Thread by @lilyraynyc

I've started digging in to the Helpful Content Update.

Some findings so far (🧵)

The most heavily impacted category appears to be online tools like calculators, converters, alarms, etc.

While most "tool" sites exist to make money off ads, some have much better UX than others.

Next is "information" sites, like definitions, city data, meanings of colors, etc.

What do they have in common? It's obvious:

They're scraping publicly available data, re-hashing it in their own way, and blasting ads all over the place. The UX is often terrible.

Not helpful.

Next are the "lifestyle" sites, like horoscopes, meanings of numbers, self improvement, motivational quotes, etc.

There are *so many* sites like this. You can't pretend to be "helpful content" with overwhelming ads, fake/missing authors, spammy SEO headlines, too much content...

Next is travel. I will need to write an entire post about this one. So much to say.

Yes, undeserving sites got hit.

But the patterns among the biggest declines are overwhelmingly obvious. This. Is. Not. Helpful. Content.

As a woman who travels constantly, I dislike all of it.

This may be a hot take, but because so many other sites have ruined it, I'm not going to trust your travel advice unless you can show me actual pictures YOU took of your travels.

If this is too hard for you to do, maybe a travel blog isn't the best fit.

I have so many more opinions and so much more data to share, so watch this space.

But so far, to me, many of the biggest drops seem warranted, and I think this update was needed.

But hopefully Google tweaks things so the legit, undeserving blogs get their visibility back.