Google’s Spam + Core + Helpful Content Update: Everything You Should Know!

Google's new monster search update, explained

Google’s current Core Algorithm Update is rolling out!

We knew it would be big (Google hinted it would several times previously). It includes many parts (to make our lives even easier!) and it looks mostly content-focused:

Helpful Content System is Now Part of Core Updates

Hardly have we digested those two updates (Helpful and Core Updates), they are now merged! This makes auditing any possible impact even more challenging!

What does it mean in simple words?

• Helpful content updates won’t likely be ever announced anymore (there will be only core updates from now on)

• We haven't really seen a good recovery since the September update which was the most dramatic so far. So at this point, it's all about theorizing and guessing which we should still be doing to have any data to rely on in the future!

Google’s new Helpful Content FAQ claims that:

• The helpful content system is page level but it can be sitewide if there’s a large % of unhelpful content on your site

• Removing unhelpful content from your site may help your other pages regain the rankings.

Cyrus Shepard examined 50 sites and found some interesting correlations!

• Excessive and sticky ads (especially sticky video ads) put your site at an increased risk of being hit by a Helpful Content System (We already know that from Google and Glenn Gabe).  Clean up your ads if you were impacted!

• Writing in the first person may help you avoid being hit by HCU (or recover). Not that it is a direct signal but it strongly correlates with Google's "first-hand experience" guidelines.

Lily Ray published an early list of losers and winners of the current update which seems to show that Google aims at diversifying results (sites previously dominating organic SERPs are losing a lot of visibility):

Fingers crossed: This has been very well-needed!

New Google Spam Policies

Google released an update to its spam policies this March and shortly after that it also announced the new Core Update which is rolling out in combination with the spam update. On top of that, Google sent lots of manual action notifications to website owners referring to the new spam guidelines.

Note: The spam update was announced complete yesterday (March, 20). The Core/Helpful Update is still running.

In other words, Google is hitting spam practices both manually and algorithmically, so if you see a decline in rankings but no manual action notification, you should still audit your site for potentially violating the newly updated spam policies.

So which sections were updated?

Answering this question is important because the timing of introducing these policy updates shows that both manual penalties and algorithmic updates are focusing on these updated areas.

1. Scaled content

Google has been advising against scaling and automating your content strategy for many years. Now they have expanded this recommendation with a few examples:

• Use of generative AI to create content for your site

• Scraping content (from RSS feeds, search results, etc.) and using it on your site without providing any unique angle or context

• Stitching content from many sources and using it on your site (again, with no unique value-add)

This is the first time Google has mentioned AI-generated content as something they don’t allow to rank, but they include it in the “scaled” content section. This may be interpreted as they don’t like when AI is used to create a lot of content or when the majority of a site is created this way.

2. Expired domains

Expired domains are those that become available when the owner forgets or neglects to pay a registrant to keep them. In many cases, these domains may have some authority and/or link equity. For this reason, SEOs have been investing in expired domains to use this authority and rank content in Google faster (as the authority takes time to build).

Expired domains have been used in two major ways:

• New content is hosted on an expired domain (usually vaguely relevant) for it to rank

• The domain is 301-redirected to a third-party site allowing that site to benefit from the link equity

Google now includes expired-domain SEO as one of the spam tactics but the examples are somewhat extreme:

• Affiliate / gambling content published on expired gov and school domains

• Expired non-profit organizations’ domains are used to sell (questionable) medical products, etc.

These examples may indicate that Google is only after extreme cases of using expired domains this time but they may target more generic use cases in the future.

3. Parasite SEO

Parasite SEO is a non-official name of an SEO tactic when low-quality content is placed on a trusted domain for SEO purposes. Google refers to this tactic as “site reputation abuse.”

Google’s examples mostly list use cases when the content is not relevant to a trusted domain.

The guidelines also emphasize a lack of editorial oversight over third-party content.

Niche Site Metrics published a list of sites that were deindexed in the early days of this update. Most of them are affiliate sites with no particular niche (publishing “linkbaity” headlines daily). But some looked pretty legit to me, at first glance. Take a look and let me know if you are seeing any patterns / trends here:

Again, it is still too early to make any conclusions. Google is asking us to be patient (looking at businesses losing huge money), so let’s watch and see!!