to be some sort of waiting period (perhaps a validation period) that a site needs to go through to indicate to Google’s algorithms that the site is providing useful content for humans in the first place.
This validation period is automated, and Google continually updates the classifier scores on your site, but even if you make a change today, it’s likely that it won’t be reflected in Google’s rankings for several months. , Sullivan told Search Engine Land.
According to google:
- “Sites identified by this update may find signals that have been applied over several months. We determined that unhelpful content was not being returned over time, so the classification is no longer applied.”
Google uses machine learning to identify unhelpful content
Google uses new machine learning algorithms that can evaluate and identify unhelpful content.
The algorithm should improve over time, between automated machine learning improvements and regular overall algorithm tweaks and improvements by Google engineers.
According to Google, useful content updates look at a variety of signals about your page and site to determine how your page ranks.
As you can imagine, Google didn’t specify which signals were used.
Verified Quality Rater
Google said the search company has verified these new results with quality raters and confirmed that using the system improves Google’s search quality. This is done for most (if not all) of the ranking and user experience improvements Google makes to search.
Again, quality raters don’t directly affect rankings, but help Google’s search engineers see if their algorithms are improving overall search quality.
English search only
This update will initially start searching globally in English.
Google plans to expand to other languages in the future.
currently search only
According to Google, this update is currently only for Google Search. However, Google may cover additional products (such as Google Discover) in the coming months.
Are useful content updates as important as pandas?
For many SEOs who experienced the February 2012 Google Panda update, it completely changed the way SEOs recommend how to create content going forward. Panda is now part of the core update, so it’s still in use today.
This update is very similar to past Panda updates.
As with Panda, SEOs will look back on Google’s helpful content updates and say they’ve made a fundamental shift in their SEO content strategy. Only time will tell, but in the coming weeks we’ll see how big an update this is.
why we care
Google’s informative content updates can be important updates that SEOs look back on as catalysts for change, in terms of the advice they give their clients when building content.
Admittedly, it’s too early to tell how big an impact this update will have on Google’s search results, your site, or your client’s site.
Once updates are rolled out, be sure to monitor your analytics and, if necessary, re-evaluate your content strategy based on the advice Google provided above.
We will continue to report on all the latest developments in useful content updates.
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You can read Google’s official announcement here.
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About the author
Barry Schwartz is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns his RustyBrick, his New York-based web consulting firm. He also runs the Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on highly advanced He SEM topics.You can follow Barry Twitter is here.
