We've just gone through FOUR Google updates: GET UN-LOST
There have been FOUR Google updates since late August: Core Update, Helpful Content Update, Spam Update, and another Core Update. Here's how to understand what happened
We have had FOUR back-to-back and overlapping Google updates so far. If you have seen ranking losses or fluctuations, you are not alone! To help you navigate through these tough times, here’s a quick non-overwhelming guide that gets all we know organized.
Breathe: It’s clearer than Google makes it sound.
First to help you identify what hit you:
*If you see organic search traffic decline after October 5, chances are, it is the core update unless you are actually spamming. OR unless “auto-generated” refers to “AI-generated” which still falls under no officially manipulative tactic, as per Google.
Another note: "Helpful content system" is currently only demoting unhelpful content. Google promises to add the "rewarding" component soon.
Core update vs Helpful update at a glance
Both updates seem to have a lot to do with satisfying searchers with great content and smooth/uninterrupted user experience, so what’s the difference? You will hear different opinions and interpretations here. What I understand so far (correct me if I am wrong)
Things to keep in mind:
Core updates are not penalizing, they are rewarding, unlike the other two updates. There’s no recovery as you were not penalized, you just need to become better.
“Fluff” content (content added for the sake of better optimization) may drag you down: “The system automatically identifies content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to people”.
Removing fluff content may help you get rid of the “unhelpful content” classifier but not immediately
Low-quality third-party content may drag you down but this signal seems not to be in effect yet, so if you were affected, it is not that. If you are affected in the future, blocking it may help.
Popular question: My site is down but I still see “spammy” content ranking higher
Content helpfulness or good UX are not decisive ranking signals. There are many others. If you think your more successful competitor’s content is not at all helpful, you may be right but they may send other signals that outweigh that negative one.
Yes, it is difficult to clearly see why one page may over-rank another page. It is a complicated game of positive signals against negative signals. To simplify, if you have great backlinks, they may be overweighed by poor UX in combination with overly SEOed and not particularly helpful content.
You need to have it all.
Glossary
Helpful content system: Google's automated system that generates a signal to rank web pages based on whether their content provides a satisfying experience to search users.
Unhelpful content: Content that does not meet a visitor's expectations or has little value to users. Identified automatically by Google's machine learning model.
Helpful content update: Periodic refinements to how Google's classifier detects unhelpful content. Shared publicly as ranking updates.
Site-wide signal: The helpfulness classification applied to an entire site, not individual pages. Determines if a site has relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall.
