The Helpful Content Update - Reflecting on What Happened

The September 2023 Helpful Content Update caused thousands of websites to lose organic (SEO) traffic from Google in the span of a few days, and Google's March 2024 Core Update came with some new developments to Google's former "Helpful Content System." Learn about the patterns Lily Ray has seen in her work and her research surrounding this update and her advice for affected websites.

#helpfulcontentupdate #SEO #GOogle

[RoyalCaribbeanBlog]

Always love your updates. Super frustrating with HCU/October core update. What's more frustrating isn't that Google went after "over SEO'd" sites, but they ignored big media sites that do exactly the same thing.

[blog_bizznass]

Great video. You mentioned how most of the sites you have seen hit by these updates have a similar pattern, which is "best of" heavy articles and affiliate links. I do agree with that, but is that no also what many of the winners are also doing? Forbes for example, are pumping out so many of those types of articles...are they able to circumvent the update punishment base don content because their perceived authority is so high? Curious your thoughts on the distinction.

[MichaelSaves]

Thanks for this video. So many good points. I have implemented changes to my site since HCU, but I would not say they’ve been bold. Two reasons: 1) I am getting search traffic from other search engines and I’m worried about losing that traffic on top of the 90% loss from Google. 2) Some of the sites that now outrank me actually wrote their content based on my original articles and others are forum posts that I can’t say are more helpful than mine. In fact, some of my articles have dozens of comments from users than I would consider just as helpful as Reddit. I think you would see more affected site owners taking bold action if the ranking changes made more sense. Maybe we will have more clarity in the coming weeks. Thanks again for sharing your expertise.

[katiecaftravel]

I have a travel blog and I will admit is pre-HCU I was keyword chasing, not the worst offender but I did have a "quotes" article which I deleted immediately post-HCU. The odd thing, and what I've seen across the board with other sites, is that the keyword-chasing articles were the ones that still ranked post updates. Anyway, I deleted these articles and still fell an additional 50% in this latest March update. I had taken ridiculous efforts to improve, redo, prune irrelevant affiliates, etc, since September 2023 and this has made no difference.

In addition, my new super high-quality articles that I've put massive effort into have not ranked at all.

[StephanieManley]

This was great. I have felt that many of the bloggers taking the same advice in small niches have pummeled the traffic. I appreciate someone else stating that openly.

[jessicadrier]

I've been analyzing the SERPS for all the keywords that I used to rank for and I think for my situation it's more about what websites are now taking the first page(s) places rather than my website being hit. For example, I used to rank for a keyword "best camping in California" and now the top 10 is all just big-name sites, Reddit, state park sites, etc. (And often the same site has 2 top spots). You would think this says that I had the searcher intent wrong, but as a user who often googles these types of keywords for my travel planning, I don't want to see a Reddit post from 10 years ago or a post by the Dyrt. I want to read from people who have actually camped at those campgrounds and/or a travel blog who maybe camped at a few but camps often and knows what to look for in a good campground and discusses that in their article.

[yamahamusicians]

This is hands down the most useful video I have seen on this subject. One of my sites, no affiliate links, always original content on the niche and all written by me, went from page one to page nowhere almost overnight. And until now, having watched this video, I could never really get my head around why? But taking a step back I can now see it. The site is way too similar to thousands of other sites out there and there is also a lot of date sensitive content that needs to be noindex because although parts of that content may be interesting it is, in reality, not longer relevant in Google's eyes. One thing I did notice is that forums have either not been affected or have actually moved up. I run a large forum with a WordPress front end. The forum has been fine but the front end site dropped. Anyway, thanks so much for this video. It has given me a path to go down where there was none before👍

[SimonStJohn]

The sites hit were not just ads +/ affiliates. They were sites that compete for Googles commissions or ad revenue. Not saying a huge number of rubbish sites don't need to be dealt with...they do. But in the process there's an alterior motive for Google to take out the annoying competitors that are 'using' Google (as they see it) to intercede in markets Google wants. Travel is a good example.

[niche-pursuits]

Lily, exceptional video! During the video, you mentioned that one of the patterns of sites that were hit the hardest is that most or virtually all of their content was targeting "SEO keywords". In the data that you see, do you believe that the total % of "SEO keyword" content for a site is a major reason for a site getting hit with the HCU? If so, do you believe that diluting the amount of overall SEO type content with more non-keyword focused (news, updates, other types of content) could eventually lift the punitive HCU from a site?

I believe a site owner should of course update/correct individual SEO articles to improve the helpfulness of those as well. But curious if you believe sites like Forbes and others that publish tons of non-SEO content alongside lots of SEO content is a big reason they may have been spared. And could publishing more non-SEO focused content help site owners recover?

[dimitrij]

Hi Lily, why Google is ranking forums from 2012 infront of everything? What's helpful there?

[MRAROCKERDUDE]

Some things I did within a month of the Sep HCU:
- No Indexing Poor Pages
- Deleting Some Pages
- Adding Extensive, Detailed About Page
- Adding Contact Info Throughout Site
- Author Name on Each Page linked to About Page
- Axed Vignette Ads completely
- Drastically Cut In-Page Ads
- Improved/Updated Old Content

Still yet to see any movement upwards. If there’s no increase in the next few weeks with the March Core, I’ll have to become an employee again (I am currently a full-time niche site owner)

[JamesDooley]

Superb analysis and one of the best iv seen on the HCU. You are absolutely correct that the training generally is to carry out the same keyword research, clustering for new pages and then they say write correlated content (meaning it’s very similar to what’s already there).

I have a question on the “noindex” tag. And if you have a set of pages for compliance, trust, accreditations, testimonials etc That don’t really get searched or will drive traffic from rankings. Then would you noindex all of this (eg like t&cs, editorial policy, careers page etc)

And if these are in footer then would you set these all to no-follow links? Just interested how far you use the noindex tag?

[Hardbacon]

Thanks for a video. We already deleted the bottom 10% of our post based on ratings by multiple humans. While some post might be less relevant based on their age, and so on, we have never been in the business of publishing useless content. But the takeaway from the video is to no-index or delete content that are no longer performing on Google. We will delete another 10% and just keep the very best. Hopefully, Google start loving us a little more after that.

[cgrossi]

This was a really well done video and I appreciate the care and consideration you showed to those affected. This update seems to have affected many of the sites in my network this time unfortunately after years of seeing minimal affects from the algorithm changes. I agree with what you're saying about Google needing to find a way to differentiate between so many sites with similar content. I really think they fumbled their methods of differentiating that content and hopefully that changes with future updates, but we'll see. For example, in one of my niches it seems like their method of deciding between which content to rank higher was to simply choose content that was from large, well-established news and media companies, even though it was more generic, while crushing the smaller bloggers with more expertise and better takes on those topics.

[mattbrown]

Great video, lots of basic stuff that has been put out on X over snippets of info for the past few months. Let's see where this goes!

[dmy_tro]

What if the search results weren't affected but Discover just dropped to near zero numbers? Is that HCU? Is that something else? We're getting tens of thousands of visitors per day from search, but Discover just refuses to show any progress.

[dicasdetop]

thank you Lily, yours tipos always motivates me and its like a lighthouse for me to make sure what I should do in future.

[thebikeracer]

The one thing no one is talking about is Google revenues. Everyone is talking about their own sites. But Google has to make money. Either they are giving up their revenue from niche sites or they figured out a way to either maintain revenue or increase it. We need to answer this question if we want to understand the updates. Their goal is to make money…the don’t care how they do it, they just want to do it!

[JeffRiddall]

Great analysis Lily with the underlying theme being Google has released these punitive updates over the years to weed out those publishers looking to game the system in search of profile, which may work for a while, but generally doesn't end well. At 12:20 you mention "how is Google supposed to choose who gets to be #1, or 2 or 3..." and here we have to remember this is where other algorithmic factors kick in to determine who deserves visibility. So, recovery is possible (in time) if site owners go back and fix/remove those items which they likely knew were questionable in the first place. This said, SGE/AI assisted search is going to change everything again in the not too distant future in any case.

[moadoodahmad]

I was ranking 350+ keywords in top 3. Niche site (not blog) more than 2 years old. But on 8th march my 300+ keywords vanished from SERP but pages were indexed. Then on 12th march all pages got back to their old top position. But on 14th march they again vanished and not back since now. 70% of pages are ecommerce categories and filters don;t have AI content. My 9 years of experience don't have any clue in this.