September 14, 2023 Google Helpful Content Update

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Google defines helpful content based on several criteria that aim to provide users with valuable and relevant information. While the exact algorithms and factors considered are proprietary, Google has outlined general principles and guidelines that help determine the quality and helpfulness of content.Google launched its latest Helpful Content Update on September 14, 2023. The roll-out time is specified as two weeks and was therefore completed on September 28, 2023. The last helpful content update was rolled out in December 2022. Like the last update, this one also aims to reward "high-quality content that was written for humans and not for search engines". The aim is to rank pure SEO content lower.The highlights of the update can be summarized as follows:

  • Content that is AI-generated will not rank directly lower than content that is written by humans. Rather, the content will be assessed independently of its origin.
  • When renting subdomains or subdirectories of domains with far-reaching influence, Google continues to warn that negative signals from the rented directories have a negative impact on the ranking of the entire domain.
  • Changes to the update date should only be made for major updates to the website. It can be seen that this update has a greater impact on visibility than the previous core update.

It is noticeable that this time domains that have been more or less spared from previous updates are particularly affected. These changes have both positive and negative effects. Successful models that are related to the subletting of domains, for example, or that have been increasingly ranked through SEO content, will lose up to 70% of their visibility.