On the 18th of August 2022, Google declared that an algorithm change known as”Helpful Content Update “Helpful Content Update,” was scheduled to be released shortly.
The 25th of August, 2022, was when the rollout was officially launched. It will take about two weeks to be completed.
If you’re the one responsible for creating or managing the content of a website in any way and you’re probably dealing with many concerns, such as:
What is the Helpful Content Update?
What kinds of websites will be affected?
First, you’re thinking: ” Should I be worried?”
When you finish this post, I’ll not only answer your question but also explain what you should take action regarding the change (if you need to do anything).
I’ll explain:
What exactly are you required to accomplish
How long will you have to wait until you see outcomes? ( spoiler: it’s probably not the same speed as you’d like.)
Sidenote: The irony of my attempt to write useful content on the Helpful Content Update isn’t lost on me.
So, what’s the useful content update?
What is the Helpful Content Update?
“The Helpful Content Update is a Google search algorithm update that is designed to enhance the quality of results of searches and decrease the number of “low-quality content.”
Doesn’t sound complicated.
But what exactly is low-quality content?
As per Google, the definition of low-quality content includes the following:
Unoriginal
Thick and lacks depth
Written to make people look bad instead of to assist people
They wish to cut down on the amount of times users find a webpage in search results. After that, the user decides it’s not helpful and returns to the search results to look for a better option.
Particularly, they wish to minimize the rank potential of sites that contain lots of irrelevant content, particularly when the content on the website is judged not relevant to the site’s main topic.
In reality, this Helpful Content Update is indeed going to be rolled out throughout the site, according to an expert in conversation algorithms, Glenn Gabe, who had with Google’s Search Liason.
The reason Google has released this Helpful Content Update
Google announced its Helpful Content Update to increase the satisfaction of customers.
Your customers should be satisfied so they return to make use of your eCommerce store for the next time.
Google would like people to continue returning to its results for search and again.
In order to do this, the first result that users click on must be
The ideal solution to their question
Clear enough (without getting too much detail)
Trustworthy
Useful
Google has an extensive history of making algorithm updates designed to devalue poor-quality content.
Panda, an algorithm update that was released in 2011, was an attack against “content farms.”
Content farms were sites that put up hundreds or even thousands of webpages (using almost exclusively scraped or sloppy content) to be ranked for the most keywords possible -with the aim being to attract users to the site and display them affiliate and advertising links.
Panda was a powerful algorithm update that impacted 11.8 percent of searches ( at the time) and also affected the way in which the SEO industry functioned.
Websites could choose to:
Rewrite all their low-value content (or take it off)
Don’t bother with the website completely, and begin another.
Panda remains part of the algorithm that is in use today.
It used to be changed frequently before becoming a part of the algorithm’s core, and likely, it was regularly updated during the Broad Core updates.
It’s not an algorithm that runs in real-time independently from the main (as was explained through Gary Illyes, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google).
Panda removed the clutter from the results of searches. The websites have adapted, and the search results have improved because of it. However, Google owners of content farms have come up with new methods to circumvent the system, and content that is not of high quality is still able to make it into the results of searches.
Now, you may be thinking that my quoting multiple times in the article be considered a sloppy copycat because the content comes from another site.
Simply, no. The sections that precede and follow this one are my “added perspectives” about the update.
I’m not reproducing the text or publishing it without comment. I’m not putting the original article through copywriting software, which will mix up the text and employ synonyms to substitute words from that original post.
This article is a dissection and a simplified version of the initial post to be beneficial to a group of people who may not be acquainted with how SEO’s algorithm (or SEO as a whole) functions.
It’s Already Tried and Tested (More-or-less)
Then, at the end of the article, author Danny Sullivan explains that the Helpful Content Update is connected to a different update from the past 12 months, dubbed”the ” Product Review Update.”
Similar to the Helpful Content Update, the Product Review Update focused on encouraging originality and reducing the value of unoriginal, lightweight, aggregated, and light review pages.
Affiliate marketers earn money by getting people to click on their links and go to the items they reviewed. But purchasing every review item costs money. Some choose to “borrowing” reviews from elsewhere.
It’s much simpler to create the Top Ten list if 50 percent of the content included in your review has been “borrowed” from other review websites. Even if they’ve truly credited the writer, the reader will be getting an unprofessional reading experience.
“Hey I’ve saw the exact same view on three different websites. What can I do to be able to know exactly what [the product] is? ?”
To prevent this from happening and increase the credibility of reviews, Google released the Product Review Update, and review websites were hit, and some lost up to 50% or more of search traffic.
As it appears, it appears that the Helpful Content Update is intended to duplicate this on other subjects, too.