On Thursday August 18th, 2022 the “Google Search Central” Twitter handle announced the release of a major new Google Algorithm Update called the “Helpful Content Update” along with a new site-wide ranking signal for helpful vs. unhelpful content. This appears to be quite a big update and has many similar overtones to Google’s much maligned Panda update from 2011 going after what the engine determines is content created simply to rank highly in the engine and not to help users.

We are not yet certain how long this will take to impact websites, but Google’s official announcement (see link below under “tips”) has stated it could take about 2 weeks to fully roll out, and they have been pretty good at rolling out other updates in this time frame in the recent past.

We are also not exactly certain what the impact might look like, however, from the description Google gives it sounds like it could cause substantial losses for certain types of websites.

Here is everything we know about the Google Search Helpful Content Update

Helpful Content Update Vitals

• Date Started: August 25th, 2022
• Date Completed: September 9th, 2022
• First Impact Reported: Unknown
• Most Impacted Industry(ies): Unknown
• Most Impacted Site(s): Unknown
• Most Impacted Website Types: Unknown
• Most Impacted Content Types: A.I. written content, guest blog posts, low quality content from Fiverr-type sites, Content consistently hitting an exact word count, content that doesn’t provide any additional value (i.e. boilerplate or duplicate content not accompanied with unique content)
• SEO Change Proven to Improve: Find any unhelpful content on your site and rewrite it to make it more helpful.
• Languages Impacted: Only English-based queries
• Regions Impacted: Global

How the Helpful Update Classifier Works
This is a brief overview based on Google’s announcement about how this new classifier and ranking signal works.

1. The classifer starts by analyzing all of the content on your website and works to classify it as either helpful people-first content, or unhelpful made for search engines content.
2. Each page/url/piece of content on a website is then given a classification on if it is helpful or not according to the parameters (exactly or even roughly how this is being done has not yet been identified). Google states that this is the case even if a page only contains some unhelpful content but itself might be helpful.
3. The classifier then generates a site-wide signal that is weighted in a way that the more unhelpful content a site has compared to the whole, the greater the negative impact will be.
4. The classifier runs continuously reviewing all new content on the site and reviewing changes to the content on a site that was previously classified. Because of this the negative impact could slowly grow over several weeks or months; and likewise once all unhelpful content is removed / redone it could take several weeks or months to see any useful recovery.
5. A site with some unhelpful content is still capable of having helpful content on the site rank highly, the impact may not be noticed if you have a small amount of unhelpful content.

Helpful Content Update Facts

• Released in Mid-August roughly 4-months prior to Christmas and 2.5 to 3 months prior to the peak holiday shopping season.
• Update issues a site-wide signal using a classifier that runs continuously.
• Removing bad content will remove the site-wide signal.
• Yes this is a site-wide signal and Google was extremely clear on that point – your entire site is being considered. (this might include your subdomain(s) too)

Media Coverage of Google’s Helpful Content Update

• Search Engine Roundtable – New Google Helpful Content Update To Change SEO Much Like Panda Did

Transparency Report

We add this section when an update may have impacted our clients or our portfolio of websites. Below you’ll find positive and negative impacts to client websites / our websites if those impacts were deemed statistically significant AND if we believe we understand one or more of the reasons behind the adjustment.

no clients impacted yet.

Helpful Content Google Algorithm Update Help

Tips

1. Do not panic. I know that sounds easy to say, but panic caused by a Google algorithm update rarely solves problems with rankings.
2. Sites with a lot of what Google determines to be “unhelpful content” will likely notice a stronger negative impact to their rankings and traffic.
3. There are no tools that currently evaluate all of the content on site to determine if it is helpful or unhelpful or if it might be considered people-first or search engine first content. You must evaluate that content on your own. Look for the content on your site that takes the biggest hit and think about why Google might find this content unhelpful.
4. Google has recommended trying to make unhelpful content more helpful or to eliminate that content completely (a noindex, nofollow tag should accomplish this – see FAQs below for more).
5. Google has stated that the classifier which creates this site-wide signal runs continuously unlike Panda and Penguin when they first launched. That means once you fix your content issues you should see faster-than-normal improvements
6. Read Google’s guidance on the Helpful Content Update from their website here: What creators should know about Google’s helpful content update
7. Hire an awesome SEO agency either one in your local area or one talented at finding and fixing issues related to algorithm updates *hint* you are reading our website *hint*.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Does Google Consider Unhelpful Content or Made for Search Engines Content?
In their announcement Google said if you want to evaluate your content to see what is “unhelpful” or “content made for search engines”, ask yourself these questions about each piece of content:

• Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
• Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
• Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
• Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
• Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
• Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
• Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).
• Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
• Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?

What does Google Consider People-First or Helpful Content?
In their announcement Google said if you want to evaluate your content to see if it is “helpul” or “people-first” content you should ask yourself these questions about each piece of content:

• Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
• Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
• Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
• After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
• Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
• Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?

How is Google Determining This New Ranking Signal?
While Google released quite a bit of information about this new ranking signal and the update (see link above under “tips”) they didn’t really spell out how they are doing it in precise details. They only mention using a ‘classifier’ to determine if content is helpful or not, then a weighted system to derive the site-wide signal. Our best guess is that Google engineers have trained a Natural Langauge Processing A.I. to evaluate content and determine if it is helpful or unhelpful based on a set of criteria (their announcement does state that the update uses Machine Learning). If the engineers were confident in this (and yes they have likely tested it in the SERPs already) it would allow them to set this machine learning classifier loose on their ranking data and allow it to operate continuously as they have stated.

One thing the materials do not make clear enough is if a document could be partially considered unhelpful and then given a score by this classifier.

How Will I Be Able to Tell What is Considered Unhelpful Content on My Site?
For now you need to simply use your best judgement. As word of this update spreads my guess is we’ll see SEO tool providers like Ahrefs and SEMrush race to make a quality tool that can analyze content and classify it in a similar fashion. We might even see a new reporting metric in Google Search Console to help us identify what is / is not helpful content on a website.

Unfortunately, for now you should review Google’s documentation and attempt to classify your content yourself. If you do not feel confident in this task you should seek out the advice of an SEO expert.

If you used any of the following to generate content on your site, you should start by examining it and how well the content performs once this update rolls out.

• • A.I. content writer that generated full content instead of an outline or brief.
  • Low price writer from Fiverr, Yonipp, or other content marketplaces where low prices are the main attraction.
  • Manufacturer provided content for products / software / apps.
  • Hired a low cost “content agency” from an overseas vendor.
  • Paid an SEO agency ~$500 / month and they created a lot of blog / service page content under this flat-rate pricing
  • Hired a writer who guaranteed an extremely specific number of words (i.e. 840-860 words for all articles) versus hiring writers who wrote the article in as many words as it took.

  One way you might consider evaluating this content is by building a custom report in Google Analytics 3 (Universal Analytics) where you can filter landing pages usng RegEx to show only the pages you suspect might be considered unhelpful. Watch this report as the update rolls out and see if your organic search traffic from Google specifically drops off heavily (so Medium -> Source -> Landing page). If it does your suspicions may be confirmed and you can start to either noinded or rework that content.

  (note: I am unaware of how to do this in Google Analytics 4 which is so far a gigantic disappointment)

  Can I Noindex Unhelpful Content to Remove the Classification?
  This would be a prudent measure and in most cases should be something you can do quickly, unfortunately Google did not detail this in their announcement. However, John Mueller a Search Advocate at Google did reply on Twitter an say that noindex should work.

  noindex is fine. Consider if all we see are good signals for your site, that’s a good sign. That said, as a user I’d feel kinda weird, you land on a good page, and the rest is bad? Why would you do that? Short-term noindex is a good way to start, but usually it’s not a few pages.

  — 🥔 johnmu (personal) updated for 2022 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 18, 2022

  If you do get hit by this update I would highly recommend noindexing the content that got hit first if it is not critical content (i.e. sales/lead generating landing pages, home page, etc…). For example a blog post or a market report from 10 years ago.

  I would also urge caution about noindexing possibly worthwhile content because you assume it will get hit based on some online blog post, social post, or TikTok / YouTube video.

  Will Unhelpful Content on My Subdomain Harm My Main Domain Rankings?
  Famed SEO Eric Enge asked this same question of Google’s Search Liasion Danny Sullivan on Twitter, the answer was basicall “it depends”. Danny official stated

  “We tend to see subdomains apart from root domains ” – Danny Sullivan

  But then went on to say that it would depend on multiple factors.

  Some clarification on Google’s Helpful Content Update from @dannysullivan. Subdomains may be treated separately from the main domain. My educated guess is whether or not it is depends on the degree of integration (such as how they interlink). https://t.co/7axQOq9VYR

  — Eric Enge (@stonetemple) August 19, 2022

  SEOs have argued for decades about how subdomains impact the main domains overall rankings and when some UGC websites saw recovery post-Panda by moving users to subdomains it was believed that was because Google treated each one as their own website (it should be noted here that YouTube a UGC site owned by Google was full of low quality channels at the time and saw massive gains during Panda). Since that time SEOs have argued how, when, and if Google would treat a subdomain as part of the main domain, with many believing that if the two are highly integrated they would be treated as one. For example if you hosted your blog at blog.myawesomewebsite.com, wrote about content relevant to your audience, and frequently cross-linked to your site then Google would likely begin to treat the subdomain as part of the main domain. However, if each subdomain represented something different, for example each school in a district having a subdomain and the main domain being the district’s main website then Google may treat each subdomain as a separate website.

  If you do have a blog or microsite on a subdomain such as blog.myawesomewebsite.com when this update finishes rolling out you may very well be able to tell if Google is treating your subdomain as part of your main site. This would be especially true in extremes to both the positive and negative of this update:

  Examples:

  • Your subdomain blog is full of AI generated content which Google deems to be unhelpful AND you see your target money pages on the main site lose rankings / traffic / conversions from Google search.
  • Your subdomain blog is full of amazing, in-depth, high-quality content which Google deems as helpful AND you see your target money pages on the main site gain in rankings / traffic / conversions from Google search.

  Even if you do not measure a correlated drop on your main domain but your subdomain does suffer losses due to having low-quality unhelpful content on it, you may want to start working to fix that content based on the reality that Google could apply this unhelpful label over to your main site at any time (and more to Google’s point because it appears to not be helping real human users at all).

  I am a Real Estate Agent / Broker, My Listings Content are Indexed and Automated, the MLS Does Not Allow Me to Add Custom Content. Whill This Update Impact My Site?
  We are not certain. Based on the ‘people-first’ definition the answer to this would be “yes”. However, Google’s helpful vs. unhelpful classification is a little more murkey and appears more focused on if the content itself is deemd not useful to users. For example if you sell real estate in Ohio but your IDX is pushing rental listings. If this algorithm is capable of decerning this difference (which it might be) yoru rental listing content then might be classified as unhelpful and your whole site might be see a negative impact.

  I Am a Small Online Retailer. All of My Product Descriptions Are From the Manufacturers. Will My Site Be Impacted?
  Unfortunately, I think this will likely be the case. Manufacturers decscriptions are duplicated across the web and were already detrimental during Google’s first release of their Panda algorithm which had similar goals a decade ago. Of course technology has come a long ways so engineers might have built-in something to keep this from hitting your website. We will not really understand if there’s an impact or the magnitude until weeks after it begins rolling out.

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