All's quiet on the Google Helpful Content Update front. Not hearing much about ups and downs.

Maybe it's a relatively tame update that's going after the egregiously bad sites - whose owners are quiet and not public, so you wouldn't hear about them.

Or maybe the meat of the update hasn't been released yet. If they're going to do it, no better time than this weekend.

The update announcement went out on Thursday, August 25th, when they quietly updated the blog post about updates. There was no Twitter announcement like they usually do.

Maybe they released a small portion of it on Thursday to see what kind of effect it'd have and then release the rest during the weekend.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case because this release would probably involve a lot more of their AI and machine learning than other updates.

The previous 3 Product Review updates would be the closest to analyzing content and deciding its usefulness, so they've had 3 trial runs.

I would consider those 3 updates to be smaller components of this update. Each with some dramatic ups and downs, and plenty of complaints. It wouldn't surprise me if the noise is what has made this update release slower.

When you look at what the focus of the helpful content update is, then the product review updates they've been pushing out starting December 2021 start to make more sense - especially for those asking "I don't have a product review / affiliate site!"

With each update, Google asks "Is this site providing value to the user?" There's no way one single update would be able to answer that question. It would take multiple iterations and building in bits and pieces.

Google updates are not silo'ed off from each other. They build on top of each other.

Is this Helpful Content Update the final culmination? Heck no. My guess is it's only Stage 1. Remember, they're continually working on their own AI technology - MUM. Until MUM can provide searchers the answer itself, Google won't be done with these updates.

Google is shoring up the many shortcuts people take when building sites. There will still always be exceptions and sites not getting "caught," but the majority will have been hit.

Instead of finding shortcuts, keep building your sites out and publishing great content. Focus on creating great sites and content for users and you'll be fine in Google's eyes.

Niche Surfer