winners & losers from Google Helpful Content Update - 1,280 search results analyzed
Digital marketers have had their collective ear to the ground, trying to tease out the impacts of Google’s latest “Helpful Content” update, and our team at Verde is no different. With some time since the update began its rollout, we decided to crunch the numbers and look at the largest shifts that we’ve seen in search engine results. What did we find? Unsurprisingly, we saw some websites fare better than others, but the real learnings come from breaking down changes on an individual basis.
Contents:
Learn More About the Update
Methodology
Winners & Losers
Deep Dives & Learnings
What to Do With This Information?
how to learn more about the Google Helpful Content Update
In this post, we won’t be specifically covering the ins and outs of the new algorithm update, many websites have covered this in great depth already. Instead, we’re looking at real-time results from our outdoor and active lifestyle spaces. Here are some places where you can learn more. At its core, the update focused on promoting unique and insightful content focused on users, not search engines, so human-first rather than SEO-first content. As Google continues to evolve, we see this trend - a focus on the user and user journey. In fact, Google released another update hot on the heels of Helpful Content, building on the changes we saw here. Looking at the upcoming GA4 (Google Analytics 4) further confirms this as data will take a more holistic user view.
Google: What creators should know about Google's helpful content update
Search Engine Land: Google’s helpful content update: What should we expect?
Have questions about GA4 migration? Contact us
the methodology
We are constantly tracking hundreds of keywords for our clients, not only to report on their progress but to better understand the changing media landscape. For this analysis, we focused on a broad group of nearly 100 keywords and 1,280 results that are representative of our outdoor industry clients. Since we work primarily in earned media and PR, many of these keywords focus on review and “best” queries, like “best rain jackets.” Our comparisons were made between search engine results at the end of Q2 and early September. We looked at the cumulative rank change for various websites, as well as the number of pages that dropped out of the top 10 rankings or were new to the top 10.
the biggest movers - by the numbers
Most postions gained
Looking at the websites that gained the most cumulative positions, we can help to target our PR efforts towards these sites, making sure that we’re getting our client brands and products exposure to these powerful websites. Targeting outlets that perform well in search is key to giving our PR hits staying power. Then, digging in, as we do below, to these pages, we can learn about the optimizations that are helping these sites succeed in search.
Most positions lost
Similar to looking at the sites that have benefited the most from the algorithm update, we can learn from the websites that saw the largest cumulative drops in their rankings. This process is equally beneficial to looking at the “winners,” especially when we see websites that post high-quality and in-depth content like Clever Hiker appear on the list. Below we break down one landing page from the site and hypothesize some reasons why this update might have affected them.
deep dive: “best hiking pants”
Looking to a specific keyword, we can start to dissect individual pages and websites, parsing learnings that we can apply to our own pages. We saw powerful websites both enter and exit the top 10 results here.
Result Breakdown: Advnture
Advnture is a website that we saw newly moving into the top 10 for several keywords that we analyzed. We love the balance that the website strikes between very in-depth reviews and ease of navigation. The balance of detail and easy-to-skim takeaways makes a clear case for the user-first content that this update is aimed to promote.
Things we like:
Detailed introduction with benefits and things to look for
Easy to navigate format with anchor links to products
“Reasons to Buy” and “Reasons to Avoid” provides top insights at a glance
Great breakdown of each product with original copy with 250-350 words for each
Result Breakdown: CN Traveler
Meanwhile, looking at a website that moved out of the rankings, CN Traveler, we see a different story. Putting yourself in the mind of a person searching for the best hiking pants, we can see that this page would be less helpful. Despite having original content, the page feels thin, with shorter descriptions and a lack of specs and high-level takeaways. While length doesn’t necessarily equate to quality, especially when you consider ease of navigation, this page felt thin.
Reasons other results may have been prioritized:
Short descriptions (less than 50 words), content feels thin, though it is original
No specs listed aside from price
No quick way to get the overall impression
No on-page navigation
deep dive: “best waterproof jackets”
Here, we wanted to dig deeper into a website that has very high-quality original content, but dropped out of the top 10. In fact, we saw Clever Hiker as one of the websites that lost the most cumulative positions in search rankings, despite being a website that we respect for their depth and expertise. So what could have contributed to these rankings losses despite great content?
Result Breakdown: Clever Hiker
Here we see a ton of great content, almost too much! Therein lies the biggest user-facing issue that we would try to address when we put ourselves into the shoes of the Clever Hiker team - scannability and ease of navigation. With so much content on the page, it can be hard for a user to get what they need from the page. Better navigation and page layout could help to better answer a search query, which is the foundation of Google’s algorithm.
Where we would try to improve if we were Clever Hiker:
Article is very long at 3,550 words, make it more easily scannable
Re-arrange the article so there is less scrolling to get to an actual product review
Add a table of contents with anchor links to sections
Anchor “Quick Recommendations” links to the product reviews below, not to commerce sites
what to do with this information?
Search rankings are changing constantly, and the data can be contradictory at times, so how do we learn from it? First, as with any Google algorithm update, we can use our observations to optimize the content we create for our clients and our own websites. Sometimes we can develop blind spots when analyzing our own content, this is why audits and analyses like we did above can be so helpful to make our own content great for users. Next, we can continue to strengthen our knowledge of the media landscape in order to better serve our clients, seeking out placements in high-impact publications that will drive long-term value. In order to maximize the impact of our work, we strategically target PR hits that can drive value by attracting search traffic month after month, this way our hits are more than a flash in the pan.
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