SEO
How Google’s Helpful Content Update Affected News SEO Globally
This post was sponsored by Trisolute News Dashboard. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Wondering why some of your articles’ visibility seemed to suddenly dip this year?
Could this be part of a larger trend?
On August 25, 2022, Google started rolling out an update that could be quite interesting for news publishers and their visibility. On September 12, they rolled out yet another core update.
These core updates were named “Helpful Content Update(s)”.
Today, we’ll be showing you how news publishers around the world were impacted by them.
What Is The Helpful Content Update?
Google’s Helpful Content Update is an algorithm update that focuses on:
- Weeding out content that is written for the sole purpose of getting a good ranking.
- Deprioritizing articles that don’t contain any informational or helpful content for the reader.
- Rewarding content that is helpful to readers.
Google frequently updates its algorithm in order to better match content to searchers, and sometimes, publishers’ visibility is heavily impacted.
Which Google Categories Has The Helpful Content Update Impacted?
In this article, we’ll be showcasing which publishers around the world were impacted by the Helpful Content Update.
We examined each of Google’s categories to see whether we would find something extraordinary around the time the updates were executed and picked out one or two countries per category where the changes were especially obvious.
Those categories were:
- Top Stories.
- Country-Specific News.
- World News.
- Business News.
- Science & Technology News.
- Entertainment News.
- Sports News.
- Health News.
- COVID-19 News.
All of the data shown in this article is taken from Trisolute’s News Dashboard.
How We Discovered The Impact Of The Helpful Content Update
We wanted to make sure to look at the most visible publishers for the generally freshest, most newsworthy keywords based on Google News and Trends to get the most impactful results for the publisher landscape.
All rankings are based on a near real-time 15-minute crawling interval, so, we used the following filter settings on the KPI Dashboard → Mobile News Box:
- Date Range: July 25, 2022 – September 25, 2022 (Week 30 – Week 38).
- Top 10 Competitors.
- All Ranking Types.
- General Keyword Set.
With those filter settings, we took a look at different countries from all over the world individually.
Let’s have a look:
Top Stories
Mexico
Here, we can observe that the two publishers, El Financiero and Infobae, have obviously been affected by the updates:
While El Financiero showed a rise in its visibility following the August update, Infobae dropped in visibility afterward.
After the September update, El Financiero then showed a visible drop as well.
The two vertical dashed lines mark the two updates respectively.
The Verdict:
Publishers seem to have been affected slightly more by the August update than by the September update, both positively and negatively.
Country-Specific News
Switzerland
20 Minutes and Blick both rose in visibility after the August update.
Then, in week 36 (September 5 – September 11), 20 Minutes had its peak in visibility, while Blick had already started to drop.
From week 36 to week 37, the week when the second update happened, both publishers displayed an extreme drop.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
While publishers seemed to have benefitted from the August update in this category, the September update led to a drop in their visibility.
World News
Colombia
For Columbia, there was an increase in visibility after the August update, especially for El Tiempo and Semana, while the visibility of El Espectador nearly stagnated.
However, the visibility dropped for all three publishers before the September update and remained at an almost constant level after it.
Only El Espectador was able to regain visibility after the second update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
Both updates have caused a lot of turbulence in visibility for publishers.
Business News
Peru
Here, we can observe that between the two updates, CNN saw losses in visibility, but these evened out again towards the September update.
RPP was also able to build up visibility at first, but lost it leading up to and after the September update.
For El Comercio, there was a short-term upswing after the August update, but it flattened out again.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
The first update seems to have had a stronger and more negative effect on publishers in Peru than the second one.
Science & Technology News
France
In the Science & Technology category, publishers in France have largely been able to maintain or even build their visibility after the August update.
However, both Jeuxvideo and Gamekult lost visibility after the September update – only Le Monde increased its visibility after both updates.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
For most of the French publishers, the two Google updates in the Science & Technology category resulted in a loss in visibility.
Entertainment News
Australia
In the Australian Entertainment category, News.com.au’s visibility increased leading up to the August update, only to then show an extreme drop that lasted until the week of the September update.
This led to the visibility curve flattening again.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
The first update in August seems to have had a significantly negative impact on Australian publishers in the Entertainment category, while the second update in September had a more positive impact.
United Kingdom
For publishers in the U.K., the two updates showed significant influences on visibility, as can be seen below for the Daily Mail and the Mirror.
Both publishers showed an increase in their visibility leading up to Week 34.
Then, when the August update took place, both of their visibilities dropped significantly.
For the Daily Mail, the graph drops continuously, even through the September update, but for the Mirror, this second update made them drop even more in terms of visibility.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
Here, the first update in August had a significant effect on the publishers’ visibility; the second one only had a moderate effect.
Sports News
Canada
In the Canadian Sports category, TSN held visibility during the August update, but lost it slightly in the week before and during the September update. However, they gained it back after the update.
CBC’s visibility, on the other hand, went the other way: Before the August update, their visibility increased significantly, and then dropped off slightly at the time of the September update and in the following week.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
The August update had a larger impact on publishers’ visibility in the Sports category, for some immediately at the time of the update, and for others in the following weeks.
Health News
Austria
In the Health category, Austrian publishers Der Standard and ORF were able to significantly increase visibility after the August update and also brought this increase through the September update with slight fluctuations.
In contrast, both Kurier and Vienna.at lost visibility after the August update, but were also able to make up for this after the September update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
For publishers in Austria, the August update seems to have had the largest impact on their visibility in the Health category, with it being negative for some publishers and positive for others.
United States
In the U.S. Health category, the progressions seem to have been identical between NPR and The New York Times, because initially, both lost visibility after the August update.
However, NPR continued to lose visibility until the September update and after that, their visibility increased slightly again.
For The New York Times, on the other hand, things got a bit more turbulent: First, they regained visibility between the two updates, only to lose it significantly in the week of the September update, and regain it in the week after the update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
The August update seems to have had a negative impact on the publishers’ visibility in the Health category, while the second update in September had a positive effect.
COVID-19 News
Brazil
In the COVID-19 category in Brazil, the three publishers Globo, Abril, and UOL showed little to no changes in their visibility in the week of the August update.
In week 36 though, which marks the week immediately before the September update, both Abril and Globo dropped in their visibility, while UOL rose.
For Globo, this drop continued throughout the September update as UOL continued to rise; only Abril was able to catch itself again and flatten the curve.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
Brazil’s top publishers seem to have been significantly more impacted by the September update than by the August update.
Germany
In the German COVID-19 category, DER SPIEGEL particularly gained visibility in the week leading up to the August update and then slowly lost it again throughout it.
Through the September update, the trend for DER SPIEGEL then went up again.
The picture is different for Die Zeit: Here, the publisher lost visibility in the week before the August update and regained it throughout. They were also able to maintain this visibility with slight reductions in the time between the updates.
However, they then lost visibility dramatically through the September update.
Screenshot from Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022The Verdict:
Here, both updates seem to have had an impact on visibility simultaneously.
Key Findings For How Google’s Helpful Content Update Affected Publishers
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.
Here are some other interesting takeaways we noticed:
- Publishers from Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Germany showed noticeable changes in visibility around the updates in all of Google’s categories.
- The Country-Specific News category was the only category where publishers from all countries showed anomalies in some way.
- In the Business News category, Brazil was the only country that showed no noticeable changes in top publishers’ visibility.
- The categories Country-Specific News, Business News, Science & Technology News, Entertainment News, and Health News were most affected by the update.
- The BBC was affected by the top 10 rankings of the World category in four countries (Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Peru) and was therefore the most affected publisher in this analysis.
Want to learn more about your visibility in Google News? Schedule a free demo.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Trisolute News Dashboard. Used with permission.
window.addEventListener( ‘load’, function() {
setTimeout(function(){ striggerEvent( ‘load2’ ); }, 2000);
});
window.addEventListener( ‘load2’, function() {
if( sopp != ‘yes’ && addtl_consent != ‘1~’ && !ss_u ){
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
if( typeof sopp !== “undefined” && sopp === ‘yes’ ){
fbq(‘dataProcessingOptions’, [‘LDU’], 1, 1000);
}else{
fbq(‘dataProcessingOptions’, []);
}
fbq(‘init’, ‘1321385257908563’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘trackSingle’, ‘1321385257908563’, ‘ViewContent’, {
content_name: ‘helpful-content-update-news-seo-trisolute-spa’,
content_category: ‘content trends international-search seo seo-strategy adnouncement vertical-seo’
});
}
});
SEO
Measuring Content Impact Across The Customer Journey
Understanding the impact of your content at every touchpoint of the customer journey is essential – but that’s easier said than done. From attracting potential leads to nurturing them into loyal customers, there are many touchpoints to look into.
So how do you identify and take advantage of these opportunities for growth?
Watch this on-demand webinar and learn a comprehensive approach for measuring the value of your content initiatives, so you can optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.
You’ll learn:
- Fresh methods for measuring your content’s impact.
- Fascinating insights using first-touch attribution, and how it differs from the usual last-touch perspective.
- Ways to persuade decision-makers to invest in more content by showcasing its value convincingly.
With Bill Franklin and Oliver Tani of DAC Group, we unravel the nuances of attribution modeling, emphasizing the significance of layering first-touch and last-touch attribution within your measurement strategy.
Check out these insights to help you craft compelling content tailored to each stage, using an approach rooted in first-hand experience to ensure your content resonates.
Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or new to content measurement, this webinar promises valuable insights and actionable tactics to elevate your SEO game and optimize your content initiatives for success.
View the slides below or check out the full webinar for all the details.
SEO
How to Find and Use Competitor Keywords
Competitor keywords are the keywords your rivals rank for in Google’s search results. They may rank organically or pay for Google Ads to rank in the paid results.
Knowing your competitors’ keywords is the easiest form of keyword research. If your competitors rank for or target particular keywords, it might be worth it for you to target them, too.
There is no way to see your competitors’ keywords without a tool like Ahrefs, which has a database of keywords and the sites that rank for them. As far as we know, Ahrefs has the biggest database of these keywords.
How to find all the keywords your competitor ranks for
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Organic keywords report
The report is sorted by traffic to show you the keywords sending your competitor the most visits. For example, Mailchimp gets most of its organic traffic from the keyword “mailchimp.”
Since you’re unlikely to rank for your competitor’s brand, you might want to exclude branded keywords from the report. You can do this by adding a Keyword > Doesn’t contain filter. In this example, we’ll filter out keywords containing “mailchimp” or any potential misspellings:
If you’re a new brand competing with one that’s established, you might also want to look for popular low-difficulty keywords. You can do this by setting the Volume filter to a minimum of 500 and the KD filter to a maximum of 10.
How to find keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter your competitor’s domain in the But these competitors do section
Hit “Show keyword opportunities,” and you’ll see all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also add a Volume and KD filter to find popular, low-difficulty keywords in this report.
How to find keywords multiple competitors rank for, but you don’t
- Go to Competitive Analysis
- Enter your domain in the This target doesn’t rank for section
- Enter the domains of multiple competitors in the But these competitors do section
You’ll see all the keywords that at least one of these competitors ranks for, but you don’t.
You can also narrow the list down to keywords that all competitors rank for. Click on the Competitors’ positions filter and choose All 3 competitors:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
- Enter your competitor’s domain
- Go to the Paid keywords report
This report shows you the keywords your competitors are targeting via Google Ads.
Since your competitor is paying for traffic from these keywords, it may indicate that they’re profitable for them—and could be for you, too.
You know what keywords your competitors are ranking for or bidding on. But what do you do with them? There are basically three options.
1. Create pages to target these keywords
You can only rank for keywords if you have content about them. So, the most straightforward thing you can do for competitors’ keywords you want to rank for is to create pages to target them.
However, before you do this, it’s worth clustering your competitor’s keywords by Parent Topic. This will group keywords that mean the same or similar things so you can target them all with one page.
Here’s how to do that:
- Export your competitor’s keywords, either from the Organic Keywords or Content Gap report
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
For example, MailChimp ranks for keywords like “what is digital marketing” and “digital marketing definition.” These and many others get clustered under the Parent Topic of “digital marketing” because people searching for them are all looking for the same thing: a definition of digital marketing. You only need to create one page to potentially rank for all these keywords.
2. Optimize existing content by filling subtopics
You don’t always need to create new content to rank for competitors’ keywords. Sometimes, you can optimize the content you already have to rank for them.
How do you know which keywords you can do this for? Try this:
- Export your competitor’s keywords
- Paste them into Keywords Explorer
- Click the “Clusters by Parent Topic” tab
- Look for Parent Topics you already have content about
For example, if we analyze our competitor, we can see that seven keywords they rank for fall under the Parent Topic of “press release template.”
If we search our site, we see that we already have a page about this topic.
If we click the caret and check the keywords in the cluster, we see keywords like “press release example” and “press release format.”
To rank for the keywords in the cluster, we can probably optimize the page we already have by adding sections about the subtopics of “press release examples” and “press release format.”
3. Target these keywords with Google Ads
Paid keywords are the simplest—look through the report and see if there are any relevant keywords you might want to target, too.
For example, Mailchimp is bidding for the keyword “how to create a newsletter.”
If you’re ConvertKit, you may also want to target this keyword since it’s relevant.
If you decide to target the same keyword via Google Ads, you can hover over the magnifying glass to see the ads your competitor is using.
You can also see the landing page your competitor directs ad traffic to under the URL column.
Learn more
Check out more tutorials on how to do competitor keyword analysis:
SEO
Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important
Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed at a recent search marketing conference that Google needs very few links, adding to the growing body of evidence that publishers need to focus on other factors. Gary tweeted confirmation that he indeed say those words.
Background Of Links For Ranking
Links were discovered in the late 1990’s to be a good signal for search engines to use for validating how authoritative a website is and then Google discovered soon after that anchor text could be used to provide semantic signals about what a webpage was about.
One of the most important research papers was Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment by Jon M. Kleinberg, published around 1998 (link to research paper at the end of the article). The main discovery of this research paper is that there is too many web pages and there was no objective way to filter search results for quality in order to rank web pages for a subjective idea of relevance.
The author of the research paper discovered that links could be used as an objective filter for authoritativeness.
Kleinberg wrote:
“To provide effective search methods under these conditions, one needs a way to filter, from among a huge collection of relevant pages, a small set of the most “authoritative” or ‘definitive’ ones.”
This is the most influential research paper on links because it kick-started more research on ways to use links beyond as an authority metric but as a subjective metric for relevance.
Objective is something factual. Subjective is something that’s closer to an opinion. The founders of Google discovered how to use the subjective opinions of the Internet as a relevance metric for what to rank in the search results.
What Larry Page and Sergey Brin discovered and shared in their research paper (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine – link at end of this article) was that it was possible to harness the power of anchor text to determine the subjective opinion of relevance from actual humans. It was essentially crowdsourcing the opinions of millions of website expressed through the link structure between each webpage.
What Did Gary Illyes Say About Links In 2024?
At a recent search conference in Bulgaria, Google’s Gary Illyes made a comment about how Google doesn’t really need that many links and how Google has made links less important.
Patrick Stox tweeted about what he heard at the search conference:
” ‘We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.’ @methode #serpconf2024″
Google’s Gary Illyes tweeted a confirmation of that statement:
“I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that”
Why Links Matter Less
The initial state of anchor text when Google first used links for ranking purposes was absolutely non-spammy, which is why it was so useful. Hyperlinks were primarily used as a way to send traffic from one website to another website.
But by 2004 or 2005 Google was using statistical analysis to detect manipulated links, then around 2004 “powered-by” links in website footers stopped passing anchor text value, and by 2006 links close to the words “advertising” stopped passing link value, links from directories stopped passing ranking value and by 2012 Google deployed a massive link algorithm called Penguin that destroyed the rankings of likely millions of websites, many of which were using guest posting.
The link signal eventually became so bad that Google decided in 2019 to selectively use nofollow links for ranking purposes. Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that the change to nofollow was made because of the link signal.
Google Explicitly Confirms That Links Matter Less
In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not even in the top 3 of ranking factors. Then in March 2024, coinciding with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes.
The documentation previously said:
“Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
The update to the documentation that mentioned links was updated to remove the word important.
Links are not just listed as just another factor:
“Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.”
At the beginning of April Google’s John Mueller advised that there are more useful SEO activities to engage on than links.
Mueller explained:
“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall”
Finally, Gary Illyes explicitly said that Google needs very few links to rank webpages and confirmed it.
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Why Google Doesn’t Need Links
The reason why Google doesn’t need many links is likely because of the extent of AI and natural language undertanding that Google uses in their algorithms. Google must be highly confident in its algorithm to be able to explicitly say that they don’t need it.
Way back when Google implemented the nofollow into the algorithm there were many link builders who sold comment spam links who continued to lie that comment spam still worked. As someone who started link building at the very beginning of modern SEO (I was the moderator of the link building forum at the #1 SEO forum of that time), I can say with confidence that links have stopped playing much of a role in rankings beginning several years ago, which is why I stopped about five or six years ago.
Read the research papers
Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment – Jon M. Kleinberg (PDF)
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
Featured Image by Shutterstock/RYO Alexandre
19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
Google Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024
An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
97 Marvelous May Content Ideas for Blog Posts, Videos, & More
Ecommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024
2024 WordPress Vulnerability Report Shows Errors Sites Keep Making
-
PPC5 days ago19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
-
SEO7 days agoGoogle Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
-
MARKETING6 days agoStreamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024
-
SEO6 days agoAn In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
-
PPC6 days ago97 Marvelous May Content Ideas for Blog Posts, Videos, & More
-
MARKETING5 days agoEcommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024
You must be logged in to post a comment Login