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We all love a good Google algorithm update. But it always sucks when things take longer than expected. That’s exactly what’s going on with the December 2022 Helpful Content Update.
With the first update rolling out this past summer, the projected time was about a week or two. However, this update appears to be extended.
December 2022 Helpful Content Update Progress
It started rolling out on December 5th and was projected to wrap up around the 19th of December. Search Engine Roundtable says that “Google’s Search Liason, Danny Sullivan, mentioned the Google December 2022 helpful content update would take longer to roll out than originally expected.”
Many have been wondering what the hold up is and why there hasn’t been much word from Google about its progress. However, just yesterday Google Search Liason did respond to a tweet questioning the progress of the system. Basically, Google says that they expected the update to be finished by now but for the time being they aren’t done. Take a look at the tweet below.
We are not. While normally this update takes up to two weeks to complete, this one is going to take longer. We will post to our page when it is done. — Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 20, 2022
Maybe the extended update has something to do with the specs of this update. For instance, this helpful content update rolled out globally in all languages. It could be that Google is taking longer to pick out low-quality content in different languages. But that’s just speculation of course.
So When Will The Update Be Complete?
As for when this update will be completed, we don’t have a definite date. At the same time that this system is rolling out, Google also has the December 2022 Link Spam Update going. This could be another reason that the update is taking longer.
Either way, this update is intended to help weed out content written for search engines first. Mainly it’s picking out the user written content, which actually helps people. So far, there hasn’t been any drastic impacts noted. But, we think the full system will need to complete before the full impacts can be determined.
