Google HCU Update In One Twitter Thread

Google, like Congress writing laws, chooses names for its updates that make them sound the best they can. The current update everyone is on about is officially named the “Helpful Content Update,” or HCU for short. Ironically, I wrote this about the Google helpful content update back in 2022, so maybe this isn’t new or something?

Based on what certain website owners are saying, it should be called the Niche Site Bomb update, or maybe the Forums Boost Update. Google’s search results seem to have demoted so-called niche sites and raised up various forums in their place. — What happened to niche site owners? They drank too much of their own Kool-aid, ratcheting their sites down to a single narrow focus. “Niche down,” they said to anyone who would listen, but is writing a lot about a specific thing really a demonstration of knowledge?

Google, and searchers, were dubious of the quality and veracity of a website focused on a single, narrow, topic. Who would you trust more? A website about all facets of gardening, or a website about single horsepower aerators? Especially, when your question is something like how a single horsepower aerator would work in your extensive 18-century European style garden. (Full disclosure: I don’t what any of those things above mean. For all I know they might not even be real things. — I put an affiliate link on them — you know — just in case. “Rank and bank,” as they say.)

What Happened with Google HCU Update?

The visible result of the Google HCU update is the higher ranking of forum-like sites like Reddit, Quora, and the like. How was this update implemented? Easy, Google previously had downgraded such sites by devaluing their links and their incoming links. All they had to do was turn off that downgrade parameter, and POP. Hundreds of searches were now answered by huge, well-known, websites with near 100 level domain authority. The One Horsepower Aerator page just can’t compete.

Why did Google implement the HCU update? It was tired of being embarrassed by the number of people adding “reddit” to their searches. Each search like that was an accusation that the search results Google returned were not good enough. That whole “perspectives” thing never really reached the searching masses.

Adding reddit, or less commonly, quora, was an accusation that Google’s results were filled with junk published by people who cared about ads, affiliate links, and traffic and not what the search was about. So, Google acted, and the niche site owners (among others) got crushed by forums no longer held back by algorithmic brakes in SERPs.

Is Google HCU a Good Update?

Is the HCU a good update? No, but not for the sake of website owners who feel betrayed that their “good” ranking techniques are less rewarded now. The real problem is I don’t always want a reddit answer.

Sure, I want to read dozens of A/V nerds arguing about whether the nits on a giant LG TV are better on the panels made in South Korea or Taiwan, and how I can tell the difference when I go drop a few thou on a new flat screen for my recently remodeled basement.

I do NOT want to hear it when I need to know how to fix a taillight. Look, I don’t care about LED taillights, or whatever extra do-hickey I have to add to keep the whole taillight thing shorting out if I do use a LED brake light. I just want some suburban dad to stand out in his driveway with snow still on the ground and show me how to make it like it was so I don’t get a ticket or have some moron smash into the back of my CRV. Bonus points if that video is linked to from a webpage that shows the part number and how much it should cost at my local auto parts store if I’m not getting ripped off.

A more current example was last week when I realized I didn’t already have another box of coffee filters in the cupboard, and I should have bought them when I was at the store that day. I needed to know what to do without wading through multiple posts, and without clicking into multiple threads about crap like French press coffee when, for the love of god, I just want to starting brewing a pot of coffee before I start a tri-state murder spree. When I’m out of coffee filters and need a substitute. THAT is when I want to hear from the guy who built an entire website around the idea of non-drip coffee making, and not some arguing net nerds.

Will Google Roll Back the HCU?

Never forget that Google tells you what it wants you to know, and it tells search influencers what it wants them to repeat. Right now, they are saying they will not roll back the HCU. And they won’t, or at least not all at once, and they sure won’t tell you when they start.

But here is the deal. Google’s search team is full of guys who got PhDs in game theory and whatever from the best universities in the world. They know this is over-adjusted and they are already figuring out subtle tweaks that will make things better. In the meantime, that sound of a million niche website owners crying out and suddenly silenced will go a long way to shutting up people who were winning with too much inside baseball.

The solution? Yeah, I’m really not that guy. What I know stays in my head. That being said, if Google felt the need to slap the niche site community, then it means that it did not like the niche site community, and more importantly that what the niche site community was doing, was working.

I’m not saying to go out and start a niche site, or to make no changes to your existing niche site but do go through and take note of what the niche site marketers were doing. It was working, or Google would have left them alone, and most of that will work again (or still) just from a slightly different angle than having a niche site.

Then, start counting your money and remember to invest some of your earnings along the way.