The Google August 2022 Helpful Content Update has started - Let's keep track of everything here

[dlyhai]

nope

most of my keywords are 0 comp, there were absolutely no information about them on the SERPs except some crumbs on reddit and forums

now im getting outranked by reddit/forums, or higher authority sites that aren't directly targeting the KW

How many articles do you have?
What backlinks do you make?
Good traffic for 10K PV /month

 

[Dark Hat 007]

around 100k PV/month

i don't have high hopes, seen a lot of sites getting crushed for no reason lately

You know, one prevalent knowledge here is that targeting KWs that forums ranked for was a keyword Research gem; recently, I started seeing google rank forums for most of those KWs.

So, if you are (still) ranking on the first page but have temporarily lost your first position, a little updating and beefing up the article might help. It might not be a core update issue. What do you think?

I suffered from the May core update, but I am about 150% back.

Meanwhile, do you have a journey on your site, especially your KW research steps?

 

[Daxir]

How many articles do you have?
What backlinks do you make?
Good traffic for 10K PV /month

250-300
no link building

You know, one prevalent knowledge here is that targeting KWs that forums ranked for was a keyword Research gem; recently, I started seeing google rank forums for most of those KWs.

So, if you are (still) ranking on the first page but have temporarily lost your first position, a little updating and beefing up the article might help. It might not be a core update issue. What do you think?

I suffered from the May core update, but I am about 150% back.

Meanwhile, do you have a journey on your site, especially your KW research steps?

looks like i've lost around only 10-20 top10 positions (out of tracked KWs), so my stuff are mainly pushed further down in the first page i'm assuming, including many of the #1 positions

big drop in impressions in GSC though, might ve completely lost a lot of side keywords that i'm not tracking, as i should've technically only lost clicks and not imps if my tracked keywords told the whole story

no journey, sorry

 

[dlyhai]

250-300
no link building



looks like i've lost around only 10-20 top10 positions (out of tracked KWs), so my stuff are mainly pushed further down in the first page i'm assuming, including many of the #1 positions

big drop in impressions in GSC though, might ve completely lost a lot of side keywords that i'm not tracking, as i should've technically only lost clicks and not imps if my tracked keywords told the whole story

no journey, sorry

Do you use expired domain?
I also do 0 com keywords but just a little traffic. I see a lot of people use expired domain with good backlinks and get good result

 

[popbradley]

nope

most of my keywords are 0 comp, there were absolutely no information about them on the SERPs except some crumbs on reddit and forums

now im getting outranked by reddit/forums, or higher authority sites that aren't directly targeting the KW

Dude same here. My main drop in traffic is some Keywords dropping to rank 4 or 5 behind some forums and one of them has one sentence on the subject. One… fucking… sentence… that ranks number one now because that’s “helpful” compared to my article covering the subject in detail lol.

 

[popbradley]

250-300
no link building



looks like i've lost around only 10-20 top10 positions (out of tracked KWs), so my stuff are mainly pushed further down in the first page i'm assuming, including many of the #1 positions

big drop in impressions in GSC though, might ve completely lost a lot of side keywords that i'm not tracking, as i should've technically only lost clicks and not imps if my tracked keywords told the whole story

no journey, sorry

Again, same for me. I was getting only 51k sessions a month but I was hovering around 38k impressions and have dropped to 26k impressions as of yesterday. Seep robot has showed I haven’t lost any keywords but I’m down about 30 to 40 keywords from rank 1 and 2 to rank 4,5 and 6. Many secondary keywords had to of been completely lost.

I filled out the form they submitted for your site being “wrongfully hit” but I know that’s not gonna do jack shit.

 

[vikalp.jain]

Lost almost 50% of traffic and impressions yesterday. Really bad! Any tips on how to recover? Mine is a real site with very good human-written content. Education niche.

 

[Atif Butt]

I have got it. Everything was fine. It was just last few days that have really brought things down for me.

 

[Rokit555]

I have got it. Everything was fine. It was just last few days that have really brought things down for me.

View attachment 224216

Check your stats on GSC. GA counted those bot/ghost visits from Seychelles, Chechia, and Netherlands, but now it seems that this problem is eradicated. I had a considerable boost, mainly because of these "visits". Now it seems it is back to normal, maybe a slight 10-15% drop, which is insignificant and can vary depending on the searches.

 

[Alexion]

Check your stats on GSC. GA counted those bot/ghost visits from Seychelles, Chechia, and Netherlands, but now it seems that this problem is eradicated. I had a considerable boost, mainly because of these "visits". Now it seems it is back to normal, maybe a slight 10-15% drop, which is insignificant and can vary depending on the searches.

Came here to say exactly this.

After a closer look at one PAA website I run where I thought I lost traffic, it turns out it was just a GA correction on that weird traffic everyone was getting.
GSC is actually on an upward trend.

 

[Atif Butt]

Check your stats on GSC. GA counted those bot/ghost visits from Seychelles, Chechia, and Netherlands, but now it seems that this problem is eradicated. I had a considerable boost, mainly because of these "visits". Now it seems it is back to normal, maybe a slight 10-15% drop, which is insignificant and can vary depending on the searches.

It is down as per Search Console as well. Web 1 is hit badly.

 

[hehe2444]

I have got it. Everything was fine. It was just last few days that have really brought things down for me.

View attachment 224216

My one also started going down on same date as yours. It's going down more everyday

 

[mirrorer]

Check your stats on GSC. GA counted those bot/ghost visits from Seychelles, Chechia, and Netherlands, but now it seems that this problem is eradicated. I had a considerable boost, mainly because of these "visits". Now it seems it is back to normal, maybe a slight 10-15% drop, which is insignificant and can vary depending on the searches.

+1 for this.

My analytics were up by a lot but after some research, I found those bots visits. Now blocked them and analytics show a 40% drop although GSC has remained stable.

 

[Atif Butt]

Google is a messed up company now. They are desperately trying to figure out how to pull these AI webs down in doing so they are failing again and again. May update and now this one.
White hat webs are getting hit by stupid updates.

I already had a set up back from EZOIC. As EMPV for my web 1 got down out of nowhere. Ezoic was not able to fix that. Now this crap has happened.

 

[sci0n]

None of my client sites got hit (neither is primarily an internet company).

My own sites don't see a lot of changes this time, except some of my trash sites raked up new ranking keywords.

Site 1 - got hit in May, I didn't attempt to recover it. No change now. Has no AI content.

Site 2 - got helped in May in a big way. There's a little blip but overall not much change now. Has AI content but passes detectors as human-written.

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Check your stats on GSC. GA counted those bot/ghost visits from Seychelles, Chechia, and Netherlands, but now it seems that this problem is eradicated. I had a considerable boost, mainly because of these "visits". Now it seems it is back to normal, maybe a slight 10-15% drop, which is insignificant and can vary depending on the searches.

Wow!! I just discovered that I had visits from them too, so those were bot traffics? Wow

The error doesn't show n GA4.

 

[Mactronn]

Websites with AI-generated content have lost almost 30-50% of traffic so far. Websites with normal content are climbing slowly.

 

[jacksi]

We're noticing ALOT of PAA and image packs in our niche

I also think it's stupid that ahrefs actively tracks and counts PAA as a position. On the face of it we look like we've lost a significant amount of 1-3 pos but in reality we've just been bumped down by PAA and not actually lost any position.

Though this was worth mentioning when looking at your traffic through AHref

 

[popbradley]

Dust seems to of settled on mine and I can find zero patterns. This update is supposed to be a site wide thing. meaning if one of my pages is outranked by one blog, the other pages should be as well but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Im now being outranked by some forums, sites I’ve always beat, and some new sites I’ve never seen before that have the EXACT same structure With extremely broken English articles. I’m talking “you will want to being looking out for this because it may be becoming very big problem later” stuff.

One of the biggest slaps in the face is google wants you to have some kind of niche to your site. They reward “expertise” apparently. Yet 5 of my 37 lost top 3 keywords are being beaten by a site with a name like klrmekrdopl.com with articles all over the place. One will be about trees growing, the next is about fixing an iPhone and the next is about cooking lol.

I just can’t find any pattern whatsoever why some sites passed me and some of my keywords will still beat those same sites.

Anyone else who’s been affected noticed stuff like this?

 

[Dark Hat 007]

Generally, I haven't seen much complaints.