Google is pushing a big update to how search works and if you work in marketing, here’s what you need to know. Here’s how they described it on their blog…. Many of us have experienced the frustration of visiting a web page that seems like it has what we’re looking for but doesn’t live up to our expectations.
The content might not have the insights you want, or may not even seem like it was created for or even by a person.
We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers. So starting next week, For English users globally, we’re rolling out a series of improvements to search to make it easier for people to find helpful content made by and for people.
And onto the actual update…. Google describes this as better ranking of original, quality content. And here’s what they said about that… we continually update search to make sure we’re helping you find high quality content. Next week will launch the helpful content update to tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines, rather than to help or inform people. This ranking update will help make sure that unoriginal low-quality content doesn’t rank highly in search, and our testing has found it willespecially improve results related to online education, as well as arts and entertainment, shopping, and tech related content.
Google also gives an example, if you search for information about a new movie, you might have previously seen articles that aggregated reviews from other sites without adding perspectives beyond what’s available elsewhere. This isn’t very helpful if you’re expecting to read something new. With this update, you’ll see more results with unique authentic information. So you’re more likely to read something that you haven’t seen before.
There’s also another part of this update that Google describes as more helpful product reviews written by experts. And here’s how they described that… we know product reviews can play an important role in helping you make a decision to buy something.
Last year, we kicked off a series of updates to show more helpful in-depth reviews based on firsthand expertise in search results. We’ve continued to refine these systems and in the coming weeks we’ll roll out another update to make it even easier to find high quality, original reviews. We’ll continue this work to make sure you find the most useful information when you’re researching a purchase on the web. We hope these updates will help you access more helpful information and valuable perspective on search. We look forward to building on this work to make it even easier to find original content by and for real people in the months ahead.
So that’s all they’ve said about the update and as usual, Google doesn’t really reveal all the technical details. They tend to Tell us their intentions on what the algorithm is supposed to do. And then of course the marketing industry has to do a ton of testing to figure out what this actually means. But in broad strokes, I think this is really exciting. They are basically continuing the fight against machine generated content. And bringing more attention to content creators that are spending time to come up with unique, insights and perspectives and adding to the conversation as opposed to just repeating the same thing that you find elsewhere.
Personally, I’m excited for this update because I always encourage people to take the time to create unique original content. And if your content marketing strategy is very SEO and keyword dependent, now might be the time to revisit that. I do believe that over time on Google and beyond, there’s going to be a growing emphasis on original thought leadership content. My advice would be not to worry. Often times, I need marketers with great insights on the industry. Now is just maybe a push to publish those thoughts and produce the original content that’s already in your head. And as the situation unfolds, as Google release more updates as to what they’re actually doing, I’ll create more videos to keep you posted. Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video.
