Google confirms another helpful content update is starting to roll out across search results. It began on December 5 and will take up to two weeks to complete.
In an announcement on Twitter, Google states:
“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.”
The December 2022 helpful content update improves on the helpful content system Google introduced in August.
According to Google’s new terminology, a ranking “system” refers to an augmentation of Google’s algorithm that’s constantly running in the background. An algorithm “update” relates to improvements to ranking systems.
Google’s helpful content system is designed to reward webpages created for people rather than search engines. It aims to elevate content that adds unique value to the web, above and beyond what’s broadly available from other publishers.
In addition to expanding to all languages, this update to the helpful content system can potentially include new signals or adjustments to previous signals. Google doesn’t provide specific details regarding updates to ranking systems.
With every algorithm update comes a chance to recover from the last one. If Google’s helpful content system hit your website in August, and you’ve made an effort to improve your site, it’s possible you’ll see rankings climb with the December update.
On the other hand, there are also adverse effects associated with algorithm updates. If you experienced a positive or no impact from the August rollout, that could change with the December update.
Google’s helpful content system received much criticism over the summer for being too “quiet,” does that mean this update will be more noticeable?
We’ll have to wait and see over the coming days and weeks.
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