You probably haven’t heard about this but Google are launching what they’re calling the “helpful content update” that’s apparently part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.
I checked out their article and wanted to review in depth what they shared to give me a better understanding of what this update entails and why they may be doing it. Any bolding below is added by me, my comments are in italics.
So, what did they share?
“The helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they’ve had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn’t meet a visitor’s expectations won’t perform as well.”
So, this screams to me of an increase in search user data. CTR, clickbacks, time on site, volume of reader’s scream of delight, facial scan proving delight is legitimate etc etc (I know I tweeted this but I found it funny both times). Not only this but a way to conjoin this information with insights from their crack team of scurrying minions.
How can you ensure you’re creating content that will be successful with our new update? By following our long-standing advice and guidelines to create content for people, not for search engines. People-first content creators focus first on creating satisfying content, while also utilizing SEO best practices to bring searchers additional value.
Here Google pretend that they’ve always cared about their search results being of high quality rather than good enough. The truth of the matter is that they’re shit scared that AI created content will 1) Make their search results a mess and 2) Make their ‘advanced’ algorithms look as thick as pig shit as my dear Grandad would have said.
So now they’re going all wholesome. People 1st! They know that this ‘update’ will stall content creators plans to spam the fuck out of the internet with their AI content (however well developed it is). In all likelihood, like everything else, they’ll likely go for the small fry with their generalist ‘niche’ blogs that were selling links anyway.
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?
lol, if you’ve written about a specific topic before then it means that you’re allowed to write about it… It’s an amusing admission from Google that they’re likely showing results that are as useful as a senior social media executive.
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)?
Anyone who is making money online via content will already be creating the best content they can already to increase its chance of ranking and show visual trust signals to the user/buyer so I’ll presume they’ll be ok? Demonstrating first hand experience by ‘using’ a product can be easily faked as well as showing a depth of knowledge.
I’ll let you content creators in on a little secret, if you want to learn a decent amount about a topic, use a little known search engine called Google. Most of what you need will be in the top 20 results…
Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
In a way I kind of get this but there could be many reasons why a skilled and knowledgable person may be sharing their ideas and opinions on a completely different site. Again, I think this is Google trying to control what and where people put information online to make their lives easier (this is an understandable request considering people fall over themselves to do whatever they recommend).
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Did the reader click back into the SERPs?
Did our team of minion website reviewers click the happy face or the sad face?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
Not really sure this is much different to above? Unless this is to do with site usability, web design or they really are using those little cameras on your computer. Smile! x
Negative signals?
SEO is a helpful activity when it’s applied to people-first content. However, content created primarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfying.
I would love to see the data behind the ‘strongly correlated’ point. I mean I don’t really doubt it because a large amount of content online is utter shite but this is the game that Google has created. They have helped shape how people create content and so they have to take part of the blame for why searchers are unsatisfied with their results.
As previously mentioned, it isn’t so much about giving the user ‘amazing’ results (although they’d probably like to) but rather that they give the user enough to ‘feel’ that their search has been satisfied. An interesting distinction.
Answering yes to some or all of the questions is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you’re creating content across your site:
Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
Again, the smart bastards have been covering this base for years because it actually ranks better. Who’d have thought that including vital information, answering the questions that people have on a topic and adding your own unique spin would be such a tricky concept?!
Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
Will be interesting to see how some of the authoritative generalist sites like news websites do with this ‘update’ – They obviously tend to cover a lot of different topics and aren’t specialists just because they’ve got ‘journalists’. If the behemoths manage to keep their traffic then you have to ask why they included this part in their commandme… propagan… article.
Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
And here comes the crux of the matter. The little bit they were just trying to slip in… Extensive automation, now how could that be done? I definitely won’t be doing that!
Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
I mean yeah, this is the internet. We all steal ideas from one another without adding any value whatsoever. Deal with it Top G. This goes back to adding your own unique spin whether it’s a viewpoint, theory or group of ideas. Added value can be pretty much anything as long as it’s semi relevant because Google doesn’t know any better…
Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
A trend can nearly always be brought back to another ‘relevant’ subject in some way or other, however tenuous the link but yeah, make sure that you only write about rubbish for your waste management client(s) and leave trending topics alone.
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).
No, you don’t but the SERP’s do. There isn’t a ‘specific’ word count because different topics require different levels and volumes of information. Example, You’re writing 500 word articles for keywords where the results feature 2000+ words then good luck!
Additional information
This update introduces a new site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages. Our systems automatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.
I probably should have moved this part higher because a new site wide signal is interesting… Automatically judging low value content as a whole rather than at a specific page level.
Have their minions been able to put patterns together that state that low value content all has *these variables* in common so that they can automatically judge things without looking at the content itself?
This ‘update’ will be rolled out slowly, likely with little feedback until they choose to turn the dial and amp it up a bit.
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.
I liked this point. Sites that feature unhelpful content will have the rest of their results ‘diluted’. This is an interesting move and is probably the part that is used as a scare tactic to get SEO’s/content people/whoever to remove or edit content to ‘save’ the rest of their results. Also sounds a bit like Panda v2 to me. Get rid of your shit content because we don’t want to crawl and index it anymore!
A natural question some will have is how long will it take for a site to do better, if it removes unhelpful content? Sites identified by this update may find the signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this update runs continuously, allowing it to monitor newly-launched sites and existing ones.
Our continuously running tool that can review things automatically will take months to review your shitty site, sorry!
This classifier process is entirely automated, using a machine-learning model. It is not a manual action nor a spam action. Instead, it’s just a new signal and one of many signals Google evaluates to rank content.
Minion and user data —> Machine learning. Refine, adjust, refine. Continuous automatic automation. Should expect huge changes *crickets*
This means that some people-first content on sites classified as having unhelpful content could still rank well, if there are other signals identifying that people-first content as helpful and relevant to a query. The signal is also weighted; sites with lots of unhelpful content may notice a stronger effect. In any case, for the best success, be sure you’ve removed unhelpful content and also are following all our guidelines.
This is the excuse for the newspapers and other large media sites ranking well. Hmmm, what could those additional signals be?
Right, apologies for all that. I wanted to have a deeper think into this update and thought that writing it would be a better way than thinking on it or discussing it with someone. Hopefully it has been of use, even if just for some light comic relief away from your daily grind.
One of the primary reasons that I stopped writing on here was because I stopped finding topics to write about. If I keep my ear to the ground then I might add some stuff on here now and again.
Any additional thoughts? Anything that I’ve missed that is glaringly obvious? Anything that you disagree with? Let me know in the comments or on Twits.