Google Search updates, helpful content, and recovery: a guide for marketers
by PPC Land
PPC Land— On April 29, 2024, a conversation on Twitter between SEO professional Thomas Jepsen and Google's John Mueller, a Search Relations team lead, shed light on website recovery following Google's recent Helpful Content Update (HCU).
seroundtable.com—Google: Sites Hit By Helpful Content Update Could See Improvements With Next Core Update If. Google's John Mueller was asked when can a site expect to recover from the September 2023 helpful content update, assuming the site took all measures to "fix" their site. John Mueller said you can assume "bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen."This came up on X:Question: Assuming a site hit by HCU in 2023 has fixed everything that caused the sitewide classifier to be applied, what is the timeframe for the site to start climbing again? Answer: "Fix" is hard to say...
seroundtable.com—Google: Sites Hit By The Old Helpful Content Update Can Recover & Grow. Google's John Mueller said again this morning that sites hit by the old September helpful content update or even new core updates can recovery. He said on X and on LinkedIn that it is possible to recover but it is not a simple change you can tweak on your website, but rather it takes a lot of effort, over time, to recover.John said that not only can you recover but you can grow. He said this morning, "Yes, sites can grow again after being affected by the "HCU" (well, core update now)."Last week...
seroundtable.com—Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Ranking Volatility, Site Reputation Abuse Enforcement, Pichai On Search Quality, HCU Recovery & More. Google may have had two search ranking algorithm updates, one around May 9th and one around May 3rd. Google began its site reputation abuse policy enforcement this week with manual actions, and it is not about linking. Google said sites may recover from the helpful content update. Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, responded