This post is sponsored by Trisolute News Dashboard. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the sponsor.
Wondering why the visibility of some of your articles seemed to take a sudden dive this year?
Could this be part of a big change?
On August 25, 2022, Google started rolling out an update that could be of great interest to news and video publishers. On September 12, they released another important update.
This core update is called “Content Update(s)”.
Today, I will show you how the world’s news publishers are affected by them.
What Is The Helpful Content Update?
Google’s Assistive Content Update is an algorithm update that focuses on:
Google constantly updates its algorithm to suit searchers’ content, and sometimes, publishers’ views are greatly affected.
Which Google Categories Has The Helpful Content Update Impacted?
In this article, we will introduce the publishers around the world that are affected by the Help Desk Update.
We examined each of Google’s categories to see if we would find anything unusual at the time the update was implemented and we identified one or two countries in each category where the changes were particularly clear.
All data shown in this article is taken from Trisolute’s News Dashboard.
How We Discovered The Impact Of The Helpful Content Update
We wanted to make sure to look at the most visible publishers across the board for the newest, most newsworthy keywords based on Google News and Trends to get the most impactful results for the publisher’s visibility.
All rankings are based on real-time 15-minute crawls, so, we used the following filter settings in KPI Dashboard → Mobile News Box:
For filter systems, we have looked specifically at different countries around the world.
Top Stories
Mexico
Here, we can see that the two publications, El Financiero and Infobae, were clearly affected by the update:
While El Financiero showed an increase in its visibility after the August update, Infobae’s visibility decreased after that.
After the September update, El Financiero then showed a noticeable decline as well.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The two horizontal lines mark the two updates respectively.
Publishers seem to be less affected by the August update than the September update, both positively and negatively.
Country-Specific News
Switzerland
Both 20 Minutes and Blick rose to prominence after the August update.
Then, in week 36 (September 5 – September 11), 20 minutes had its peak, while Blick already started to decline.
From week 36 to week 37, the week when the second update took place, both publishers showed a sharp decline.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
While publishers seemed to benefit from the August update in this category, the September update resulted in a drop in their visibility.
World News
Colombia
For Columbia, there was an increase in visibility after the August update, especially for El Tiempo and Semana, while visibility for El Espectador almost stopped.
However, visibility dropped across all three publishers before the September update and remained at a steady level afterward.
Only El Espectador was able to regain visibility after the second renewal.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
Both updates caused a lot of noise from the publishers’ point of view.
Business News
Peru
Here, we can observe that between the two updates, CNN saw a loss of video, but these appeared again in the September update.
RPP was also able to build visibility at first, but lost it after the September update.
As for El Comercio, there was a short-term uptick after the August update, but it has rebounded.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The first update seems to have had a stronger negative impact on Peruvian publishers than the second.
Science & Technology News
France
In Science & In the technology sector, French publishers were mostly able to maintain or even build their profile after the August update.
However, both Jeuxvideo and Gamekult lost their visibility after the September update – only Le Monde increased its visibility after both updates.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
For most French publishers, both Google updates in Science & The technology sector led to the loss of vision.
Entertainment News
Australia
In the Australian entertainment category, News.com.au’s visibility rose until the August update, only then to show a sharp decline that continued until the September update week.
This caused the sight curve to flatten out again.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The first update in August seems to have had a negative impact on Australian publishers in the Entertainment category, while the second update in September had a positive impact.
United Kingdom
For UK publishers, both updates have shown a significant visual impact, as can be seen below in the Daily Mail and the Mirror.
Both publications showed an increase in their visibility through Week 34.
Then, when the August update happened, both of their features dropped significantly.
In the Daily Mail, the graph is constantly decreasing, even until the September update, but in the Mirror, this second update has made them decrease significantly in terms of perception.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
Here, the first update in August had a big impact on the publishers’ views; The second only had a moderate effect.
Sports News
Canada
In the Canadian sports section, TSN had a feature during the August update, but lost it a week before and during the September update. However, they got it back after the update.
CBC’s visibility, on the other hand, went the other way: Before the August update, their visibility increased significantly, then decreased slightly during the September update and the following week.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The August update had a big impact on publishers’ views of the Sports section, some immediately at the time of the update, and others in the weeks to come.
Health News
Austria
In the Health sector, the Australian publishers Der Standard and ORF were able to significantly increase visibility after the August update and have also brought this increase to the September update with minor changes.
In contrast, both Kurier and Vienna.at lost the feature after the August update, but were also able to do this after the September update.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
For publishers in Austria, the August update seems to have had the biggest impact on their profile in the Health sector, with some publishers being negative and others positive.
United States
In the American Health section, the developments seem to be the same for NPR and the New York Times, because initially, both disappeared after the August update.
However, NPR continued to lose visibility until the September update and then, their visibility went up again.
For The New York Times, on the other hand, things got a bit more noisy: First, they regained visibility between the two updates, only to lose it significantly in the week of the September update, and regain it the week after the update.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
The August update seems to have had a negative impact on publishers’ views on the Health sector, while the second September update had a positive impact.
COVID-19 News
Brazil
In the COVID-19 section of Brazil, the three publishers Globo, Abril, and UOL did not show any changes in their weekly profiles in the August update.
In week 36 though, which marks the week immediately before the September renewal, Abril and Globo both lowered their profile, while UOL rose.
For Globo, this decline continued into September as UOL continued to rise; Only Abril was able to catch up again and turn the curve.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
Brazil’s top publishers seem to be more affected by the September update than the August update.
Germany
In the German COVID-19 section, DER SPIEGEL had a special appearance in the week before the August update and then gradually disappeared again during it.
Since September, DER SPIEGEL’s trend has risen again.
The picture is different from Die Zeit: Here, the publisher lost its image a week before the August update and regained it all the way. They were also able to maintain this feature by slightly reducing the time between updates.
However, they then lost the feature significantly until the September update.
Image gallery for Trisolute News Dashboard, October 2022
Here, both updates seem to have affected the scene at the same time.
Key Findings For How Google’s Helpful Content Update Affected Publishers
For the top publishers in most countries, the first Effective Data Update in August seems to have had a greater impact on their visibility than the second one in September. It cannot be clearly stated that publishers’ views have been adversely affected by the update, as some have clearly benefited from it.
Here are some other interesting things we discovered:
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Featured Image: Trisolute News Dashboard Image Used with permission.
Why does Google like fresh content?
Google and its users value new information because it is likely to be accurate. Since the new algorithm was updated in 2011, changing queries or time-sensitive keywords trigger Google to prioritize new pages with the most up-to-date information.
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Is it safe to update Google?
In general, yes it is safe to update Chrome.
What is meant by low quality?
low quality. adjective us. used to describe an item of inferior quality or standard: food/goods/goods of inferior quality The retail industry is calling for higher duties to control the importation of inferior products.