SEO News: September 2023 Helpful Content Update, Merchant Center reports in GSC and FAQ and How-To Rich Results changes

Time flies, and it is a day for another round of SEO News of the week. Ready? Here we go:

Updates

GOOGLE SEPTEMBER 2023 HELPFUL CONTENT UPDATE HAS BEGUN

I bet you could hear the phrase, “With the core update out of the way, let's focus on the next one,” echoing through the search giant's vibrant headquarters. Google decided to strike while the iron was hot, kicking off the rollout of its latest update on September 14th—this time targeting the Helpful Content System.

What we know so far:

If you were waiting for the magic promised way back in May regarding "finding and surfacing hidden gems", don’t hold your breath. Google says it won't be releasing it now, "but we are actively working in this direction". This update focuses on improving the existing classifier.

Area of impact: Google Search and Discover, all languages. It's also worth noting that the algorithm is sitewide, as in it evaluates not only individual pages but the domain as a whole.

It was also noted that:

"Google said this will be felt more for online-educational materials, entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content."

All we know at the moment is that the update is only promoting useful content, but soon it will also start downgrading unhelpful content.

Moreover, Google has updated its Helpful Content documentation due to the update:

• The search giant has officially recognized that AI-generated content has the right to exist, removing "written by people":

"better ensure people see original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results"

(By the way, not so long ago Google even created a free text generation course. As Ukrainian SEO specialist Olesya Korobka aptly commented on Google's decision: "If you can't beat them, lead them")

• About third-party content:

"If you host third-party content on your main site or in your subdomains, understand that such content may be included in site-wide signals we generate, such as the helpfulness of content. For this reason, if that content is largely independent of the main site's purpose or produced without close supervision or the involvement of the primary site, we recommend that it should be blocked from being indexed by Google."

So, make sure to keep this in mind if you’re playing around with parasite SEO.

SERP

FAQ RICH RESULTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ONLY FOR AUTHORITATIVE SITES

I covered this in a previous post, and as was promised on August 9th, FAQs are now only up for mega-authoritative domains.

HOW-TO RICH RESULTS TAKEN DOWN FOR GOOD

And this is NOT what we were promised. This was also discussed in August, but Google was planning to leave desktop results untouched. Now, however, Google put up a new post on X, where it claims they decided to remove them completely from everywhere. And they did. The boss is always right, right?

TEST - BLUE HIGHLIGHTS IN SNIPPETS

Color-highlighted text has been a feature in search results for quite some time, but it was limited to specific types of snippets like featured snippets, "people also ask", "things to know", or sections of the "explore" feature.

Now, according to recent updates, Google has the capability to highlight text in the descriptions of all the snippets listed in the top 10.

GSC

NEW MERCHANT CENTER REPORTS

Google has announced new reports for Merchant Center visibility issues and changes.
The data will be available in the Shopping section. In order for it to appear, you need to associate a Google Search Console property with a Merchant Center account.

Local

TEST - 3RD PARTY REVIEWS ON GOOGLE MAPS AND LOCAL. AGAIN

This has some strong Back to the Future vibes to it. Google hasn’t practiced anything like this in over a decade. They stopped displaying reviews from external resources on Maps back in 2011. And I remember this... It's like suddenly realizing that Evanescence's song 'Bring Me Back to Life' turned 20 this year. Don't think about my age, don't think about my age…

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