Google has recently launched the latest update in its “Google’s Helpful Content System.” It is a core update that’s going to heavily change Google’s search algorithms and system.
This update is known as the September Helpful Content Update, and it is going to affect a lot of websites present over search engines.
In this article, we’re going to discuss what this update is, what changes it will make, and which websites are going to be affected.
Without any delay, let’s begin this guide and discuss this new September update !!
What is Google’s Latest Core Update?
Google launched a system called “Helpful Content Update” on August 18, 2022. The main function of this system is to check the quality of each website indexed over the Google search engine. But, this system doesn’t check the content quality based upon its freshness or relevancy, instead its helpfulness.
In simple words, this updated system checks the content based on how much this content is made to help the users rank over the search engines. Generally, the SEO helps the website to rank over the search engines. This often deviates the content from its main purpose of helping the users and instead just tries to rank over the search engine.
In this new September Helpful Content Update, Google is going to punish such websites whose main agenda is to just rank over the SERPs and not genuinely help the users with their content. All the websites that create low-quality or no-quality content and just add the keywords, alt texts, captions, etc, to make the content rank better. In this process, they do not check whether the content is useful for the users or not.
What Google Expects From Your Website Content?
In this Helpful Content Update, Google has clarified that your content should follow the conspiracy of “For The People” and “By The People.” This means your content should be created for the real humans and by the real humans.
Google has pointed out one more factor in this update, as they were completely against AI-generated content firsthand. When Google launched its “Helpful Content Update” in December 2022, it released a simple guideline stating that it doesn’t matter whether the content may be AI-generated or written, but what matters is that it is proofread and edited by humans for the better readability of the readers.
Therefore, if you generate the content from AI and make it useful for the visitors through the human touch, then this content will also rank over the SERPs.
Is This “September Helpful Content Update” A Penalty Update?
This new core update is more of a site-wide ranking signal and not a penalty for the website owners. In this update, you might lose your web page rankings, but you can also retain them after a certain time just by correcting or making your content helpful for the users.
For instance, if you have a website with 2000 webpages over the Google search engine and half of them consist of helpful content while others just hold the SEO ranking factors, all of your page rankings will be down after this update.
It will happen because it is a site-wide ranking signal, not a penalty. In this case, you simply have to check the helpfulness of the entire content of your website.
How Does This Update Affect A Website’s Ranking?
This “Helpful Content Update System” won’t directly lower your ranking; instead, you’ll lose it gradually. Thus, it becomes difficult to figure out that you’ve lost your website ranking because of this update. You have to carefully analyze your website patterns and try to find out the main reason.
If you somehow recognize this reason, then you should directly remove all the non-useful content from your website and upload more helpful content from now on. But, it won’t directly help you to get back your search ranking in one go.
Since it is a weighted signal, you will start getting your ranking back over the course of several months. However, there is a surety that you will get back your ranking.
What Are The Changes Made In Third-Party Content After This Core Update?
As per the latest Google’s September 2023 helpful content update, all the websites having third-party content will face heavy strikes from Google itself. In simple words, if you have added the content of any third-party website or publisher to your main website, you will have to face strikes over your website.
You will face strikes even in cases like you have a subdomain of your main website where you publish third-party or syndicated content. In fact, if you have rented your subdomain website to another website for ranking purposes, you’ll have several issues after this update. Thus, it will directly impact your main website’s ranking.
What Google Advices You Through This Update?
Every website owner should remove the unhelpful content from their website and sub-domains. You should only remain with the quality and helpful content on your website.
However, if you can not remove the content from your website due to any financial or legal reasons, you can simply mark it as “no-index.” It won’t let the Helpful Content Update affect your website anymore and, instead, retain your search rankings.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. Does Google Accept AI Generated Content?
Google has declared accepting AI-generated content from December 2022 through its Helpful Content Update. The only criteria that you have to fulfill is to make sure that this content is helpful for the users. Plus, you also have to make sure that you don’t directly publish the AI-generated content over the website. Instead, you should proofread the content and give it a necessary human touch to make it readable for the visitors. After this process, Google will not only accept it but also rank it.
Q2. When will I get back my ranking lost due to “Helpful Content Update?”
Generally, the websites that lost their ranking due to a broad core update get back their ranking after the next Boradcore update, which generally takes 6-8 months. But you don’t have to wait for the next update to retain your website ranking. Instead, you will get it back in a couple of months maximum.
Wrap Up
Google has recently launched an update on 15 September 2023, and it will take around 2 weeks to implement the search engine and start affecting the websites properly. If you have a lot of useful content on your website that you have uploaded just for SEO purposes, then you should remove all of it or make it useful for the users.
You can even mark that content as “no-index” to save your website from being affected by the repercussions of this update. Also, make sure to remove the content from your main website’s subdomain as well. We hope this article helps you find every essential thing about the newly rolled-out update.