Google’s SearchLiaison answered a question asking for advice on how to diagnose content that’s lost rankings because of the Helpful Content update. SearchLiaison offered advice on how to step back and think about what the problem could be and if there even is a problem to consider.
Question On Fixing HCU Affected Pages
Someone on X (formerly Twitter) expressed frustration with the advice SEOs have offered because it was understood (erroneously it turns out) that the Helpful Content issue is a sitewide signal which complicates identifying pages that didn’t need fixing.
Lee Funke (@FitFoodieFinds) tweeted:
“I keep getting advice from SEOs to “look at the pages with the biggest drops” and figure out why they dropped. If we were hit by HCU then the sitewide signal has made ALL pages drop, making it difficult to analyze helpful vs. unhelpful. Any advice?”
SearchLiaison Answers HCU Question
SearchLiaison first addressed the perception that the Helpful Content ranking system is a single signal.
He tweeted:
“We had this in our Search Central blog post, but it’s probably worth highlighting that the helpful content system of old is much different now:
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies“Just as we use multiple systems to identify reliable information, we have enhanced our core ranking systems to show more helpful results using a variety of innovative signals and approaches. There’s no longer one signal or system used to do this, and we’ve also added a new FAQ page to help explain this change.””
Next he explained that the Helpful Content System (commonly referred to as the HCU) is not a sitewide “thing” but rather it affects websites at the page-level.