Google Says Sites Hit By Helpful Content Update Could See Improvements With Next Core Update

Google’s John Mueller was asked when can a site expect to recover from the September 2023 helpful content update, assuming the site took all measures to “fix” their site. John Mueller said you can assume “bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen.”

This came up on X:

Question: Assuming a site hit by HCU in 2023 has fixed everything that caused the sitewide classifier to be applied, what is the timeframe for the site to start climbing again?

Answer: “Fix” is hard to say when it comes to relevancy, but I’d assume bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen.

John Mueller recently said it is not only possible to recover but also to grow after the helpful content update, for those sites hit by it.

Many hit by that September helpful content update were expecting to recover with the March 2024 core update but there were no recoveries that we saw and sites hit by that September helpful content are now about 7 months with little to no Google organic traffic.

Also John said it may just take a lot of time to recover from that helpful content update. This is despite Google telling some people it can take weeks (then said several months) to recover.

“Fix” is hard to say when it comes to relevancy, but I’d assume bigger changes would be visible when the next core updates happen.

— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) May 15, 2024

I guess time will tell and we have no clue when the next core update will be. There is no new helpful content update expected but we were expecting the core update to move things.

Forum discussion at X.