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With over 85 percent of the search market share globally, Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine in the world. To maintain its leader status, the company frequently updates its algorithms to filter out content that is unlikely to meet user query goals.
The company’s “helpful content updates” strive to weed out unhelpful content or “filler” that is added merely to improve rankings without bringing any value to the search. Google’s most recent helpful content update, which was announced in September and implemented over the following weeks, will “tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines,” according to the company. The update will “help make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn’t rank highly in Search,” Google added. The changes will be driven by Google’s new “improved classifier,” and will apply to both Google Search and Google Discover.
What Does This Update Mean for My Content?
The new classifier was designed to target content that was created to rank well in search rather than help searchers. Essentially, if you are producing content solely to drive search engine visibility and traffic, you might be affected by this update. Additionally, the September update will also apply to non-English sites.
In the announcement, Google noted that individuals or companies hosting content for other parties will also be affected.
“If you host third-party content on your main site or in your subdomains, understand that such content may be included in site-wide signals we generate, such as the helpfulness of content,” said the company. “For this reason, if that content is largely independent of the main site’s purpose or produced without close supervision or the involvement of the primary site, we recommend that it should be blocked from being indexed by Google.”
The update was also designed to overcome efforts to make content seem fresh by, for example, redating old content, or adding or removing material from old content to pass it off as new content. The company said its newest classifier update won’t affect people who follow best practices of content generation.
“If you’re producing helpful content, then you don’t need to do anything; in fact, this system may be good for your site, as it is designed to reward helpful content,” said the company. “If you’ve noticed a change in traffic, you suspect may be related to this system (such as after a publicly posted ranking update to the system), then you should self-assess your content and fix or remove any that seems unhelpful.”
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