A week ago we wrote about the timing it takes to recover from a Google helpful content update. Then on Friday, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, added more clarity on the fastest time a site can possibly recover after being negatively impacted by the helpful content update.

In short, it still can take several months to recover from the helpful content update and truth is, we have not really seen a case of a site hit by the September 2023 helpful content update recover yet. Some say they have but I have yet to see a real case of this -let me know if I am wrong.

As a reminder, in Google’s original communications around the helpful content update, Google told us that Google needs you to prove, over several months – yes – several months – that your content is actually helpful in the long run.

It doesn’t want to be in a position where you drop from the HCU, you may a change the next day, you rank better again, so you put your content back the way it is. It wants you to have long term evidence of helpful content and that can take “several months.”

So what did Google say on Friday that is new? I covered in my story from last week that that one content writer, Morgan Overholt, said that Sullivan said at an event that you can recover within 2 weeks. I heard the recording and Sullivan said it is possible to recover “within a couple of weeks.” I thought Sullivan misspoke or misunderstood the question, so I called it out (heck, we all misspeak or misunderstand stuff all the time, we are human).

Sullivan replied on Friday on X saying, “Yes, it’s totally *possible* (but not guaranteed) someone might see change from the helpful content system within a couple of weeks.” But he added it is unlikely, he said, “I should have said it might take several weeks to several months or just several months.”

Here is the full post:

Based on it being over 5 months since the September helpful content update was released and we have yet to see a recovery. Plus, based on Google’s original communication around it taking time for you to earn Google’s trust that your content is going to be helpful going forward… I don’t think a couple of weeks makes much sense, as Sullivan explained.

Glenn Gabe added on X, “Danny explained that it’s *possible* to see changes in “several weeks” IF you implemented big changes immediately after being impacted by the HCU. He also explains it could take several weeks to several *months*. And *months* is what the documentation explains, and what was communicated from the beginning.”

But he added that he has not seen it happen. He wrote, “Also, I have hundreds of domains documented that were heavily impacted by the various HCUs, and I haven’t see any recover in several weeks. It took months for the ones that did recover. So I guess it’s possible, but not realistic IMO. Why? You have to first implement big changes from a content and possibly UX standpoint. That can take a while depending on how much content you have. So it’s really months *from* when those changes are implemented.”

Here are these posts:

Click through to these posts to see the full context.

In any event, do not expect to recover from a helpful content update (or honestly, any Google update) in a couple of weeks. These things normally take months of work…

Forum discussion at X.