On March 5, Google, the world’s largest search engine, rolled out algorithmic enhancements that affected millions of websites – some to the point they no longer appear in search results.
Google dominates internet searches, comprising over 80% of all global search engine traffic. It’s a household name. With the latest update to their Helpful Content Update (HCU) first launched in 2022, Google estimates it removed 40% of low-quality, unoriginal content.
Poor definitions of quality and helpful content impact more than AI content mills. Although most penalized sites use artificially created and/or plagiarized content, not all do. Google’s latest update creates problems for small businesses, independent media outlets, and regular users. Due to a lack of oversight, those who rely on these sources for income and information suffer.
Who the Helpful Content Update Punishes
As many sites lost traffic and revenue, others saw exponential growth. These higher-ranking sites’ sudden boost, as well as others’ decline, may not last. It’s hard to determine, given Google’s conflicting statements and generic advice for site recovery.
New York City SEO expert Lily Ray made a video made a video explaining the latest March updates and their unfairness. She references site owners who use similar SEO and keyword strategies, resulting in significant penalties. Quote redundancy and affiliate sources hurt niche sites in the HCU.
The latest update allegedly targets spam, but many specialized sites saw significant traffic drops. One site expert, the Niche Alchemist, created a thread on X showcasing a series of site owners hit by the update.
Individual owners aside, suspicions about brand favoritism remain strong. Chris Barnes made noteworthy comparisons between successful niche sites and big brands. He highlighted how major players use content strategies similar to Forbes, Business Insider, and others.
What Google Wants Sites To Do
Ray’s X thread, brainstorming responses to the HCU, created a stir. Danny Sullivan, a Google Search Liaison, gave website owners perspective on Google’s algorithm “likes.”
He writes, “You want to do things that make sense for your visitors because what ‘shows Google’ you have a great site is to be … a great site for your visitors, not to add things you assume are just for Google. Doing things you think are just for Google is falling behind what our ranking systems are trying to reward rather than being in front of them.”
Sullivan’s response addresses the peculiarity of Google’s ranking processes. The current guide to creating helpful, reliable, people-first content offers more questions than answers. Some highlights of the guide include:
Provide a great page experienceFocus on people-first contentAvoid overly SEO-focused contentLearn about EEAT and quality rater guidelinesAsk “Who, How, and Why” about your content
As a search liaison, Sullivan understands how folks might feel. Continuing his thread, he writes, “I very much hope our guidance will get better to help people understand that what Google wants is what people want. I’m pushing for us to have an entire new help page that maybe makes this point better.”
If Google’s own affiliates recognize the confusion surrounding HCU guidelines, how well do they expect the rest of the Internet will fare?
Trust Issues: Censoring ‘Poor Quality’ Content
The HCU’s current state disconcerts many in small, independent media. Potential deindexing — the complete removal of a website from Google search results sites entirely — may be more imminent than ever before. with the ambiguity of Google’s . Machine learning’s limitations afford Google an excuse for the HCU’s discrimination penalties – their automated ranking system is still learning.
Niche site blogger and Web Publishers Association member Jon Dykstra told Wealth of Geeks, “Since the HCU in September 2023, we’ve yet to learn of a single web publisher who managed to recover their search traffic following the current Google Web Publishing guidelines in place.
“At the end of the day, so many small web publishers feel like Google is intentionally censoring web content by de-ranking thousands of sites as well as removing thousands more from the search index altogether, effectively preventing the public access to websites that they may find helpful.”
Independent media sites and creators feel stifled and censored. Even the Department of Justice (DOJ) has questioned how much we rely on Google. The DOJ’s ongoing antitrust trial against Google targets its monopolistic practices. With this in mind, the HCU looks like censorship rather than an anti-spam measure.
No one company or entity has the right to throttle businesses or individual search patterns. Where is the arbitrary line in the sand separating consumers and content? Google has content licensing deals with forums like Reddit, and these now rank higher than ever.
The ever-changing Internet industry landscape contributes to tech’s beauty. Wait a few weeks, and those sites penalized for the wrong reasons may recover traffic. But for those tired of Google’s shenanigans, other search engines, like Duck Duck Go or Bing might be worth checking out.
