Google Helpful Content Update Has Begun Rolling Out

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   PaulGoodman67posted 2 years ago

   Hold onto your hats folks, the rollercoaster might be beginning, according to Search Engine Roundtable!
   
   Hopefully, all the work that HP editors and writers have done in recent times will pay off and views and earnings will improve.
   
   After all the hits that HP has taken over the past 15 months, surely things can only get better?

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      Kenna McHughposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Advertisers have a pull with Google. It'll be nice to see automatic sites gone from the top tier.

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         CYong74posted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Frankly, I hope some of the major magazine sites are hit hard. They do nothing except regurgitate popular opinion and each other, but can effortlessly rank because of their domain. I certainly don't feel any "help" when reading their things.

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            Kenna McHughposted 2 years agoin reply to this

            I agree. Doing research, I have to dig to get anything that answers some of my questions. Most of the stuff on top is bunk and regurgitated. We can thank the writers mills for that.

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            ReViewMeMediaposted 2 years agoin reply to this

            Since I like videogames, I hope it nukes ragebait/clickbait articles.  I hate those.  They're mainly just about politics, using games to bash political views they don't like.  I don't find these articles to be helpful at all.  I want to read about what's going on in videogames, not read some rambling political hottake about a videogame.

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               CYong74posted 2 years agoin reply to this

               Exactly. The same for movie reviews that barely discuss the show, but blab about the protest of certain lobbyists.

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   2. 86

      bravewarriorposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      According to my account, my views have more than tripled in each of the last two days. That's pretty exciting considering HP just kicked one of my ToughNickel articles back to Discover.

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         PaulGoodman67posted 2 years agoin reply to this

         I've had multiple articles kicked out of ToughNickel recently. It's stuff that wasn't getting much views, though.
         
         As I've tried and failed in the past to get them to do better, I just deleted the demoted hubs.
         
         Mostly, they were older, weaker material. I've got other, often newer articles, that I'd rather focus on.
         
         I think HP was right to expel the articles from TN in my case.

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      Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      It'll be very interesting.

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      SerenityHaloposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      My numbers are going down. I’m not jumping to any conclusions yet. A couple of weeks ago they were really high because one article was picked up by Android.Google.

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      renegadetoryposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I'm a little late to this party, but I'm glad I found this thread!
      
      In the last few days, there has been an uptick in traffic to many of my articles, and it was dramatic enough that I had to blink a few times to ensure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me.
      
      I wasn't sure what was going on, but after reading the comments in this thread, it seems something good (maybe) is happening (at least for me and others, I hope).
      
      I'm curious to see what else will follow!

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         DrMark1961posted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Check the traffic sources for the articles with the big increases. It may have been due to a link on a news article (from HP). Those bumps are short lived, but if it was from Google it will probably be more lasting.

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      misterhollywoodposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I wish I could say I've seen a positive shift but its stayed the same or decreased. I wonder if Google views all of the HP verticals as an article farm?

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   Stephen Tomkinsonposted 2 years ago

   We live in interesting times.

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3. 69

   PaulGoodman67posted 2 years ago

   It might not be easy to figure out what's happening, unless it's dramatic; given that at this time of year, traffic and earnings tend to rise of their own accord, due to seasonal concerns.
   
   I just hope we don't get hit again.

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      Miebakagh57posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      But what if Google should undertake another update? It should be expect, and anything can happen.                                              Let the roller coast continue rolling forth.

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4. 66

   eugbugposted 2 years ago

   My views had increased on Monday, presumably because of students returning to school. The rise seems to have been cancelled out in the last couple of days. Hourly traffic this afternoon is slightly up on this day last week, but it's probably too early to draw any conclusions.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      It's going to take two weeks to roll out. Then we should probably factor in another two or three weeks for it to settle out. So a sober assessment shouldn't really happen until the end of September.
      
      I'll still probably speculate though...

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         bravewarriorposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         Should be interesting.....

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   Brenda Arledgeposted 2 years ago

   Thanks for the heads up.
   Now...we wait.

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   Shesabutterflyposted 2 years ago

   I was reading through some of the comments in the link you provided, I found it interesting some people were saying you would have a good idea how your site would be affected within 2 to 3 days. Do you think that holds any merit?
   
   I wish I would have took the time to see where some of my articles were ranking prior to the launch of this update. I noticed one article is higher than it has been, but honestly it could have happened a month or more ago for all I know. The articles I keep a close eye on, appear unchanged so far, and so is my competition as far as I can tell.
   
   A few commenters were also complaining about more youtube video's and other unhelpful content at the top of search results. Are you seeing anything similar? Maybe I do not write or search for the right things, but I did not see any Youtube links as the top result. I did see a couple Youtube links (occasionally two back to back), at the bottom or middle of the first page. However, I can't be positive they were not there prior to this update. It will be interesting to see if/how the results change in the coming weeks.
   
   Didn't Google already try Youtube heavy search results and it was a bust? I'll be disappointed if that is one of the big changes from this update.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 2 years agoin reply to this

      We don't know how it's going to roll out. We may be affected early on or at the end. Traffic may go up and then down, or vice versa. We may barely be affected at all.
      
      I take some, maybe most of the comments on SERoundtable, with a pinch of salt.
      
      The people who write/edit SERoundtable I take seriously though.

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7. 87

   Miebakagh57posted 2 years ago

   Pass this weekend, I'll take time to look into my articles rising and fall traffic.

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8. 66

   eugbugposted 2 years ago

   Is anyone seeing red arrows yet? Nothing much is happening for me. The upwards trend on Monday didn't continue.

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   1. STAFF

      Larry Slawsonposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      I only have two red arrows out of the 258 articles I've written haha.  Other than that, no major changes.  Everything has remained relatively stable so far.

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         Madeleine Claysposted 2 years agoin reply to this

         This is what I'm talking about. One of our best writers on Pethelpful right here!

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      bravewarriorposted 2 years agoin reply to this

      Nope. No red arrows, but I do have two blue arrows. Bummer.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 2 years ago

   Nothing out of the ordinary here. Same s***, different day.

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10. 84

    jansharesposted 2 years ago

    I haven’t seen anything significant yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for something good to happen. Overall, views and pay have been dismal the past couple weeks. Praying for payout to return to normal by October.

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    PaulGoodman67posted 2 years ago

    Yes, I've not seen any action either. I have multiple accounts and sometimes with Google updates, some them get affected early and  others later. But nothing yet across the board, in this case.
    
    It all depends how it's rolling out. And that can seem random.
    
    I think we're all hoping for a boost, especially as we're entering the most lucrative period of the year.
    
    HP have hired a bunch of editors and are in the process of going through absolutely everything in the niches, it seems, improving and demoting lower quality articles.
    
    It's the most drastic clean-up since the niches were formed. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what they're supposed to do!

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    PaulGoodman67posted 2 years ago

    I have little faith nowadays that CPMs are going to dramatically improve. So the only hope for increased revenue lies in traffic levels going up.

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       eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

       Lets hope our share of revenue doesn't continue to be reduced. Interestingly, CPM seems to be stuck at much the same level for months whereas it used to vary hugely. Maybe an average CPM per author has been set.

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          PaulGoodman67posted 2 years agoin reply to this

          There's zero convincing evidence for the share of revenue being reduced, in my opinion. I believe you misunderstood the terminology used in that article you posted as evidence.
          
          It's never been confirmed or denied by HP. So I keep an open mind.
          
          I have ten sets of CPMs and they vary hugely for me. Both on a day to day basis and across my different accounts. The CPM on one account can literally be seven of eight times as much as another.
          
          One should be wary of trying to extrapolate too much from one set of figures. My stats teacher always tried to warn us about that.
          
          That said, CPMs are generally depressingly low from an historic standpoint, I'm generally seeing that across the board.
          
          Literally everything is generally bad right now: Amazon sales, CPMs, and traffic.
          
          Hopefully, HP can find a way through. They've done so in the past. (I'm less confident about Medium, but that's another story).

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             eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

             Not to mention inflation...Oil double the price it was last year, electricity up 50% etc. etc. HP never denied revenue share reduction so what does that imply I wonder?

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       SerenityHaloposted 2 years agoin reply to this

       I agree that traffic is the way forward. Without that, I think we're stuck in limbo.

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          bravewarriorposted 2 years agoin reply to this

          I'm seeing fewer and fewer reasons to post new work on this platform. I'll take my bi-monthly stipend and re-open my freelance business once I can fully retire in September of 2023.
          
          Real clients are the way to go. Not a disguised version of content mills. At least with the mills you get paid for each piece you write. Pennies per word, yes, but no ads or clicks governing your paycheck.
          
          I'm not promoting content mills (I left them years ago), but at least they pay regardless of traffic.

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    Shesabutterflyposted 2 years ago

    Has anyone seen a change in rankings at all besides Tess, either on Google or Bing? I didn't think Bing was being affected as it is owned by a completely separate company, but I'm seeing very different results from that search engine, more so than Google. I'm honestly wondering if they are experiencing some glitches right now?
    
    I've been keeping an eye on only a few of my articles, with special attention to my education articles as it seemed like that category could see a bigger change. I have not noticed much as of yet. I did find it interesting that a Youtube video is now the first thing showing under the ads or appears on the top of the second page, depending on the keywords used (create vs make in this case).
    
    There is also a Pinterest link on the first page. My article is still holding rank for now, and the Pinterest link (ranks 4th) takes you to a pin of my article. I'm wondering if there is any advantage to having an article rank twice on the same page, or if it technically doesn't matter since it takes you to pinterst vs niche site and wouldn't necessarily get clicked through to the article.
    
    When I use those same keywords on Bing, I don't see my article at all within the first 6 pages, which is new. Bing is only showing me a handful of the same websites, which I have not noticed before and an irrelevant Discover article, which Google does not show on the first 6 pages. I also noticed if I want my article to appear in the Bing search I need to use the word creating (and type out the majority of the actual title) vs make/create. My title does have the word creating in it, but on Google I can use multiple keywords interchangeably and my article will still appear on the first page or two.
    
    The other main article I've been watching has seen a bigger shift in results. Not the top three as of yet, but the other competition has changed. I was competing with a Discover article, which has since dropped to the bottom of the first page from ranking 4th, and there are three new links that I have never seen before on the first page. Bing doesn't show the Discover article at all in their results, but does show the same PDF files (one of which is my article's chart for some reason) and a Letterpile article on pages 2-5. That article does not appear until page 4 on Google and I don't see any PDF's.
    
    I know Bing generally does not account for a lot of traffic, but it is my second highest right after Google. I'd hate to lose what traffic I was getting from them, because I'm no longer ranking. I hope they are not experiementing too and this is a glitch of some kind. I can't imagine why Bing would be purposefully only showing the same handful of links/websites on the first several pages.

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       PaulGoodman67posted 2 years agoin reply to this

       The last I read, SE Roundtable did a survey and 80% of respondents said they'd had no effect from the Google content update.
       
       Out of the 20% that said they did experience an effect, some have maybe got it wrong and are blaming the update for changes when it's actually other causes.
       
       It's still rolling out, though, so we can't be totally certain what will happen.
       
       There's far less info available about Bing updates. Search engine news tends to be Google-orientated.
       
       My own Google traffic is around 60 times as much as Bing. So my interest in Bing tends to be fairly limited.

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    eugbugposted 2 years ago

    Semrush is reporting increased volatility. Just lost some featured snippets too. Traffic also down.

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       Shesabutterflyposted 2 years agoin reply to this

       Curious if it was across several niche sites or one? I'm seeing changes in results even from 3 days ago when I posted.
       
       My traffic is up overall, but I believe one of my articles was used in the news section as I'm seeing mostly MSN traffic as the source and it generally has less than 10 views on any given day. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out after that anomaly.
       
       Likely just a coinsidence, but possibly related, my last article that I think was shared within the News section has since dropped drastically off. Seeing maybe 5-10 views a day currently. It was shared right before this Google update launch and has continued to drop in views the last two weeks, well below where it had been sitting for the past year.
       
       Are you noticing any results back to back for the same website? Not sure the correct terminology, but almost feels like they are nesting the results together. I saw it for muliple sites including Amazon and Pinterest. The second result is indented a bit and right under the first one. Hopefully that makes sense.

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          eugbugposted 2 years agoin reply to this

          I'm not sure. Maybe the search terms I used previously, which generated the featured snippets, were different.

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    PaulGoodman67posted 2 years ago

    I believe the rollout's done now. Not much seemed to happen, certainly for me. Things are as crap as ever.
    
    I think SE Roundtable got it wrong, it wasn't a largescale change like Panda.
    
    Maybe evidence will come to light that contradicts this, but I suspect that the Google content update will be quickly forgotten.
    
    Nothing to see here, folks...

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