22% Of Sites Hit By Google’s Helpful Content Update Are Up 20% Or More

I’ve been wondering how the majority of sites hit by Google’s September 2023 helpful content update are doing. Glenn Gabe is tracking about 400 of them, so he provided an update saying 88 (or 22% of them) have seen a 20% increase since the August 2024 core update. Some had full recoveries but most did not, and most saw no lifts at all.

Glenn wrote on X, “As of this morning, 88 have increased 20% or more since the ugust 2024 core update rolled out (about 22% of the sites in the list).” “Many show a surge and then a drop back down after… Some show more of an increase recently, and a few have shown full recoveries. Note, full recovery is an anomaly here… most surges were relative… and those sites didn’t get back to where they were (not even close),” he added.

He shared some of these charts:

He posted more about this on X:

And here are more examples of what I’m seeing with the HCUX sites surging in August (but some dropping back down a bit). Good to see them surge, but weird how some have dropped during the post-August core update volatility. pic.twitter.com/nqVdKwQv6K

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 5, 2024

As a reminder, Google told us a new update is coming fairly soon but we might not see HCU recoveries with it.

We saw some early signs of some sites hit by the September 2023 helpful content see some signs of life. Then some saw reversals of sorts, but maybe that was the search ranking bug that got fixed a few days later. There are more details about those surges here but ultimately, we are now months after this and only 20% or so saw a 20% lift since then, and most did not.

I know 400 sites is just a sampling of all the sites impacted by the helpful content update, but it is the largest data set I know of that is being tracked by someone who really understands these updates.

Will these sites ever recover? Will that Google web creator event make any difference in the long run?

If you want to catch up on this helpful content update stuff, reading through the headlines might drive you mad.

Forum discussion at X.