Helpful Content Update - some early findings

So a few episodes ago I did a podcast on the Google Helpful content update and at the time I said I'd not seen any changes on any of my sites . Now the data I was giving them was true , because the sites I was keeping an eye on the sites my main income sites were actually fine , no problems at all from the Helpful content update .

But one of the strategies I have for launching new sites is that I will launch basic sites and then essentially leave them for a good while and unmonitized and leave them and let them start to build indexing , build links , build their audience .

Then after a while , when I've got to a certain level , I'll then turn to put on some display ads , usually AdSense , when they've got to a certain point and then , when they've grown again to the point where it's worth putting affiliate monetization on , I will tend to put affiliate monetization on and take off the AdSense so they then go back to having no display

advertising . So the ones I was keeping an eye on were mainly the ones which were running on affiliate income , because I generally only check my AdSense once or twice a month .

But recently , the past few days , I've gone back and I've been looking at the data on these sites that kind of in my backlog , the ones that are sort of up and coming , and I've noticed actually there are some changes there that I can see around the timings of the Helpful content update .

Now they're not massive 90% drops like some people have seen , which again is another reason why it hadn't occurred to me before that there was a drop on these . The other interesting thing is that some of these sites actually saw big jumps in traffic just as the Helpful content update finished rolling out .

So essentially , to recap this , I've got sites in three different phases the monetized ones , the top sites , the ones that have got big traffic and are purely monetized by affiliate .

Then I've got the middle tier sites , which are the ones which have built up a bit of traffic and they are monetized by display ads because they're not quite got enough traffic yet to bother with managing affiliate programs and it's just simpler to put on display ads .

And I've got sites at the bottom that are much the newer ones and because they're very , very new , I've not got any display or any affiliate on them at all , so they're completely unmonetized .

So what I'm now seeing by looking at all the data is that the top sites , which are just affiliate and monetized , they saw no negative effect on the Helpful content update . And the sites at the very bottom , they saw a jump in traffic just as the Helpful content update ended .

So around about the end of 27th , 28th of September , they saw big leaps and we're talking 150 , 250% leaps . Now there aren't quite small numbers , we're only talking a few hundred people a day , not thousands and thousands . But there was a sudden leap .

Now the ones in the middle , which are the ones which I haven't yet put the affiliate on but have got display advertising on , those have seen a gradual drop over the period of the Helpful content update . Nothing major , no big drops , not 90% , but probably around 25 to 30% over the period of time . It's noticeable .

Now there's enough trend data that I can compare sort of a month on month rather than day on day , because day on day you don't really notice the difference , but month on month I can see the difference now . So to me it looks like the sites with the display ads are the ones that are being seen as not so helpful .

Now they're obviously not terrible and seeing a 90% drop , but I think there's obviously something in there on those ads that have affected it Helpful content-wise and there's obviously a dampen have been put on those sites . Now , the interesting thing about all these sites is they're essentially all based on the same template .

They all target the same niche , but each site targets a different country . So that means that I can isolate it and say it's not a technical issue with the template , it's not an on-page issue , because the pages all follow the same format . They all have the target , the same data , but just in different countries .

So yeah , that kind of element of it is very similar across the board . The only difference amongst them all is that some of them have display ads on in this case AdSense and some of them don't . So the ones with the display ads on , regardless of the country , are the ones that have seen the hit .

And also , because the target in different countries , I can see the dates where obviously the rollout of the update has sort of affected different countries , so they've come in at slightly different times . And also languages , because some of them are in English and some of them are in various different languages Spanish , french , german , whatever .

So I can see how that kind of rollout effect has happened . And , obviously , the interesting thing , the other interesting thing is the sites early on , sites which are not monetized at all , have seen the big jumps just at the end of the update . Now Google said that the helpful content update didn't provide a boost to any sites .

So it's interesting to see why those sites have jumped . But it was right at the end of the helpful content update . So maybe there's something in there at the end where they did do a little boost on some sites . Maybe I don't know , but they haven't told us .

So yeah , so I just thought it'd be interesting to share these findings , these early findings , because , yeah , there's definitely , I think there's something in there that's worth investigating more . So I thought it was worth sharing . But again , you'll say it's early days . If you do have a site with display ads on , don't necessarily panic .

What I'm actually going to do , my next step is I'm going to take the display ads off some of the sites that have been hit and not others .

So I'm now going to see if removing the ads on some will help them start to ease their traffic back up and see if the other ones stay suppressed , like keep the ads on , and it might take a while to see how that pans out , but obviously I will share anything that I find . Thanks for listening . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share .

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Write today for free at KeywordsPeopleUsecom If you want to get in touch , have any questions , especially about the health content update or anything like that , I'd love to hear from you . I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter or you can email me at podcast at KeywordsPeopleUsecom . Why , for now , and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard .