Content managers and SEOs are about to have an interesting several weeks…
… And they’re off: Google announced that the much-anticipated Helpful content update has been officially released.
The rollout is expected to take up to two weeks, but we’ll probably need more time to see whether the update will cause any tectonic shifts.
Also, don’t hide your comment pages: We’ve mentioned before that Google treats user comments as part of your content.
Some comments aren’t helpful, it’s true. But that doesn’t mean you should hide those pages.
Google’s John Mueller says that instead of “noindexing” pages with comments, you should just keep them tidy and cut out irrelevant comments or spam.
Why we care: Marketers are coming up with all kinds of theories and methods for complying with Google’s recent rules.
But if you’ve already done everything by the book, wait out the helpful content update until there’s more data on how it’s affecting content. It’s not the first big update, after all…