Your thoughts on Google Helpful Content Update

Do you think there will be more weight to social media comments, shares, likes and general interaction related to content we produce?

My own thoughts, if there is a lot of genuine interaction for the post on social media which links to the piece of content it is a signal that it is helpful and of use to the audience, as long as there is a good CTR from the social media post to the article.

Dear Google,

Google Helpful Content Update​

The answer is right in the title! What does it mean for a piece of content to be "helpful"?

Simple: A higher avg. time spent on the page where visitors interact with the content (filling a form, playing a video, etc.) and find the information they need.

Here's how the August 2022 update looks like so far for one of my sites. An increase of ~30% traffic without any backlinks built. Just high quality content. It's really easy these days to be on top of the competition when it comes to content quality. There is so much junk out there...

I don't think the social interactions with the content will be the main ranking signal.

I think that Google's helpful content update ties in neatly with Google's RankBrain update.

RankBrain is focused on page context and user experience.

You have to understand that as powerful as Google's software technology may be, I don't think it has reached a point where it can read pages like a human being.

Maybe they're getting there, but it's not quite there yet.

You only have to look at the ridiculous search result published by SEO Roundtable to get a good idea.

Google uses an indirect method where they pay attention to user experience metrics and make some inferences about the overall quality of the content that triggered a particular behavior.

Expect more of this, and I believe Google will continue to tweak its helpful content parameters in line with YMYL and EAT.

All these take place within the larger infrastructure of Google RankBrain.

Social media comments are useless. Now most of the webmasters do not even use plugins like Facebook comments anymore.

It’s just a matter of time before Google starts filtering out that shit content for good. I’m talking about the unedited, auto generated & posted content. I’d like to say within the next 2 years, Google will be ahead of the curve when it comes to even mid-tier AI content.

AI technology isn’t just going to stop, but Google has a seemingly infinite amount of resources to use.