Google launches the Helpful Content Update to ensure content usefulness
There are already those who have compared it to Panda and Penguin in terms of the possible effects on SEO (or at least on the way professionals will have to rethink some of their SEO strategies), and indeed the premises are bombastic: as of August 25, the rollout of Helpful Content Update, a major new update to Google Search‘s ranking algorithm that focuses on the usefulness of content for humans and people, has begun, promising to make only useful pages stand out in SERPs, precisely, demoting and removing visibility from overtly unhelpful content. For now, this update affects only the Search system (thus not affecting Google Discover or other Google platforms) and is available only for the English language, but it is likely to be extended to other Big’s services and languages.
Google Helpful Content Update, what it is and how it works
In summary, Helpful Content Update is an algorithmic change by which Google aims to eliminate content written for the sole purpose of ranking in search engines and that does not help or inform people.
More specifically, in presenting the update Danny Sullivan wrote that the goal is “to counter content that appears to have been created primarily for good search engine rankings rather than to help or inform people,” and “to ensure that unoriginal, low-quality content does not rank high in Search.” In addition, the Public Liaison for Search adds that Google’s initial internal tests “found that it will particularly improve results related to online education, as well as arts and entertainment content, shopping, and technology” (not because the tests focused on these areas, but because these topics may have larger amounts of target content for the update).
On the technical side, to identify useful content and content that is unhelpful instead designed only to rank well in Search and not to provide benefits to users, Google uses machine learning; the post explains that “[Google’s] systems automatically identify content that appears to have little value, low added value, or is otherwise not particularly useful to searchers”. A variety of signals on the page and on the site will be aggregated to determine a page’s ranking, although (obviously) no more specifics were given.
In any case, the process is automated using a machine learning model, which then allows helpful content to continuously learn, improve and change. From this perspective, it is important to dwell on the words chosen by Google to define its intervention: helpful content update is a “site-wide ranking signal that is always active,” thus applied to the entire site (and not to individual pages) and continuously running-unlike broad core update or changes such as product reviews update, which require periodic updating. In addition, its effects do not produce a manual action or an anti-spam penalty, although for those affected the result is similar to that of a penalty, and at the moment it is not possible to predict the impact of the intervention in terms of the percentage of queries or searches that could be affected, although search engine sources already speak of a “significant” impact.
Other interesting information, Google confirmed to Barry Schwartz that these algorithms have been validated with quality raters and that using this system improves search quality, just as Google validates any kind of ranking improvement before launch.
What is this update for
Simply put, the new site-level ranking signal targets search-engine-first content, that is, content created first to please search engines and gain visibility positions in SERPs, which proves to be of little use to users, to whom it provides no concrete support in terms of information or achieving search intent.
In contrast, Google’s goal is to bring out people-first content, content that is crafted with people’s needs in mind and that ensures a complete and satisfying search experience.
Google’s post specifically states that with helpful content updates it is charting a course to “reward content where visitors feel they had a satisfying experience, while content that does not meet a visitor’s expectations will not perform as well.” Examples of “useless content” include pages that simply aggregate information from other sources without providing any value or unique insights, and more or less between the lines to AI-generated content as well, because bad practices include pages that “do not appear to have been created for, or even by, a person.”
As Sullivan writes, “people don’t find useful content that seems to have been designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers”: for example, if we’re looking for information about a new movie, it’s frustrating to come across “articles that aggregated reviews from other sites without adding perspectives beyond those available elsewhere” because they don’t offer something particularly useful or new. Instead, with this update, we will see more results with “unique and authentic information“, following Google’s mission to “reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find authentic and useful content in Search.”
In practical terms, since it is a site-level and weighted signal (and therefore, sites with a lot of useless content might notice a stronger effect), when the machine learning algorithm determines that a relatively large amount of the published content is unsatisfactory or unhelpful, the entire site might be flagged by this classifier, causing negative effects to the ranking of all pages, even though “some people-first content on sites ranked as having unhelpful content might still rank well, if there are other signals that identify that people-first content as useful and relevant to a query.”
What is useful to know about the helpful content update
As mentioned, for now the update only affects English searches globally, but it is easy to imagine an expansion in the coming months.
The update introduces a new site-level signal that Google considers among many other signals for web page rankings, which allows the search engine to automatically identify content that appears to have little value, low added value, or is otherwise not particularly useful to searchers.
The model that applies this signal to sites is running continuously and allows the system to “monitor newly launched and existing sites“, Google explains.
The post also points out a crucial aspect: from now on, “any content” (and therefore not just non-useful content) found on sites that, according to Google’s criteria, are shown to have relatively high amounts of non-useful content in general is less likely to perform well in Search, “assuming there is other content elsewhere on the Web that is better to surface.” In practice, this site-level ranking signal can affect the rankings of the entire site, including those of higher-quality content.
For this reason, they advise from Google, removing unhelpful content could help the ranking of other content on the site.
Sites affected by this update-and this signal-can in fact recover lost positions and visibility, starting precisely with the removal (or noindexing) of “useless content,” although one must budget for a wait of several months before there are positive effects after the fixes. Although, in fact, Google constantly updates the utility-related scores, there is still a kind of “timeout period” and a validation period that one has to wait to recover (if we have indeed removed enough useless content).
Helpful content update: how to know if content is useful?
At this point, it is crucial to understand what is meant (and what Google means) by usefulness of content.
A first definition is the one we have already presented: useful content is content created with people rather than search engines in mind. In practical terms, to really determine whether a piece of content is truly “people-first” and not “search engine-first” we need to ask ourselves whether we would have created it equally if search engines did not exist or whether this resource really helps readers or customers regardless of Google.
It is again the Google article that then identifies a series of thoughts and best practices that help us determine whether our content is useful and “people-centric,” that is, written with a focus on satisfying user interest and intent first and foremost, while also using SEO best practices to bring added value to the reader. These are five questions to keep in mind when evaluating a piece of content, a positive answer to which identifies a good people-first approach:
- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find your content useful if it came directly to you (without going through Google)?
- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and deep knowledge (e.g., expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service or visited a place)?
- Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
- After reading your content, will a person feel they have learned enough about a topic to achieve their goal?
- Will someone reading your content feel they had a satisfactory experience?
Google then identifies other questions that are instead indicative of an engine-first search approach, and thus may offer a warning sign to reevaluate how we are creating content on the site. However, it is important to note that Google clarifies that these tips “do not invalidate SEO best practices, because SEO is a useful activity when applied to people-centered content,” but content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfactory.
And so, in order to avoid adopting a search engine approach, we must answer negatively all (or most) of these questions:
- Is the content created primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
- Are you producing a lot of content on different topics in the hope that some of it will 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 would otherwise write about them for your existing audience?
- Does your content leave readers feeling like they have to search again for better information from other sources?
- Are you writing respecting a specific word count because you heard or read that Google has a preferred word count?
- Did you decide to enter a niche topic area without any real experience, but mainly because you thought you would get search traffic?
- Does your content promise to answer a question that is actually unanswered (such as suggesting that there is a release date for a product, movie, or TV show that you lack accurate information about, however)?
Gli effetti sulla SEO e sulla produzione dei contenuti
Google’s new HCU (helpful content update) signal is thus an always-on ranker that aims to reduce the amount of low-quality content in SERPs, powered by a site-level ranking signal that identifies and hits search engine-first content.
According to first impressions (and what is transpiring from Google’s official communications) it is likely to be a significant update that could change the way people work in SEO for content creation, although of course it is too early to say how big and significant its impact will be (and we all have in mind the hype around the Page Experience Update, which then turned out to be a signal of little weight so far).
Certainly, it could (and should) hit those who produce content with the overriding (or absolute) goal of increasing search engine visibility and traffic, i.e., the old understanding of SEO, because Google will be looking to promote and increase rankings of content that offers more original perspectives not available elsewhere on the Web, in an effort to increase authenticity and avoid a series of search results that trivially repeat the same thing, the same viewpoint, and the same information, leading to a poor search experience.
According to Marie Haynes‘ analysis, the types of sites affected by this update could include:
- Sites that publish AI-generated content.
- “Niche sites” (unless they do a really good job demonstrating expertise and fully meeting the needs of the researcher).
- Sites that do little more than aggregate information from other online sources.
- Heavy affiliate sites (although many of these have already been heavily influenced by the update on product reviews).
Also under the lens, as noted by Glenn Gabe, content generated by artificial intelligence and through AI models such as GPT-3 and others (which have begun to proliferate and sometimes rank well in recent times) will also end up under the lens, because the goal of the update is “to surface content that will be seen as helping and adding value to the topics searched,” and those who create “search engine-first content, including AI-based content, could suffer.”
Google HCU: new SEO best practices to create useful content
Broadening the analysis, the U.S. expert points out that HCU aims to reward content creators who focus heavily on a topic, have deep expertise in an area, and who can demonstrate first-hand skills and deep knowledge. The advice for SEOs (and SEOs) is therefore to try to “stay in your own lane,” i.e., don’t try to cover too many different topics if we are unable to provide in-depth information for each one.
In this framework, it is therefore more appropriate to focus on what we really have expertise in, while changing the strategic approach: Gabe explicitly calls for “providing top-notch, high-quality content that can really help users, don’t just follow search volume, do not use automation to create a lot of lower-quality content just to target search-volume queries, don’t just summarize what others are saying, don’t artificially increase the word count thinking Google is trying to reward it, don’t promise an answer to a question that has no answer.”
In addition, as already evident with other recent updates, the helpful content update also puts the role of EAT at the center of SEO discourse, particularly in terms of incorporating real expertise into our content strategies.
Lily Ray also provides some interesting insights into a new SEO approach to content creation, and specifically recommends:
- Conduct an objective analysis of our content to assess its quality and the extent to which it meets user expectations, possibly engaging objective third parties to conduct user testing as a means of assessing content quality.
- Eliminate or significantly update content that could be considered “SEO-first” and is not useful to users.
- If there is a significant amount of such useless content on our site that provides no value (traffic, conversions, any other KPI focus), it may be time to consider deleting, not indexing, or consolidating to another relevant position on the site.
- Involve real experts in the content strategy, through direct contributions to the article, interviews, or by getting quotes from experts, to help demonstrate the authenticity of the information.
- Do not rely on keyword research tools and reverse engineering what everyone else has already written as content strategy. Google is getting better at identifying when articles are all saying the same thing and wants unique perspectives that can only come from real human beings with experience.
Helpful content update: how affected sites can recover
We have already made brief reference to possible corrective actions to try to recover lost rankings if our site has been affected by the helpful content update, but we can expand on the considerations thanks to some insights from Marie Haynes (and interpreting what Google has said in its two articles on the topic).
First, let’s reiterate that a site can indeed regain traffic, ranking, and visibility lost due to the new signal if it takes action by correcting (or removing) unnecessary and “search engine-first” content, but that Google’s reevaluation process takes time and could take up to several months to complete.
Corrective action could focus on the following steps:
- Identify what content is created primarily for ranking and develop a strategy to noindex, remove or improve this content.
- Ensure that first-hand experience on the topic is demonstrated on the site and find ways to get others in the industry to recognize our experience and knowledge on such topics.
- Renew content and improve EAT according to Google’s official best practices and guidelines for site owners (e.g., on core updates, product reviews, and or affiliate content), specifically adhering to:
- demonstrate better first-hand experience;
- do more to make themselves known to others as experts (e.g., good content marketing and PR);
- find ways to make content as valuable as possible to users;
- focus on understanding what the researcher intends to do and find and deliver content that meets that need.
- Clarify what the purpose or focus of each page is (and ensure that this focus is first and foremost intended to help people).
- Compare the type of content Google is ranking from competitors for inspiration.
