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Have you noticed changes in performance for some articles on your site? Maybe a little rise here, but more importantly some dips there? Well, you might not be the only one and it’s for a reason.
Can you guess what it might be? If you thought Google’s most recent Helpful Content Update, the you’re spot on! In late August, the initial system was launched and rolled out over about a week or so.
But the just last week, on December 6th, Google announced the second system update of 2022.
Update Roll Out So Far
To date, the rollout of Google’s second helpful content system hasn’t caused too many impacts to content visibility. But since the rollout lasts a couple weeks, there is still time for the system to detect content written for search engine first.
The algorithm update also focuses on prioritizing content that is useful for readers. That being said, there hasn’t been any huge impacts notice so far. Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Roundtable says “the impact, thus far, in the past 24-48 hours, was not yet massive.”
There’s been some buzz about this on Twitter as well, here’s what SEO expert Glenn Gabe had to say:
Quick update on the Dec HCU: Here’s the first big drop I have seen based on the December Helpful Content Update. Search visibility drops heavily starting yesterday. I’m now also seeing several other domains that dropped over the past two days… Will share more soon-ish. pic.twitter.com/md5FEls6u1 — Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 7, 2022
But since this system is rolling out on a global level, a look into different countries may reveal more of an impact.
Helpful Content System Worldwide
The first help content systems weren’t working globally, but things have changed. Search Engine Land conducted some KPI research to findout how this update is affecting news across the world. Search Engine Land conducted their research based on the following countries:
Mexico
Switzerland
Colombia
Peru
France
Australia
United Kingdom
Canada
Austria
United States
Brazil
Germany
Here’s what Search Engine Journal noticed about the algorithm’s impact on different countries content:
“For top publishers in most countries, the first Helpful Content Update in August seems to have had a more significant impact on their visibility than the second one in September. It cannot be clearly said that publishers’ visibility was only negatively impacted by the updates, since some clearly benefitted from them.”
For now, there seems to be some impact from this system but as time goes on, over the next couple of week, we should know more.
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