Does Google Helpful Content Update Change Rankings?

Google Search always strives to improve efficiency in connecting users with useful information. To achieve this goal, they will launch a “Google Helpful Content Update”. This is part of an effort that people always see as more original and valuable material. Here’s more information about this update and what SEOs and SEO companies should take into account.

The Google Helpful update is not done

We’ll continue to monitor whether this Google Helpful content update results in a ranking change, but so far we haven’t seen any major changes. Danny Sullivan says it’s still being tweaked and Google will roll out an update when it’s completed.

Danny announced on Twitter “Update isn’t done” and “With this helpful content update, as I said before, it’s part of a continuing effort. Directionally, it’s what SEOs and creators should pay attention to. We’ll continue to tune it, refine it. It matters, which is why we’ve spent so much time talking about it.

Google’s John Mueller said: “I’d give it a bit more time“.

So we will continue to monitor until this useful content update is completed and communicated to you.

Only 20% of SEOs feel the change in ranking since Google Helpful content updates

As we’ve shown above, Google’s helpful content updates so far seem to be quite minor, and please note that the update is far from complete. 

According to a quick Twitter poll by Aleyda Soli, only 20% of SEOs have noticed ranking changes, both positive and negative, since the update. 

The results of the poll are as follows:

• 63% Nothing so far
• 9% Positive impact
• 12% Negative impact
• 16% Haven’t checked

This is in line with what I’m seeing in SEO forums and the Twitter SEO space. We think those who are noticing the change may not be due to a helpful Google content update. Many other external influences lead to a change in the ranking of Google searches.

We will continue to update the news on what is being said outside of this issue.

A few notable points in the Google algorithm

Links Outside Of Webspam

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that he is not aware of any recent search algorithm updates that focus on links beyond the webspam algorithm. When asked about how links will be relevant to Google’s ranking algorithms in the future, he shared a poem like this:

John replied: “There are a lot of search signals, but I’m not aware of any recent link-focused updates (except for link-related webspam updates).” 

So maybe links weren’t a major focus of nearly all of those core upgrades, product review updates, useful content updates, and other recent improvements?

Crawl Site Sections

Google’s Gary Illyes said on the Search Off Last Record podcast that Google crawls certain parts of your site more often and infers the quality of certain parts of your site.

This came out at 9:09 on the podcast.

Improve Your Meta Descriptions

Google has updated its meta description help document with five examples of how to improve your meta descriptions. This was added on Sep 2, 2022, and Google has also made some formatting updates to the page.

You can find examples posted here.

This update will initially affect English searches globally, with Google intending to expand to other languages in the future. Google will also continue to improve how the classifier detects unhelpful content in the coming months, as well as launch new efforts to better reward people-first content. Let’s wait with EverRanks for useful improvements soon!