Google started rolling out the new site-wide helpful content update On August 25th to ensure user-friendly content is the priority and not written solely for search engine ranking.  This roll-out could take several weeks to complete.   

The ultimate objective of this update is to ensure users find high-quality content, aiming to encourage content that feels authentic and useful in search.

It’s important to note that the update will only impact English searches globally at first and then eventually expand to other languages.  The process is entirely automated, using machine-learning algorithms to rank content. 

You will start to see whether you have been impacted as it rolls out but we know that the most impacted will be tech-related, educational, arts & entertainment, and shopping sites.  These niches have been noted to have a search engine-first mentality when producing content. Unfortunately, since it’s a site-wide impact, if a site is hit by this update, it can take months to recover from it. 

So we know that we must build human-first content to avoid this update’s negative impact. Check out our blog: Google’s Helpful Content Update: 6 SEO Tips, for handy search engine optimization tips on the update. I would also recommend that you look at Google’s guided questions around building human-first content. 

Keep an eye out for updates on the latest developments, if you’ve been listening to our content marketing advice, hopefully, you will not be affected by this update.