Google Says Fixing A Helpful Content Site Isn’t About Where Measuring Against The Previous Version
I’ll start by saying that was a hard title to write and I hope it makes sense. In short, Google’s John Mueller said on X, when it comes to fixing your site that was hit by the helpful content update, “it’s not relative to previously, it’s basically a re-evaluation of the whole site in the new / current online world & users expectations.”
What John is saying is that just because you improved the helpfulness of your content on your site by a specific amount, it still might not be good enough based on how you compare to those in your industry.
So you shouldn’t compare where you are today to where you are now, with your specific site. You need to compare yourself today to where you are with the current space you are in today.
Of course, you can always look at poor examples of sites outranking you that shouldn’t – so I am not sure how good this statement is when you look at specifics. But in general, it is a nice statement for any site owner.
Here is that post:
I don’t know your site, but I’m happy to take a look if you want to DM. One thing with updates like these is that it’s not relative to previously, it’s basically a re-evaluation of the whole site in the new / current online world & users expectations.
— John (@JohnMu) April 1, 2024
This is part of a much larger discussion on X:
Def an interesting one… HCU is a site wide assessment however. So worth keeping in mind that if you have been classified then looking at results for individual pages is not going to tell you anything other than which sites have not had the classifier applied to them.
