Helpful content
What is helpful content?
Helpful content is Google’s description of content created primarily to help people rather than to attract search engine traffic. Google launched a “helpful content system” in August 2022 to demote sites with a lot of unhelpful, search-first content. In March 2024 that system was folded into Google’s core ranking systems, so helpfulness is now judged by multiple core systems.
Google publishes self-assessment questions for this. Does the content provide original information, research or analysis? Does it show first-hand expertise? Would someone leave feeling they had learned enough to reach their goal? Warning signs include writing to a word count, covering trending topics you have no expertise in, summarising what others say without adding value, and producing lots of content on many topics hoping some will rank.
It doesn’t matter how the content is made. Google has said AI-assisted content is fine if it is helpful, but mass-produced pages made mainly to rank break the scaled content abuse policy.
Why helpful content matters for SEO
Helpfulness is at the centre of how Google assesses content quality. Sites hit by the original helpful content updates often saw site-wide drops, not just on the weakest pages.
Because it is part of core updates now, improving helpfulness is the main way to recover from core update losses.
How to make content more helpful
- Write for a specific audience that would come to your site directly, not just for search traffic.
- Add something new: original data, first-hand testing, examples, photos or expert opinion. See information gain.
- Answer the question quickly, then go deeper for those who want more.
- Remove or improve pages that exist only to catch keywords.
- Make authorship and sources clear.
Is Google updating right now? Every confirmed core and spam update, with rollout dates and daily ranking volatility, is on the OpenSEO Google algorithm update tracker.
Helpful content FAQ
Does the helpful content update still exist?
Not as a separate system. Since March 2024, Google assesses helpfulness through its core ranking systems, and there are no separate helpful content updates.
Can AI content be helpful content?
Yes, according to Google, if it is accurate, original and made to help people. Using AI or any method to churn out low-value pages to rank is against Google’s spam policies.
Related SEO terms
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google’s quality raters look for in content.
A Google core update is a broad change to Google’s main ranking systems, released several times a year, that can move rankings for many sites.
Information gain is the new, useful information a page adds beyond what other pages on the same topic already say.
Scaled content abuseBlack hat
Scaled content abuse is producing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, with little value for users, whether made by AI, people or both.
A content audit is a review of every page on a site, with data, to decide which to keep, update, merge, redirect or remove.
Thin content is a page with little or no useful content of its own, such as near-empty pages, copied text or doorway pages.