Recently, Google's "helpful content" update has attracted widespread attention and discussion. Many website owners say their website's ranking in search results has dropped sharply, resulting in a sharp decline in traffic. The update allows AI-generated content to appear in search results, which has left many website owners unhappy about Google's fear that publishers are forcing publishers to generate a lot of AI spam that would otherwise be excluded from search rankings.
This update of Google simplifies the definition of “helpful content” from “helpful content written for people” to “helpful content written for people”. This change means that whether it is manually written or AI-generated content, as long as it is beneficial to users, can be regarded as "helpful content." However, this adjustment has caused a lot of controversy, especially for websites that rely on artificial content creation, who worry that their content will be replaced by AI-generated content.
Some website owners said their traffic dropped sharply after the update, and some websites even reduced traffic by more than 50%. They believe that this update from Google not only affects their business, but may also lead to a decline in the quality of content throughout the Internet. After all, while AI-generated content can quickly produce a large amount of information, its quality and accuracy are often not comparable to what is written manually.
Although Google said the purpose of the update is to improve the quality of search results and ensure that users can find the most useful information, many website owners are skeptical of this. They believe that Google's move may encourage publishers to generate large amounts of low-quality AI content, which will affect users' search experience.
Overall, Google's "helpful content" update has sparked widespread controversy, especially among website owners and publishers. Although Google claims the update is intended to improve the quality of search results, many people worry that the move could lead to a decline in the quality of Internet content and could even have a long-term negative impact on websites that rely on search engine traffic.