December 2022 Google helpful content update

SEO specialists didn’t even have time to celebrate the cheap and quick content generation before Google dropped another “update focusing on useful content.” Unfortunately, this means that generated texts like these will get mowed down.

Here’s the deal:

• Content should be created by people, for people.
• Content should please the audience, not just be created to meet random expectations.
• The algorithm is used to evaluate web pages and applies to the whole site.
• Not only will useless content be ranked poorly, but also content with a lot of information that’s irrelevant or unnecessary to the user
• Removing useless info from their pages is recommended to improve their ranking in search results.
• The algorithm is automatic, so there are no manual sanctions here.
• After removing useless content, the ranking improvement process can take several months, as long as the site isn’t further filled with low-quality content.
• The update will affect all languages.
• Rolling out will take about two weeks.

The Dec. 2022 helpful content update was released Dec. 5, starting to become more visible today & will take about two weeks to fully roll out. It improves our classifier & works across content globally in all languages. Our help page explains more: https://t.co/MS7hbcBTsp

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 6, 2022

How the helpful content system works

The helpful content system is about rewarding content that makes visitors feel like they had a great experience, while content that doesn’t meet their expectations won’t do as well.

The system generates a site-wide signal, along with many other signals for ranking web pages. Google systems automatically identify content that doesn’t seem to have much value, doesn’t add much value, or is not that helpful for people doing searches.

Any content – not just unhelpful content – on sites with a lot of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in search. If there’s other content on the web, that’s better to show. That’s why removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of other content.

The classifier process is completely automatic, using a machine-learning model. It works everywhere in the world, in all languages. It’s not a manual action or a spam action. It’s just one of many signals Google looks at to rank content.

This means that some content made by people on sites with unhelpful content could still rank well if there are other signals that say that content is helpful and relevant to a search. The signal is also important; sites with much unhelpful content may notice a more significant effect.

Google’s recommendations for creating helpful content are here.