SEARCHENGINES

Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update Current Impact

Published

1 year ago

September 21, 2023

Google started to roll out the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update last Thursday afternoon and I’ve been seeing mixed signals about how strong and widespread this update is. There are definitely site owners and SEOs claiming some of their sites were hit hard but the tracking tools are reporting relatively calm weather since the update started.

The chatter is pretty heated in the various forums however I am not seeing much talk on Twitter of this update. The weird thing is the chatter is not matching up with the tracking tools.

Since we are now over five days since it started rolling out, I wanted to cover what I am seeing.

Again, there is a lot chatter and SEOs are claiming traffic drops (or gains) from Google Search after this began rolling out. But again, most of those tracking tools have been pretty calm.

Many are reporting drops in traffic and visibility from 40% to upwards of 80% after being hit by this helpful content update.

SEO Chatter

Let’s look at what the chatter is showing in the WebmasterWorld forums and the comments here. The chatter did slowly start up a day after the update was announced.

Huge drop 10am sharp…traffic was very high this morning then right off the cliff. Hopefully temporary…

I love Google. I am now -30%. Destroy my site more G! Keep those downward spirals coming! They have a monopoly going but want to destroy their SERPS instead. Really hope this is temporary.

Mine was UK 19.00, exactly the same and has continued into today. It is now 12.30 UK time and in the last 17.5 hours I have had only ONE multiple page view visitor, in fact so far today I have had only 15% of my average traffic, yes 15%.
What on earth are they doing, quite simply Internet traffic does not switch on and off like this, it is blatantly being manipulated.

My traffic jumped up considerably from August 26th onward, and has been especially high in the last week. Interestingly, this past week there weren’t many new customers inquiring at all. Now with this 2nd update we are back to big drops and peaks, and as usual it’s USA traffic that is dropping, every other country is still high. It’s too early to tell whether this will hold…I’m thinking that this is the dialing back of the previous update.

Is anyone noticing a huge fluctuation today? Both up and down. My website moved up to the first 5 positions on the first page for the most used term in my niche. It stayed there for 2 hours.
Then returned to the 3rd page. But it’s fluctuating a lot today. My website has never come so close to the big competing companies in my niche.
I had a small drop when the useful content update started in december/22. I notice that several pages are recovering positions since yesterday.
Nothing more just. It seems like a kind of “fix” for G, after its disastrous update.

Yes, large drops with plateaus throughout the day starting at 10am yesterday and continuing through today. All of it is drops in USA traffic. It seems that around 9am this morning it jumped up a bit. but both Fridays and Saturdays are generally low traffic days so hard to tell. Interestingly, all the conversions stopped already while the traffic was very high. I do think GOOG is probably dialing back the previous update…they made a terrible mistake and allowed people to get decent traffic for far too long. That simply cannot be allowed to continue.

USA traffic -62% at 1pm on Sunday…Canada is -40% and Australia is -30%. USA was also down most of the day yesterday, but ended up +4% after a late night spike. Every other location is still strong. So this latest update is simply a rehash of the previous trends where USA/Canada and other English language searches drop off a cliff on a regular basis. This has nothing to do with “Helpful Content”, it’s really a “We’re Helping Ourselves to Your Income” update.

Saturday struggled to a 63% with today being even lower coming up to 17 hours and 32% … This is looking extremely pear-shaped !

I have noticed big movements all day since sep/15. Overall, I notice an increase in my traffic.

Big moves downward in USA / Canada traffic since the minute this was announced basically. It went from being +36% in the previous month to -50%-60% all day long with a mysterious pop of traffic in the eve making up the day’s loss.

Very, very slow weekend, like other said before. But today traffic was a little better. Some conversions and it seems that certain items that we put much effort in coming back. But that means nothing. Could be upside down tomorrow or in 10 minutes.

Sunday’s total traffic 45.5% with today after 16 hours at 32.5%, this is sub-Xmas / New Year / Easter Day levels for me. My global SERPs seem to be unaffected apart from USA localisation of half-a-dozen specific keywords.

Traffic for our informational travel site has been up slightly (most days, in the single digits) in week-over-week comparisons.Of the past seven days, all days but one were showing an improvement. Since these improvements have come at a time when we’re normally in a downhill slide that lasts until at least mid-December, the boosts are better than the raw percentages might suggest.

A page that was deleted over a month ago, has now started ranking for many keywords during this update.
This means that Google extracts data on pages for ranking weeks before, launching the update. So, any quality changes you make will literally take months to take effect.
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There isn’t any synchronization between their crawling, indexing and ranking systems, else their algos wouldn’t rank and display pages that haven’t existed for weeks.

In the first few days, it seemed like it was something intense. But it has stabilized for now. Slight movements so far, everything is warm…

UK traffic is down ~40% for today. First day seeing changes since the update was announced, not sure if it’s gonna stay or not.

The HCU is killing my 10-month old informational site. Yesterday -20% organic traffic compared to last week, today will end up being about -45%. I am hoping for a full recovery as with the August update, but this looks bad. Really bad. I tried my best with this site, I have proper topical authority, topical clusters, interlinking is excellent, and the blog posts are extremely helpful to the best of my abilities. This is ludicrous if it remains.

Well, this Helpful Content update reversed all the gains from the August Core Update.

For once, seeing an uplift in traffic since these last updates. It might go back down in a few days who knows.

Since September 19th my site has lost visibility on Google News and apparently on Google Discover. If before with keywords it was on 1-2 pages on Google News now it is on 4-6 pages.

My newest site is hit terribly. Today will end up at -40% at least. The site is extremely helpful and I’ve implemented some of the best SEO practices, so I’m completely lost… Perhaps it’s the SGE rolling out?

I’m finding very little info about this update, but there’s a huge impact in my niche/location (Tech/EU), since yesterday. SERP’s for a lot of terms that I track have completely been scrambled. I’m down about 50% of my search traffic personally. All that’s ranking right now are retailers and sites with tons of authority, often with results that aren’t as helpful in answering the search query. Independent/small publications all seem to be down, however helpful the content is (better answers for the query, actual product reviews, etc, doesn’t seem to help ranking for these sites). Really hope to see some of this reversed soon.

Same here. Lost about 40 to 50% of organic traffic today. Is it the SGE rolling out for everyone? Now AI ranks up perhaps? And organic traffic suffers? Just guessing, but no idea.

Same here. My rank tracker today has shown a disastrous loss of formerly secure keyword positions, most of which were ranking in the top 5 and have now fallen to page 2 or 3. But this new ordering only displays some of the time depending on page refresh.
I’m looking at the new results and I’m now being outranked by pages that are not even relevant to the query. Many sites that are ranking now are just e-commerce listings.

60% loss in traffic in the past 24 hours. There is insane volatility in my keywords, jumping from page 1 to 7 to 3, also the SERP results change every time I refresh.

So far approx -15% for my 16 year old, niche authority, highly relevant and helpful information site. It tanks further every day, especially US traffic.

My 7-year-old site is 15-20% down since Monday. I’m tired of this grind—one week up, next week down. Traffic does not increase at all. On top of it, lower ad revenue.

Seeing massive shake ups on my end and lost heaps of traffic, im not even counting at this point cause it seems to be on the hourly that more keywords are losing their positions to massive news sites, reddit and quora.

Lost 20% traffic (around 1k sessions). Seems like many featured snippets are gone.

Like most of you. Even I lost 45% traffic from my website since September 18-19. Thank you Google.

Yup, in the same boat. About 45% lost organic traffic on my main site.

Never happened before, it’s getting worst, down 50% all of sudden. This is the most unhelpful update even seen from Google, like Google set the criteria, only very high authoritive website must rank high on SERP, no matter the relevancy of content and quality.

That is just some, a sampling, of the chatter.

Google Tracking Tools

Here is what the tools are showing, as you can see, most are pretty calm since the 14th and 15th, when this update started to roll out. In fact, Semrush looks almost dead:

Semrush:

SERPmetrics:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Sistrix sent me some charts saying they are just noticing the first movements from this helpful content update:

Glenn Gabe is also tracking this super closely early on was also not seeing big shifts but things may have changed in the past 24 hours:

On the fourth day of the rollout, it’s STILL VERY QUIET on the HCU front. I’ve been going through a ton of data each morning since the rollout began and I’m not seeing anything yet. Either it hasn’t kicked in yet, or we have another HCU dud. Time will tell. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/YQcnnvmRCv
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 18, 2023
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This morning he noticed big changes:

Even though I’m seeing a ton of movement with the HCU this morning, it seems ‘parasite SEO’ sites are stable overall. Maybe that part of the update still needs to roll out… Here are some examples showing no movement yet from the Sep HCU. Again, stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/NPDx6wVmSB
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 20, 2023

This feels like a weird update.

What are you all seeing?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Related Topics:Content Current Google Helpful Impact searchengine September update

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How AI is Transforming SEO and What Website Owners Need to Know

Published

3 days ago

October 30, 2024

Max

How AI is Transforming SEO and What Website Owners Need to Know

The digital landscape is changing fast, and artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of this transformation. One of the fields AI is impacting significantly is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In recent years, search engines have become increasingly intelligent in how they rank content, and AI is playing a major role in these changes.

For website owners, understanding how AI will impact SEO is essential to stay competitive and visible online. This article explores how AI is influencing SEO today, what we can expect in the near future, and the practical steps website owners can take to optimize their sites in an AI-driven SEO landscape.

The Role of AI in Modern SEO

SEO has evolved from keyword stuffing to a more complex practice involving quality content, user intent, and technical optimization. Today, search engines are looking at more than just keywords; they are focusing on understanding the intent and context behind a user’s search. This shift has been made possible by advances in AI and machine learning technologies.

AI helps search engines process and rank enormous amounts of data, allowing them to better interpret what users are looking for. Some notable AI technologies shaping SEO include:

Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP enables search engines to understand language more naturally, helping them interpret search queries more accurately.
Deep Learning: This subset of AI allows search engines to improve their understanding over time by learning from vast amounts of data.
Machine Learning Algorithms: Algorithms like Google’s RankBrain and BERT analyze search behavior and content to provide more relevant results.

These technologies are improving how search engines analyze content, making it crucial for website owners to keep up with AI-driven changes in SEO.

Key Ways AI is Impacting SEO

AI is already changing SEO in various ways. Let’s look at some of the main areas impacted by AI and what it means for website owners.

1. User Intent and Content Relevance

One of the biggest impacts of AI on SEO is how it helps search engines understand user intent. Modern algorithms don’t just match keywords; they analyze user behavior and context to provide results that answer the user’s underlying question.

This means that website owners need to prioritize content that addresses specific user needs. Instead of focusing solely on keywords, it’s essential to create content that answers common questions, solves problems, or fulfills a particular need that users may have.

Tip for Website Owners: Use AI-powered tools like chatbots and analytics platforms to understand what your users are looking for on your site. Tailor your content to align with those needs for improved relevance and engagement.

2. Personalization

AI allows search engines to personalize results based on individual preferences, search history, and location. For instance, someone searching for “best restaurants” in New York might see different results than someone searching for the same term in Los Angeles.

For SEO, this means a greater focus on localized and targeted content. Website owners need to consider how their content can appeal to specific demographics or regions to make the most of AI-driven personalization in search results.

Tip for Website Owners: Use AI-powered SEO tools to understand your audience’s demographics better. Consider adding location-based keywords or creating content specific to your main audience groups.

3. Voice Search Optimization

As AI-powered voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant become more popular, voice search is changing how people interact with search engines. Voice searches tend to be longer and more conversational than text-based searches, and they often focus on local queries.

This shift toward voice search requires website owners to optimize for natural, conversational phrases and questions. Content that mirrors spoken language and answers specific questions has a better chance of ranking for voice search queries.

Tip for Website Owners: Consider using “long-tail” keywords and question-based phrases in your content. Tools like Answer the Public and Google’s “People Also Ask” feature can help identify popular questions related to your niche.

4. Content Quality and User Engagement Signals

AI has enabled search engines to assess content quality in ways that were previously difficult. Google, for example, uses AI to monitor user engagement metrics like click-through rates, bounce rates, and time spent on a page. Content that engages users is ranked higher because it’s more likely to be valuable.

This shift makes it critical for website owners to focus on content quality. Engaging and informative content not only attracts users but also keeps them on the page longer, which signals to AI-powered search engines that the content is valuable.

Tip for Website Owners: Focus on creating high-quality, easy-to-read content that keeps users engaged. Add visuals, infographics, or videos to make the content more interesting and shareable.

5. Image and Video Recognition

Search engines are now capable of recognizing and indexing images and videos through AI-driven technologies like image recognition. This means that visual content, once overlooked by search engines, is now a critical component of SEO.

For example, Google Lens allows users to search for information about objects simply by taking a photo, which has opened up new SEO possibilities for image-based content. Website owners can optimize images by using descriptive file names, alt text, and relevant captions.

Tip for Website Owners: Optimize images and videos by adding descriptive alt text and captions. Consider using AI-driven image recognition tools to ensure that visual content aligns with keywords and SEO strategies.

How AI Will Shape SEO in the Future

As AI continues to advance, we can expect even more changes in SEO. Here’s a look at some potential future trends and what they mean for website owners.

1. Predictive SEO

In the future, AI may enable “predictive SEO,” where algorithms can forecast popular keywords or trends before they peak. By analyzing data patterns and user behavior, AI could help website owners predict what users will search for, allowing them to create content proactively.

What This Means for Website Owners: Predictive SEO could make it easier to stay ahead of trends and anticipate the content users are likely to search for. Using predictive analytics tools, website owners can be more strategic about the content they create.

2. AI-Generated Content and Content Curation

AI is increasingly capable of generating high-quality content. Tools like GPT-3 and other advanced language models can write coherent articles, product descriptions, and more. While AI-generated content isn’t yet perfect, it could be a valuable tool for generating SEO-friendly content quickly and efficiently.

What This Means for Website Owners: In the future, website owners might use AI tools to supplement human-written content, allowing for quicker content creation. However, quality control will still be essential, as search engines are likely to favor content that feels authentic and engages readers.

3. Advanced User Behavior Analysis

AI-powered algorithms will become even better at analyzing user behavior, tracking every click, scroll, and interaction. This advanced tracking could lead to a more dynamic SEO landscape, where search engine rankings adjust in near real-time based on user engagement data.

What This Means for Website Owners: Continuous user engagement will be essential for maintaining high rankings. Website owners will need to be proactive in analyzing user behavior and refining their content to keep up with what resonates most with their audience.

4. Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Multilingual SEO

NLP capabilities in AI are advancing quickly, and search engines will become more adept at interpreting language, meaning SEO may become more language-neutral in the future. This could allow websites in one language to rank well in another, depending on user demand and relevance.

What This Means for Website Owners: To maximize reach, website owners might need to focus on multilingual SEO. Investing in high-quality translations and optimizing for a global audience can open up new SEO opportunities.

Practical Tips for SEO in an AI-Driven Future

Given the changes AI is bringing to SEO, website owners can take proactive steps to stay ahead:

Focus on User-Centric Content: AI prioritizes content that genuinely answers users’ questions. Rather than focusing only on keywords, make sure your content addresses specific user needs and is easy to understand.
Utilize AI Tools for Content Strategy: AI-powered tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SurferSEO can help you analyze data trends, identify keyword opportunities, and optimize content effectively.
Optimize for Voice Search: As more people use voice search, optimize your content for natural, conversational language. Include phrases that match how people speak rather than how they type.
Enhance Visual SEO: Use descriptive file names, alt tags, and captions for images. Consider incorporating more videos and graphics to improve user engagement.
Monitor User Engagement Metrics: Track metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and click-through rates to assess content quality. Make improvements based on user behavior to keep your content relevant.
Experiment with AI-Generated Content: If your site needs frequent updates, consider using AI-generated content as a supplement to human-written content. Ensure it’s well-edited to meet quality standards.

Final Thoughts

AI’s impact on SEO is only beginning, but it’s clear that it will continue shaping how search engines rank content and how website owners approach optimization. By staying informed and adapting to these changes, website owners can not only maintain but improve their visibility in search engine results. Whether it’s optimizing for user intent, embracing predictive analytics, or enhancing visual content, AI provides numerous tools to create a richer, more engaging user experience.

For website owners willing to stay ahead of the curve, AI offers exciting new possibilities for SEO – transforming it from a keyword-driven strategy to a dynamic, user-centered approach that enhances both site performance and user satisfaction.

This article was written by the Entireweb Team.

SEARCHENGINES

Google Search Ranking Volatility October 26th & 27th & 23rd & 24th

Published

6 days ago

October 27, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

While I was offline, it seems we had two bouts of Google Search ranking volatility, one starting around Wednesday, October 23rd and 24th, and then again in the past 24 hours, starting on October 26th and 27th. I mean, this is a lot of the same as my previous Google Search ranking algorithm update coverage.

Again, I am seeing new intense chatter from the SEO community about big ranking changes in the past 24 hours and also from when I went offline on the 23rd and 24th of October.

As a reminder, we covered October 19th and 20th volatility and then on October 15th, October 10th and then before that on October 2nd which lasted a couple of days. The Google August 2024 core update started on August 15th and officially completed on September 3rd. But it was still super volatile the day after it completed and also weeks after it completed and it has not cooled.

We saw big signals on and around September 6th, September 10th or so and maybe around September 14th. We also saw movement around September 18th, last weekend and Septmeber 25th and September 28th or so.

Here is what I am seeing now.

SEO Chatter

Here is some of the chatter in the past 24 hours from both WebmasterWorld and over here:

Google shut down organic traffic completely today in Brazil. The Semrush sensor is normal(8,9), but the traffic is stopped.

Wow, traffic just died today. It’s like my traffic went on a weekend break too.

The worst thing is close to Christmas, it’s as if my website doesn’t even exist.

Why my category pages with little to no data getting indexed and appearing on first page while pages with content are no where to be found? This new update has totally messed up SERPs. Anyone else observing this behavior?

My “informational” site seems to be holding steady rank and traffic wise but seeing competitors drop from page one to 3 then back again to original position a few hours later, its like total flux and nothing I have ever seen, constant movement for months now, hour by hour…. What are they doing?

There is more but here is some of the chatter from Wednesday and Thursday:

Really low traffic today, according to GA.

Update today? Huge drop over here!

Does anyone understand the current chaos? Despite a good ranking, my traffic has dropped drastically since Friday and every day it gets less. The same applies to a number of other website owners I’ve spoken to in the last few days. Especially considering that Google traffic has increased dramatically since August. In the shop the same: until Friday, sales were good, now it’s just zombie traffic again.

Huge swings today again, yesterday it looked like they did a roll back to around March…. now the past few hours it looks like a roll back of a rollback. I think this is the new norm and another money grab by G to have organics in a constant state of flux to prevent any company/site having any sort of stability if not using ads?!

Drop today confirmed since yesterday.

Sheeesh. @rustybrick I’m seeing HUGE movement in last 24 hours, both gains and losses (naturally).— Taylor Kurtz (@RealTaylorKurtz) October 24, 2024

Yep, lots of volatility. For example, here’s a site heavily impacted by the September helpful content update (HCUX) that surged with the August core update, then dropped when a number of other HCUX sites dropped back down AFTER the August core update completed, but now surged… https://t.co/kBavOmX586 pic.twitter.com/f6O8S7YtuO— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 27, 2024

Google Tracking Tools

The tracking tools seem at their normal high levels, with nothing really jumping out as massive. So, it is a bit unusual not to see the spike in chatter along with the spike with the tools. Here is what they show:

Mozcast:

Wincher:

Cognitive SEO:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SERPmetrics (not updated in a week or so):

So what are you all seeing?

I am covering this with a rare Sunday story as I catch up on other stories throughout the week.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Ranking Movement, Sitelinks Search Box Going Away, Gen-AI In Bing & Google, Ad News & More

Published

1 week ago

October 26, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Google Ranking Movement, Sitelinks Search Box Going Away, Gen-AI In Bing & Google, Ad News & More

This week, we had more Google search ranking volatility to report on – surprise, surprise. Google is deprecating its Sitelinks Search Box next month. Google may have penalized Fortune Recommends over site reputation abuse. Google is showing generative AI throughout the search results. Google has this People’s Insights box that shows online forums for unprofessional medical advice. Bing Search is adding AI-enhanced summaries to its search results. There are several bugs with the Bing Webmaster Tools API and documentation. Google Ads performance max won’t take priority over search campaigns when in the same account. Also, Google Ads has sharable ad previews, asset experiments for Performance Max with product feeds and test adding assets and using Final URL expansion. Google search ads now uses travel feeds for hotel ads. Google has a watch video icon for video ads in search. Google to pause ads from showing after the electoral polls close on November 5th. Google Local Service Ads is testing request competitive quotes. Google Merchant Center is testing audience insights. Google Ads API version 18 is out. Nick Fox is the new head of Google Search, he is replacing the super controversial Prabhakar Raghavan. There is a new SEO board game coming out for the holidays. And I am offline today, when this was published, for a holiday, this was pre-written, pre-recorded and scheduled to go live today.s That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: This week’s video recap is sponsored by Duda, the Professional Website Builder You Can Call Your Own.

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