[null,null,[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Search is launching the "helpful content update" to prioritize original, helpful content written by people, for people.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebsites should focus on creating people-first content that provides a satisfying user experience and demonstrates expertise.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eContent created primarily for search engines may be identified as unhelpful and will likely perform worse in search results.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe update introduces a site-wide signal to identify unhelpful content and is being rolled out gradually, starting with English searches globally.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eRemoving existing unhelpful content can improve the ranking of other content on your site.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Google is launching a \"helpful content update\" to prioritize people-first content in search results. This update, which uses a site-wide signal to identify unhelpful or low-value content, rewards content that satisfies users and penalizes content primarily created for search engines. Creators should focus on producing original, helpful content for their audience, demonstrating expertise and avoiding practices like extensive automation or summarizing without adding value. Sites identified with large quantities of unhelpful content may see ranking changes, but this can improve over time if unhelpful content is removed.\n"],null,["# What creators should know about Google's August 2022 helpful content update\n\nThursday, August 18, 2022\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore). Check out our new FAQ on [helpful content and Google Search results](/search/help/helpful-content-faq)\n\n\nGoogle Search is always working to better connect people to helpful information. To this end, we're launching what\nwe're calling the \"helpful content update\" that's part of a broader [effort](https://blog.google/products/search/more-content-by-people-for-people-in-search/) to ensure\npeople see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results. Below is more about the\nupdate and things creators should consider.\n\nFocus on people-first content\n-----------------------------\n\n\nThe helpful content update aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience,\nwhile content that doesn't meet a visitor's expectations won't perform as well.\n\n\nHow can you ensure you're creating content that will be successful with our new update? By following our [long-standing advice](/search/blog/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality)\nand [guidelines](/search/docs/essentials) to create\ncontent for people, not for search engines. People-first content creators focus first on creating satisfying\ncontent, while also utilizing SEO best practices to bring searchers additional value. Answering yes to the questions\nbelow means you're probably on the right track with a people-first approach:\n\n- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?\n- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?\n- Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?\n- After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?\n- Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience?\n- Are you keeping in mind our guidance for [core updates](/search/blog/2019/08/core-updates) and for [product reviews](/search/docs/specialty/ecommerce/write-high-quality-reviews)?\n\nAvoid creating content for search engines first\n-----------------------------------------------\n\n\nOur advice about having a people-first approach does not invalidate following SEO best practices, such as those\ncovered in [Google's own SEO guide](/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide). SEO is a helpful activity when it's applied to people-first content. However, content created\nprimarily for search engine traffic is strongly correlated with content that searchers find unsatisfying.\n\n\nHow do you avoid taking a search engine-first approach? Answering yes to some or all of the questions is a warning\nsign that you should reevaluate how you're creating content across your site:\n\n- Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?\n- Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?\n- Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?\n- Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?\n- Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you'd write about them otherwise for your existing audience?\n- Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?\n- Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't).\n- Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you'd get search traffic?\n- Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there's a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn't confirmed?\n\nHow the update works\n--------------------\n\n\nThe update will start rolling out next week. We will post on our\n[Google ranking updates page](https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history)\nwhen it begins and when it is fully rolled out, which could take up to two weeks. This update\nintroduces a new site-wide signal that we consider among many other signals for ranking web pages. Our systems\nautomatically identify content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful\nto those doing searches.\n\n\nAny content --- not just unhelpful content --- on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content\noverall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that's\nbetter to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.\n\n\nA natural question some will have is how long will it take for a site to do better, if it removes unhelpful content?\nSites identified by this update may find the signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this\nupdate runs continuously, allowing it to monitor newly-launched sites and existing ones. As it determines that the\nunhelpful content has not returned in the long-term, the classification will no longer apply.\n\n\nThis classifier process is entirely automated, using a machine-learning model. It is not a [manual action](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175) nor a spam\naction. Instead, it's just a new signal and one of [many\nsignals Google evaluates](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/) to rank content.\n\n\nThis means that some people-first content on sites classified as having unhelpful content could still rank well, if\nthere are other signals identifying that people-first content as helpful and relevant to a query. The signal is also\nweighted; sites with lots of unhelpful content may notice a stronger effect. In any case, for the best success, be\nsure you've removed unhelpful content and also are following all our [guidelines](/search/docs/essentials).\n\n\nThis update impacts English searches globally to begin with and we plan to expand to other languages\nin the future. Over the coming months, we will also continue refining how the classifier detects unhelpful content\nand launch further efforts to better reward people-first content.\n| Thank you to everyone who's submitted feedback. We received enough reports for this specific update and the feedback form is now closed, however for historical accuracy we left the link in the blog post.\n\n\nIf you have any feedback about this update, you can comment on this\n[thread in our help forum](https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/176644600).\nIf you'd like to give us feedback specific to your site, you can use the\n[feedback form for this update](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiHK67MSjwH8U_dt-DFiMaT-Gp4IGxUmgzBGQcbgR-PQBpEA/viewform).\nWe use your feedback to help our engineers find ways to improve our systems overall.\n\n\nPosted by [Chris Nelson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelso), Search Quality"]]
