Numerous sites heavily impacted by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update experienced significant surges starting around July 7, 2025, marking the first major positive shifts after nearly two years of stagnation. When update started rolling out I didn’t have any hope that HCU sites will start to recover.

But as the update rolled out yep! there were some improvements for sites. Also some people in SEO industry were claiming that the recoveries of sites is because of what SEO changes they did on sites. While I think that its mostly Google improving their systems rather than much to do with sites.

As the update is done but still I’m waiting before jumping on to any sort of conclusion cuz I know what happened with August 2024 Core Update and even then Google pushed up HCU sites but later reverted back. I’m hoping that same don’t happen this time around.

Also as SEO Consultant Glenn Gabe mentioned in X post “some have reversed course etc.” which is interesting. Let’s see if the upside stays or not.

Like if it's a page about "Accounting services for SMBs" and there are already some reviews on GBP of business which talks about or have mentions of like they helped out this small business.

Then having mentions of those on the page content is something good to consider from the content of page perspective. Like we have worked with so & so (link to review) and they have said so & so about our team members and services which we provide.

Also while talking about what some else said in the review its alright to use indirect speech but make sure to have it in the context itself rather than it being just a widget. Having a widget is alright but review text being present in the content itself is even better.

Also I suggest to do this not only on the main services pages but also in the blog pages too.

But some sites like news publishers write about everything? a lot of topics I think in those cases its not about unrelated topics because having information about different topics (like politics, sports, entertainment) all at the same place is what users expect from news sites.

But if a site like GeeksForGeeks whose primary topic is programming related content but branches out into different topics like children of different famous personalities then it becomes a problem, if its being done at scale.

I think that’s why GeeksForGeeks recently got a manual action for “Thin content with little or no added value“ which led to no page from their site showing up in Google’s search results. But eventually after 16 days the action was lifted because they cleaned up the site and submitted request for getting manual action lifted.

But in general it can become problematic if a site is publishing content about too many topics.

Scale of that unrelated topics? Impact on percentage of search queries that users are doing? and might be going to those pages & probably from user interactions Google picking up a tonne of negative signals. That's something that led to the penalty.

That's why to few publishers (which haven't gotten a penalty yet) I have recommended to stop publishing unrelated content and if it's not getting that much traffic then noindex those pages because when Web Spam team will look for "scale of search results ruined" those 1000s of unrelated topics content each getting couple of search visitors a month will just add up. And will become a factor for Google to issue the penalty.

Also even recently Google is going after unrelated topics content on sites since Nov 2024 when they updated the site reputation abuse policy and in there they mentioned different subsections losing site wide signals? That's what happened with HubSpot algorithmically in Feb 2025 and that’s why their pages suddenly dropped in search rankings, back then I explained this in one of my LinkedIn post.

Also I’ve been asked what if a site is publishing unrelated topics content? but its high quality content? I think even this can be somewhat problematic?

Because on 27th March 2025 Google changed the definition of spam?
Earlier it used to be “spam is web content” but it was changed to “spam refers to techniques” & its no longer about quality of the content.

And even during Search Central Event in New York in March - Search Liaison to SEO Community Danny Sullivan said this.

Clearly saying that “Quality” of the content doesn’t make a difference.

That’s why I think even if publishing high quality but totally unrelated content to the topic of site then should be careful because it might lead to some issue, if that publishing of unrelated content is being done at scale.

Also this applies to AI generated content too like

It's no longer a question of generated by AI but is quality? because from policy perspective now content isn't something that Google looks for to issue penalties rather it's the technique (AI) which they now are looking for to issue penalties.

Quality content created using humans Ok
But similar quality content created using AI - not Ok and will most likely get a scaled content abuse policy violation manual action, if it's being done at scale by a site.

Also couple of weeks I wrote a whole LinkedIn post explaining use of AI generated content and explained it properly given that now from policies perspective spam isn’t content but technique being used.

So should you publish unrelated topics content or continue to do so? I don’t know because there isn’t a single answer to it. And it just depends upon a lot of factors, if your looking for some guidance around this then best is to contact me and provide me specifics of your sites. Then based upon my analysis, I can give specific recommendations on what you should do about unrelated topics content.

Talking about a publisher here and they were doing SEO mess of all the inputs coming from their ground reporters while raw/real ground info is something that people prefer to read. In that case sticking to raw reporting of here's
- What happened
- Here are some points
- If there is history to it explain that
And then only think of SEO on page elements.

The goal should be reporting the information and that’s important over doing some SEO on page optimisation or tweakings.

But once that’s done then can explore opportunities to make on page SEO changes but specifically in case of publishers I think because sometimes its better without being optimised?

Given the site wide singals boost from Google for such large publisher sites that’s why I think SEO operations shouldn't be wasting too much of daily time thinking it at the level of which keyword to include in which heading ..... YES its somewhat ok to do so but even without that its going to be fine because of site wide signals.

I think the bigger the publisher site - lesser amount of daily SEO resources should be spent on making sure minor things like keywords in headings rather focus on more broad issues is the key like training the SEO and Editorial team to write content in better way or probably optimise the content to be shown in Google Discover, which can drive a lot of traffic to the site.

Same advice of before vs after thought also applies to use of AI generated content, I think. My recommendation to publishers is to start with writing whatever you want to write or decided based upon user research then use LLMs as "after thought" to look for opportunities to improve that content rather than it being something "before thought" and starting with AI generated content then editing it.

This approach ensures that your team is focused on creating net new information on the web which of course might be better than what a LLM can generate.

• Is it primary to gain search traffic?

• Is it unoriginal?

• Does it provide real, unique value to visitors.

And at the same event Danny also said that Spam practices rather than spam content? Our spam policies are based on curbing abusive practices, rather than types of content. We revised our spam policy page last year to make this clearer and will continue to do more work.

And just a few days after it Google updated official docs to change "web content is spam" to “technique being used” is spam.

That's why I think it's no longer a question of generated by AI but is quality? because from policy perspective now content isn't something that Google looks for to issue penalties rather it's the technique (AI) which they now are looking for to issue penalties.

Quality content created using humans Ok
But similar quality content created using AI - not Ok and will most likely get a scaled content abuse policy violation manual action, if it's being done at scale by a site.

In short SEO professionals and business owners now have to make their site optimisation decisions according to this specific change in policy.

For example in the SEO decision making process this key change in Google's definition of spam affects things like using AI generated content.

Let me explain how ....
Before Google considering "spam is content" which means to demote the ranking of pages in search results Google was looking at what's there on the page and making a decision accordingly (of course using different algorithms for this)

But now Google considering "spam refers to techniques" which means before deciding to promote/demote a page in search rankings Google will NOT be considering if content is spam & is okish in quality or not rather the primary decision factor will be "AI" (technique that was used to create it).

😀 Summary
I think this change in definition discourages AI powered SEO strategies (AI being a technique) and highlights that even if a site is publishing good or okish content which is generated using AI still they may end up violating Google's spam policies.

And may not rank well in Google's search results.

Because it's the technique of creating content which matters more now than content itself.

- News/Discover Manual Action is usually 6 to 8 weeks BUT if your a known publisher and got the action then fix it + submit the request then reach out to Google News Initiative (GNI) and see if they can help too 🙂

Make sure to check if it's happening with your images too cuz even the ones aligned with 'Google's technical guidelines for Discover images' are getting messed up.

Also "Google's technical guidelines for Discover images" here 👇

"Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting, or by using AMP. Avoid using a site logo as your image."

I’ve asked Google’s Liaison to SEO Community, but he hasn’t replied yet.

But personally I think that the real usefulness of all this LLM/embeddings/RAG research is to find good content pages, the ones which ranking systems are struggling to rank?? Meanwhile Google is just using all this to summarise what's there on the first page of search results.

I think Google's AI Mode/Overviews will only be useful if it can find pages which have useful info but hard to find otherwise. Almost like AI Mode/Overviews finding an amazing query relevant paragraph on a page which otherwise is somewhere on 5th page of search results.

I’m hopeful that Google will work on this and soon we will see AI Overviews/Mode citing helpful content pages and its not necessarily URLs which are already ranking on first page of search results.

How to and what changes need to be done for getting a News/Discover manual action lifted?

So basically, what I generally like to do is whatever the manual action is, there might be like so many specific manual actions.

For News/Discover there are so many specific manual actions. Here is a list of all those …..

But the general strategy to get the manual action lifted is to make sure that you provide evidence of changed editorial practices, including new editorial policies. And an editorial board with a history of improved practices. This is what Google has mentioned in their official documentation as well.

But what does this mean is that you need to make sure that on your create a new editorial policies page.

Where you highlight why, how the new policies will make sure that the site’s content will no longer be a violation of specific policies for which violation the manual action was issued in the first place.

And secondly, you need to create a blog post explaining

• What the editorial policies were and what are the new ones

• What is the difference between these two

• How the new editorial policy ensures that users are getting better content, which of course is compliant with Google's Discover/News content policies.

And once you have done that, then you can go ahead and submit a request for getting this manual action lifted in Search Console.

And over there, you can include a message to the web spam team as well, where you explain and provide some evidence explaining why they should lift this manual action and your site should be allowed back to show up across Google surfaces, either it be Search, Discover, News.

While submitting the reconsideration request to get the manual action lifted Google advise to include three things - Explains the exact quality issue on your site, Describes the steps you’ve take to fix the issue and documents the outcome of your effort.

So when submitting the request message to Google’s web spam team
- Start with explaining the issue
- Describe the steps you have taken to change, here mention that you have created new editorial policies (cite links to both new and old policies) and also include link to the blog post which you created explaining the change of policies.

Links to editorial policies change blog post, so that it's clear to the web spam team that you have moved from older to the newer editorial policies. And on the blog post, they can clearly see what specific things you have done to make sure that you are no longer violating Google's policies for which you got the manual action for.

And of course, this is a basic thing that needs to be done. But at the same time, you also have to do some specific things for which the manual action was issued. For example, if it's a misleading content in News/Discover manual action, then in that case, you would have to do things like changing or adjusting the headlines of pages or the featured images of the sample URLs which Google have shared. And also, I recommend to do the same for other similar URLs too.

And if it's a specific manual action for Terrorist content, then you have to remove all that content and then do all this and submit the request to get the manual action lifted.

• Use data insights to find the right export market

• Connect with right audience using highly relevant content

• Engaging with audience at every stage of customer journey

Zee5 which is a streaming company based out of Mumbai in India, provides content in different Indian languages. Through use of data-driven insights from their own first party data and Insights from Google Trends to understand the behavior of indians who are living abroad in different markets.

They build  a specific strategy for catering to those specific audience groups living across different countries. 

Zee5 used to data and Insights including Google transcript into six markets and grow it subscribers by 64%

Zee5 Global, Chief Business Officer - Archana Anand said “Building on our worldwide presence and extensive state of South Asisa content, we worked closely with Google to strategies on expanding our reach in the most efficient manner” with very positive results.

Similar to this another Indian brand Matrimony used highly specific insights from Google Trends to understand which regions in India the different diaspora communities hailed from. That helped it identify the Indian languages that non-resident Indians in a market would most likely use.

By serving up relevant vernacular apps, Matrimony achieved a 1.3X increases in profile resgistrations per month.

Chief Marketing Officier, Matrimony said “The non-resident Indian market can be difficult to reach. But with Google’s App campaigns, we were able to scale up and reach Indian disapore who are looking to get married across multiple countries. App campaigns are powered by AI to reach the right audience and help brand advertise confidently”.

Another Indian brand Policybazaar used full-funnel marketing strategy to raise awareness, drive conversions, maximise returns and establish itself as a marketing leader among the Indian diaspore.

To connect with high-intent customers in the decision-making phase and get them to choose its policies, it used Video action campaigns. Additionally, it tapped into Insights Finder to optimise its Display campaigns so that they showed up on popular digital publications, such as Indian matrimonial sites, which attract high-intent audiences.

As a result of its full-funnel marketing strategy, Policybazaar’s insurance bookings surged by 64% and its return on ad spend rose by 27%.

Senior Vice President, Marketing Policybazaar - Urmesh Chandra said “Google Ads’ ability to reach high intent non-resident Indian audiences has been truly instrumental in out success”.

Google is experimenting with a single background color for the site favicon, name, and URL in search results. This change seems to be aimed at improving the visual coherence of search results.

Google App Search Tabs

In the Google App, searching for a brand name sometimes shows the brand's website at the top, followed by search tabs. This feature is designed to provide quick access to relevant content directly from the search interface.

"Things to Know" Feature

"Things to Know" feature is appearing in Australian search results for mobile users, specifically for "topic name" queries.

Variations of Knowledge Panels

Google is testing several new variations of Knowledge Panels on mobile devices.

People Also Ask (PAA)

• Google is testing a new format in the "People Also Ask" section by showing some words in bold. Also for questions that don't have a single answer, Google is testing showing two or more answers.

• Sometimes Google is highlighting the question in People Also Ask as bold.

Multisearch

Multisearch is now triggered in Chrome and the Google App for any selected image. When users scroll down after selecting an image, it is automatically available and users can enter text to refine their search.

Search Results Meta information displaying

Google is testing new display formats for search results including larger favicons, bold domain names, dates and site names.

"Top-Quality Store" Badge

A "Top-Quality Store" badge is being tested alongside social links and shop ratings. This badge aims to highlight reputable stores in search results, providing users with more confidence when selecting a store.

Summary

All these recent changes in Search Results may impact both traffic and click through rates (CTRs) that’s why I think that both SEO teams and site owners must be aware of these, in some cases being first mover can be an important thing to leverage a new search feature for gaining more space in search results.

Also I continue to share my insights on Twitter (now X) do follow me there if you want to stay updated with what’s NEW in Search Results or SEO in general.

Another thing is that I’ve posted insights in this blog post over there at LinkedIn as a slides post.

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