Google’s Helpful Content Update: Everything You Need to Know

Google’s Helpful Content Update has sent the SEO world into a frenzy—but should it? Here’s what you need to know about this Google algorithm update. You can find the podcast show notes and resources at the bottom of this post.

Google announced a major update to its algorithm that will hopefully help people “see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”

As mentioned in the podcast episode, Google is not referring to this as a penalty. However, those who see a precipitous drop in search visibility and traffic will probably feel like it is a penalty.

Anytime Google announces a major update, it’s important to listen. However, we’re not too worried about this update and don’t think you should be either. If you’ve been creating purposeful content meant to serve people and answer their questions, you’ll likely be fine. If not—well, you probably have more to worry about.

This update is a good reminder of the importance of creating helpful content and, only secondarily, optimizing that content for search engines. Those who “trick” Google are only able to do so for so long until Google catches up with them.

We think this update is good news. Don’t get us wrong—there’s always a bit of anxiety around major Google shake-ups, especially when the update has the potential to impact entire websites (more on that below). However, we’ve probably all been frustrated at one point or another by large, thin-content websites ranking above us in searches by gaming the system. Hopefully this makes the search-results landscape a more equitable playing field for all website owners who are trying to create content the right way.

What is the Helpful Content Update?

This update is designed to prioritize “people-first” content. Basically, Google is cracking down on content created specifically for search engines that’s not also designed to help answer people’s questions or otherwise meet their needs.

When is this update rolling out?

Google announced the update would start rolling out the week of August 22, 2022 and that it would take about two weeks for the update to fully roll out. You can check Google’s Search Rankings Update page to check on its status.

We will likely not understand the full impact of this update for a few more weeks.

What makes this update different than Google’s regular algorithm updates?

The Helpful Content Update introduces a site-wide signal to Google’s algorithm. In other words, this is an update that has the potential to impact a website site-wide—not merely on a page-by-page basis. Basically, if Google deems that a website does not have enough helpful content, the entire website will be discounted.

As Google states in its post on the update:

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.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update

I think this is largely the reason that so many are worried.

Should we be worried about Google’s Helpful Content Update?

We don’t think so. If you have been creating content for “people-first,” you’ll likely be okay. This could actually turn out to be a big opportunity for those who have been doing things the right way.

With that said, it’s always good to monitor major updates like this closely.

How do I recover if my website is negatively impacted by the Helpful Content Update?

Google has stated that recovering from this update may take many months. However, its classifier is automated and runs continuously so there is a chance that a website recovers quicker than that… or it could take much longer—you never know with Google 😉

Helpful Links

Recent update from Google
Google’s penguin update
Google’s panda update
Google’s interstitial update
Google’s update page
Google Analytics
Google Search Console
jasper.ai
Semrush
Yoast
Google’s ranking updates page
Facebook Ads
iOS 14 update

Find It Quickly (In the Episode):

0:00 Intro
2:32 Google’s helpful content update
2:37 Biggest update since Google’s Penguin Update
3:45 Google’s panda Update
3:53 Google’s interstitial (pop-up) Update
4:56 Have you been affected by the updates?
5:08 Organic search
5:20 Google Analytics or search console
5:54 Google’s helpful content update: focusing on people-first content
8:09 Jasper.ai
8:48 G2
10:06 Google wants to focus on people-first content
13:23 Remove content that isn’t people-first content
13:57 This will be a site wide update, not just pages
14:36 How can you check for red flags on your website?
15:25 Won’t know ramifications until after the fact
17:18 Action Step: Add our site to Google analytics or verify with google search console
17:40 Action Step: Consider removing “grey or black hat” strategies from your site
17:55 Action Step: Avoid focusing on search engine-first content
20:23 Past updates to digital marketing world