Google's recent content and core updates : Transcripted
Anupam :
Very good afternoon and welcome all. Folks who have made time for this webinar and joined us thus far, and I'm sure a few more are also along the way about to join. So here we are today this afternoon talking about this you know in this webinar presented back when type on the latest Google helpful content September 4 update and the product reviews updates right. So we've of course as most of you know pin type is a provider of SaaS suite of products for digital publishers and we do conduct these webinars almost every other month to have a view from industry experts on various topics of interest to the audience as part of the ecosystem that we are in. Having said that, without further ado, quick round of introductions. My name is Anupam Dasgupta. I work as VP marketing with Quintype and I have the pleasure of hosting Mr Chandan Kumar, who is the head of audience both at Indian Express Group Digital and he's worked with the likes of NDTV 2 in the past and the audience groups space.Over to you, Chandan, to say a few more words about yourself.
Chandan :
Yes, thank you. Very good afternoon to all of you attendees, right. So I am. I have been working in this space for close to 14 years right? And we have most of the IT I have spent with the Express Group One.Midway has spent some time with any TV group also to grow their audience base, and so there's a good amount of experience, I spent a lot of information right by and time by reading these algorithm updates and we we spoke together at me and open so why don't we should do a a discussion right
Anupam :
Sure, let's get started.
Digital publishers or for news publishers, this entire view of search-led traffic. We know this is important but how do you see this - how important is it in comparison to other traffic.
Chandan :
If I speak with the data, in 2018, the Internet population was less than .5 billion which will cross 1 billion in 2022-2023. So definitely the market is going up, the entire market ecosystem is changing and search led traffic is important. A platform like Facebook, is a dominant player in the social media space, there is a shift in content consumption. People are spending most of their time on Facebook by consuming reels and videos right? Not actual content. Because the intent of the users is “if I want to read a content, we know what to search for and we can go on the Internet to consume that content, right?”
It's not like the text is absolutely gone from Facebook, right? Or maybe Twitter, but definitely the reasons and videos have surpassed the overall consumption behavior on these social media platforms. And specifically when I talk about this digital news business, right, news publisher business in India is on a lower side while search is continuously dominating the entire base, right? And definitely and that is why Google is getting this understanding that we should also tweak our algorithms, our search, our search behavior. This would help give more helpful, more relevant and towards the queries that people are searching for. So that is why the search is definitely going to dominate. And that is why these algorithm updates are happening - To make this more relevant to the user. Because of their algorithms, their bots also understand that there is some relevancy, some missing part right, some feedback worth tuning into.
Anupam :
Right so speaking of content and of audience, right. When you think of an audience one is acquiring an audience and two is developing the audience, right. Developing the audience by engaging them, by giving them the right content, right. Hence my mind goes to the reference to let's say helpful content update, right, authentic original content. So what is your perspective on, let's say engaging, nurturing, nurturing the audience more with quality of content being a parameter? With outcomes such as, let's say, subscription driven monetization models actually benefiting from that. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that dimension.
Chandan :
Right. So the number of updates in a financial or maybe in a calendar year have gone up drastically right in the last 2-3 years right? So if you actually see the data, in 2009 we used to get not more than 300 to 400 updates. Out of them only few are actually confirmed while we are getting a lot of confirmed updates. And according to one data where I did find one article which says that in 2020 there were 4500. That's a lot. In 2019 it was 3200, so clearly the graph is going right. 21 and 22 / 20, two, 2022 is already going on, right? And we're seeing a lot of changes happening in September only. The difference between so content helpful update closed rule roll down company rollout completed on September 22 core update. Product review update on September 20, right and both of the, the last two have been finished on September 26 so on. So that means in the span of only 12 days there have been back-to-back three updates which speaks a lot about how Google is actually making their research results more relevant, more focused.
This is data from 2018- 2019 till now, right? It says that there's a lot happening and Google engineers must have a tough time releasing these updates. Product people are having a good time analyzing and results. And also that's a very, very important understanding that whenever there's a significant change in query, then only Google announces it on Twitter and on other forums. But not every update right?
Google wants to showcase their search results model right and for this they are actually taking their algorithm. Local search algorithms are also a part of this. Where code and product review update is a part of the entire signal signals. So they are taking signals from this too. So I'm saying that that's a series of things happening that updates are happening because of the relevancy and the trust and the authority they have. And that is why they are doing their task.
Anupam :
Sure, sure, sure. Request to the audience, if you have any questions at any point of time, please feel free to type it in the Q&A window and we would be glad to have Chandan's perspectives on that. So that's it. Interesting what you really summarized us now is that it's a continuum basically it's a continuous change of updates that keep happening. That said, when the helpful content update was going on or it just got rolled out.
Chandan :
You might as well have seen a lot of comments going on, on the Internet saying that, hey, we didn't feel the update at all, right? What happened? Did the update at all come or it was like what happened, we didn't even realize that a content update came in. So, you know, specifically how do you react to that kind of a thought which floated across at least I came across quite a few comments on that same note.
From Google's lenses right, Google actually said this to CEOs and webmasters and website owners to get focused that what you are doing is right. And according to one data which says that the moment this gets actually announced right, hundreds and thousands of thousands of the article annotated flooded and social media posts are flooded with this helpful content update. Google shows that these many people actually contributed to healthful content updates. So the point is that we as an SEO expert should be aware of and critically deal with the info.
Because the information that is written on Google Docs is not very very, I would say they try to make it very clear but it's not clear for most of the people. So we need to actually clarify to the engineering product and respective editorial team and management that this is the flow right? And this is the requirement that Google is proposing. They have clearly shared this information that the audience, the content should be intended correctly.
You should not do certain things like automation on something that’s not adding much value and you're just doing content without adding any value, right, just covering a topic without having a test coverage, right. So every time Google actually is saying that there has to be trust, authority and expert view. They are saying that whatever you're contributing should be of essence.
The content that we are providing has to be informative, original reporting, original research, original analysis, right. If you actually go through the queries that they actually asked for right. So they say that the conversation has to be informative. Can you bookmark and share it to individuals or in your group? Does your content have repeat visitors? Will you have logged in to read this content?
Then the last information which says the credit card information, can you share the credit card information to the site? So look at the trust level which is coming from your readers.
If they do trust you then your content is actually helpful. And this gives us authority to the site also, right? Google is not saying something which is out of the blue in this content update. You should actually present both sides of the story. Which is anyway the journalistic practice, right? So that is that, that is the point.
Anupam :
Interesting. I mean particularly the way you mentioned the hierarchies, right, from you know information to the financial information content to the financial information. I think it is a very interesting way to put it. There’s another thought that helpful content is being strengthened by the September core update right. What are your observations on the September core update and what would be the call out for publishers.
Chandan :
As Danny wrote on their blog, right? They were working on this project for a decade or so. While they notified through Twitter just 10 days before the rollout will start. They are working on it and they keep working on this. What they regularly saw being communicated on Twitter and and understand this Google helpful content was the area where there was a lot of writing on Google blogs. But there are some areas which are not written right and some areas are still untouched right. So that is why they're very vocal on Twitter and that is why they responded back to a couple of quotes from my side.
That's good to actually help everyone to understand what is the problem and there is the problem, right? Which actually says to Google that the duplicate content and the less authority content are not going to help, right? It can happen where there is no expertise in the content and is duplicate. But the content is relevant to the user right? And the person's query gets solved - this bit is unanswered and similar things can cause confusion.
Helpful content update, is a series of updates which actually started in 2018 right? And this is a series that is going on. There are some strong signals for some publishers, there are some weak signals for some publishers. But what I have seen is that the entire ecosystem remains the same. It's a shift which is happening between business publishers to English, generally English publishers to Hindi publishers. So we’re actually shifting from 1 segment to another segment, right? One is getting benefited against others, right? Whoever is the closest competition, that particular segment may be business, news publication, so maybe in English news. So this is happening entirely right I'm telling you after analyzing our plot of publishers - Indian and global, right.
And I can tell you that this is happening with the core update. Product review update is another thing where user when Google is saying that your product has to be satisfying enough, has to have a additional information. It's not like that you collected this data from here, that you added this content from here and you added some more content from here and you made a piece, right. You have to add a value and layer on top of it and it's not on one page across all of your pages.
You should share the pros and cons on the page of the product. Also the person should get that decision making understanding from these pages, right. If you are able to build that ecosystem which we build that product right, then definitely this product and the domain authority will get enhanced.
So whatever publishers are actually contributing and maybe something and doing which Google is clearly saying you shouldn't do - like a code driven content, maybe automated content, maybe something else - thats a clean no no.
Anupam :
Sure, sure. So you did mention about your interactions on social media and of course we know and I have personally seen some of your conversations on Twitter with the other suspects. So I think one of them was across this word count for articles that were really interesting. So why don't you tell us that entire context, how that came by and what was the conclusion of it?
Chandan :
Right. So actually what happened? Google used to have an error which says Article 2 short where the article is less than 80 words falls under a different category in search Google Search Console right which is where they say that this is an error. You need to fix it right? It used to be the case and newsrooms evolved their practices in such a way that they have to pad up the content to complete it right? There's an article on Cystic where it clearly mentions 250 to 300 words are also short articles. So now both conversations contradict each other's right that Google's helpful content update is saying that length doesn't matter where the other content says it does matter.
So that is why that was the query that I placed on Twitter, right, where Dan responded back by saying that we don't actually do anything. They stick with the recent helpful content. Now there was another question then what happened, right. So the summary of this discussion was if News from The Newsroom site if you are actually contributing, let's say there's a new new scheme in and you published an article which says that the more details are written and published that article, but the content there, there's no update came in after right and you, but the the news desk has to complete the article by two 5300 and then leave it and move move, move. Over back to the legal newsroom practices, that is not required if the content, if the content. If the event has or maybe the news is not turned up so well, right? You don't want to pad up the content and you can leave it and you can move to the next one, it won't. So you need to be very conscious of the Google search console errors.
That was the first. It isn’t like if you're not seeing any error with the length of the content, you are fine to go with it. And it was the impact of the conversation that Google has changed their documentation.
Anupam :
Yeah, I saw that. That was quite interesting, so I thought it would be. Again, the audience may have seen it already, but I thought it would be interesting to bring that up. So a slight detour. So this entire slew of recent updates, right so. Do they have anything specific to do with core web vitals?
Chandan :
So definitely yes, it comes down to the user experience. What user is consuming what is the page experience? Are you seeing more of an ad? Are you seeing content that is not actually derailing with the conversation right? If you are consuming the content and you, you actually cut it short. A lot of articles have to have the means to conclude it properly rather than just keeping it hanging. These are some problems right? And also the page experience is also a problem. So if users are not getting good page experience right, there is just a score.
There's another part right which is CLS right which used to be only 5% of the entire score which is growing to 15% which has grown in version 8 to 15% which will grow further also. Which comes under the technical issue part will remain important.
Anupam :
Sure, sure. So what you're really saying is it all, it is all about user experience, right? Whether you're looking at the rendering part, the technical part, the response time for the website, responsiveness across devices for that matter or beach, the quality of content, is it giving something conclusive or is it just leaving it abrupt half way, so you're saying it's eventually all about the user experience, right. So yeah, so then great points made the channel. So I think one other thing which you briefly mentioned.
Sometime back. So I for one have come across a lot of these platforms recently, right, which give you, which are quite incredible though quite remarkable in the sense that they generate content on Flyer, right? So you give a keyword and they'll write a paragraph on it. So you give a URL, they'll write a 1000 word article on it, so.
In the light of the recent content updates, how do you see this AI driven content surviving, growing, not growing, dying out? What's your perspective on this?
Chandan :
So that's again a question, right, which went unanswered on Twitter because Google tends to avoid problematic areas, right? If it's because you're driven content is clearly understandable by bias, simply because the mechanism they are using in Google is pretty smart to capture it right and AI driven content can help eliminate bias.
That is not going to make the actual content fly, right? And that is why Google is saying that you have to invest in content, you have to invest in technology to make it better, relevant.
Anupam :
So while we are speaking, this is a question that has come up from Avinash B. Thanks Avinash. Avinash says sorry, I could not get it. Could you please come again about the word count which Google considers healthy content?
Chandan :
There's no specific answer of the content line. Let's say in the context of news only, right, maybe somewhere there's a story and you published an article which you will publish the moment you get any relevant information. But it was just an update, right? Which came in and there's no interest also from search, but just for sake of interest you’ve put it out there. Now just so that it doesn’t fall under 350 words you’ll publish something new - so it doesn’t fall under article 2. And then leave the content and move to the next newsroom. Practice and go forward for this right? Google is saying there is no need for padding in the content. As long as this is not appearing in your Google Search console area, you are fine with it.
Anupam :
Sure. So basically you're saying there's no point padding up for the sake of padding.
Chandan :
Yep.
Anupam :
Yes, authentic original content writes informative information. In the case of news that's going out, it doesn't have to be padded up for the sake of padding up, right. So vinash, I hope that answers your question. Please do feel free to pour in more questions so as you get them along the way, I think one thing which a lot of marketers do and SEOs and let's say more readers of search engine related updates or search engine related information? The Question is that we keep hearing about these updates, but isn't that Google forever has been anyway talking about more genuine, more authentic, more original content news publishers or not? So what is new really that's happening in these updates or is there nothing new? Is it just that there are specific algorithms which are rolling out which enforce the same point in greater detail.
Chandan :
If you actually go through these updates very closely, right, there's nothing which is substantially different. Maybe just take an example of core update. So just keep your user centered, and start producing content, making products, working on technology or maybe working on SEO to give them the right signals. What is used is used to provide the right signals to search engine and also users that should get that information. We may be based on the keyword or may be based on the content. Or maybe it's HTML or something. That art page is relevant against this query. What is whatever is being searched for?
So you should have your user centric, and if you're making the content user centric, make your product user centric, right? You are anyways done, and you need not to change your entire process and everything right now.
Also, it doesn't mean that you should not be doing that SEO stuff. Or maybe you should avoid these SEO best practices and you're just doing that sick of user experience and all? Because my user experience is good, but I'm not bothered about SEO signals. If you're not doing this right and you're just working on this user experience, this is not going to help you have a balance.
Anupam :
Sure, sure. So probably those on page parameters are like hygiene, but user experience is the priority on top of the hygiene. I mean that really makes a lot of sense. While we were speaking there was another question which came in from Avinash again and he's saying if it is something trending then can it be a smaller content like ET 200 words?
Chandan :
If you read the documentation very closely, Google has specifically had this question right and said this to avoid it. Which says that if you are covering an article because just for the sake of this is trending, it is not going to help.
Just because something is trending right and we don't have a depth coverage of it, it's not going to help according to this update.
Anupam :
OK, Sure. We got another question coming in which is, is there any specific way to optimize for Google discover?
Chandan :
That still unanswered thing, right? There's very less documentation available on Internet. We need to understand there is no separate book bought for Google Discover and Google search. So the best practices of what we're doing for search, right? Definitely going to work on Discover also, but there is another layer of personalization. The personalization is not working very very strongly currently on search, but definitely working very strongly on fields right on Discover feeds. So that is why the answer to your question is -there's no clear guidelines for what to do, what not to do, but whatever we are doing as for Google search, we should continue doing it.
Anupam :
Just wanted to hear from you because you put it very nicely the other day when we were speaking about, you know, the person who's writing the story and not just the story - their role.
Chandan : So what happens to this authority whenever we say that the person is actually expert?
So let's say I have published a roughly 3000-word article on our site and my author page will have this 3000 word article right? But what topics are they all about? They have to actually crawl all the pages and then make a cluster right? So Google is also doing these activities to understand. To make my page rank on maybe 17th or 27th or maybe seventh position, they will crawl the entire page and then they will make a decision about this particular thing.
This also relates to this right or maybe author contributes to these many topics, while if we give that a particular bio which says that they are actually having the experience of this and this is also very important how much experience I have. So let's say I'm just a contributor and have been contributing in this system, since five years, so maybe since 25 years, right. How Google Bot will you understand this right? Maybe I've written so many articles on a certain website and then I moved out to a different organization where I don't have 3000 pages to actually Google control and give my content authority then how will this happen?
I read somewhere which says that the author should clearly mention what all segments or what all genres they are contributing with. How many years of experience that particular person has, what their interests are and how people can follow individuals right on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, right? So this gives us understanding that the individual is.
If you are actually doing this right, you are also saying that the content has to be quality checked right? The editors should do that, the quality check right? The contribution shouldn't look like that. You collected this information from places and glued them up together after only adding a paragraph of original content then it wouldn’t look the same right.
Anupam :
Sure, right. Interesting insights, chandan. I think another question has come in from Vikram Shivali. And Vikram asks, do backlinks work for media websites?
Chandan :
Yes. So when Google says that backlinks and keywords in the URL and something like that don't work and you don't give that weightage right? But according to my experience I've seen this. Publishing business website against just a blog has been just started, maybe just a website started with the same number of contributors, let's say same numbers, saying the same number of reporters right after five months or maybe six months down the line, how Google will actually give weightage to both of them.
Definitely based on the back links based on authority and how you've actually covered topics according to. According to the time you have covered that article, right? Maybe five articles on a certain topic.
You have to break, you have to cover the topic right? And that that's anyways is the basic function of Google News, right? Google News is actually saying that when you publish an article and a particular topic, let's say there's a topic right, maybe Osama is dead or something right. And you have covered that article and the small blocks are covered in the article and you are doing a follow up article you are covering that article through opinion right? So that is why again that's the original research original contribution that comes to. So everything is coming around the guidelines that they are sharing with us.
Anupam :
I think there's another question which says, and this is from Mohammed Rafi, how do I get, how do I get my article on Google News and stories?
Chandan :
So I actually decrypt this question which says how to get ranking right on and how to get traffic on articles right. So that's a very simple basic newsroom guidelines right which is available on Google support right. We have to follow the content, the technical guideline. But we need to submit that particular domain as a news publisher under the news publisher center to get it verified that it has the news. Once that publication get approved, you can get started as a news website.
Anupam :
Sure. And then while more questions are coming in, you know, I just wanted to hear from your thoughts. I just wanted to know your thoughts on, you know, on entire thing of updates, dos and don'ts, if there are a few final takeaways you wanted to leave the audience with while we are of course welcoming other questions to come in. So if you want to take a couple of minutes to, you know, share your summary thoughts while the rest of the questions come in.
Chandan :
Google is pushing individuals right that you have to work on people first of course, not search engines first. If there is an interest you can cover it. So that there's a different, two different scenarios, right, sidewise content and and also what they are there, keep emphasizing that the if you are doing a certain thing which is which we are saying that you need to avoid it, but keep continuing this that the impact will not be content level not with section level, the effect will be a site wide right. So that this is very important and really important that the newsrooms have to rethink and re-analyze their strategies, right? To approach something is trending.
Google still is not very very satisfied with the documentation that they have provided and the results that they are seeing right. Just share the focus to the different direction right that. Everyone has to be very, very focused, right? We need to be very, very focused on these updates and help individuals newsrooms.
Product teams, engineering teams, management right that the the focus, everyone has to take care of their peace right digital newsroom in such a way that you should do that user centric approach that's another important thing and important takeaway for everyone. Rest of The thing is anyways written on the documentation and say no for the automation right? Just covering trending things. Word count does not matter and also the trust level factor.
Anupam :
Chandan, a couple more questions. Soumitra Banerjee thanks. Soumitra says how many articles daily are essential for a valued news website?
Chandan :
There's no answer to this, right? Because that's a very topical right. You can be NYT, you can be Washington Post right, you can publish 1000 so far articles. Also in a day you can stick with one article where you are journalistic. You can publish a 2001 article and that will also work. It's all about how you want to frame your news.
And what all genres you need to cover and how much expertise you have in every genre, right? Definitely an original contribution will help. So you have to add a value on top of it, right? That's really important.
How much can you contribute originally? Google loves original content.
Anupam :
Sure. So value value is the differentiator.
This is another question which says and unfortunately we don't have the name of the person that says an anonymous attendee. So the question is, does Google core update or ranking update also affect the website indexing?
Chandan :
So indexing is altogether a different thing, right?
Indexing has a different scenario while rankings positioning change in your volatility, search for utility adjustments, right relevance adjustments. So everything is altogether different, but indexing is altogether different, right? Indexing is something else where we.
The moment the article gets published and the moment Google is indexing it right, there's a gap, right? If this is a gap, then you need to understand why this is happening right? If the relevancy adjustment happened? If this update with the core updated is your search console, errors go up rapidly right? And Google is not getting signals after calling the website that the content is callable. But not indexable. And we will index it in a certain span of time, maybe five years, maybe six hours, maybe 24 hours or maybe a few minutes, right? That all depends on relevance, trust and your legacy. This relevancy shift happens right where some websites go in a white area or some white white listing thing right some some area is a Gray listing and some is a blacklisting.
Anupam :
Sure. I think we have time for one last question whereas there are a lot of questions streaming in. Thank you so much for the interest from the audience. So Saurav Javali asks how do Google Viral videos rank many times with the same exact video varied in ranking position?
Chandan :
See, the content is saying right? Seven stories, those are appearing in the news top box, maybe five stories, which are appearing lower to the first new lower to the top box on the first page. I'm talking about desktop ranking and mobile says roughly the same right. There's a top box coming in and they say so it's all about that.
Google ranking - there are more than 200 factors. Trust me on this. There are more than 200 ranking factors on a certain thing. So most of them are technical, domain authority, trust and all. And with these updates, these are this. This list is actually going right. So it's not a specific answer to certain things right? Someone has to have a detailed understanding right? Why is something ranking on top of anything right? But definitely if you're having good content and then if your content is definitely better against others.
You have the test coverage of the video that is being talked about, right? And you have the follow up content also that you can actually make a cluster. You have done the hyperlinking correctly and you have followed all those guest practices, right? In the area where Google will not give your trust factor higher than population.
Anupam :
Thank you to our wonderful audience who've come in and poured in so many, so many questions for being engaged with us for the hour. And I would request you to please send any more questions which we may not have been able to answer or any other questions that you get now to [email protected] (quintype.com). And we would be glad to share Chandan's perspectives on your questions. Finally, Chandan, thank you so much for taking the time from your busy schedule, it's been wonderful speaking to you. Thank you so much for coming in.