Google Now Says Google Discover Impacted By The Helpful Content Update Since October 2022
A few weeks ago, I reported that Google has updated its help documentation to specify that Google Discover visibility can be impacted not just by the core updates but also specifically by the helpful content update. I asked Google when this changed and after flip-flopping a bit on the answer, Danny Sullivan of Google said this changed around October 2022.
October 2022 is a bit weird in terms of timing being that this was between helpful content system updates. We had the August 2022 helpful content update that finished rolling out on September 9, 2022 and then we had the December 2022 helpful content update that started on December 6, 2022.
I guess sometime in October Google pushed a more minor update to say, let the helpful content update impact Google Discover. I guess a new helpful content update did not need to be pushed for this to happen, but I assume something was tweaked with Google Discover to make this happen that was not announced – not that Google has to announce everything for us…