Gary Illyes from Google said in his Q&A session yesterday at PubCon that while recovering from a Google helpful content update is possible, you can’t always get back to where you were.

Previously Google explained that the helpful content update system is automated and regularly evaluates content. So the algorithm constantly looks at your content and assigns scores to it. But that does not mean your site will recover tomorrow if you fix your content today. Google told me there is this validation period, a waiting period, for Google to trust that you really are committed to updating your content and not just updating it today; Google then ranks you better. Then you put your content back to the way it was. Google needs you to prove, over several months – yes – several months – that your content is actually helpful in the long run.

Gary was asked about this and the tweets covering his response say it is possible to recover but it is unlikely you will fully recover.

Here are those tweets:

you can’t always “get back” from helpful content update. It may be the case you were ranking based on some thing that google has now decided is a thing they don’t value/use anymore. #pubcon

— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) February 27, 2023

You can recover from HCU, but the timing is unclear. @methode #pubcon

— Kenichi Suzuki🇺🇦鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) February 27, 2023

We have had two helpful content updates thus far, the August 2022 helpful content update and the December 2022 helpful content update. Did any of you see recoveries from the first to the second update?

Forum discussion at Twitter.