When the September 2023 Google helpful content update came out, Google added new information to its documentation around this update. One thing specific to this documentation change was around hosted third-party content. But Gary Illyes from Google said at PubCon last ***** that it was not yet implemented into the actual algorithm.

Kenichi Suzuki was at the event where Gary Illyes said this and Kenichi said on X, “The crackdown on low-quality third-party content is only a change to the documentation, and it has not yet been implemented in the Helpful Content System.” He quoted Gary as saying that “it’s just a recommendation?

Here are those tweets:

The crackdown on low-quality third-party content is only a change to the documentation, and it has not yet been implemented in the Helpful Content System.

“It’s just a recommendation,” says @methode. #pubcon https://t.co/62hmS6EeYR

— Kenichi Suzuki💫鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) September 21, 2023

As you can see from the tweets below, there has been zero negative impact to these sites:

The ironic part is that multiple domains redirecting to other sites surged like crazy on 9/14 for many review queries, the day the Helpful Content Update rolled out. Not sure if it’s related to that, or if it was just a coincidence. One site is ranking for 33K queries now… https://t.co/65sQDrQdr9

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 18, 2023

Even though there is a ton of impact from the HCU showing today, many parasite SEO sites are fairly stable (as I covered earlier). But, here is one example (news publisher) that surged in early Aug only to drop at the tail-end of the Aug core update & now more with the Sep HCU: pic.twitter.com/wqr3S6coPT

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 20, 2023

So I suspect in a future update that the algorithm will detect and demote such hosted third-party content?

I confirmed this to him twice: in person and during the session.

— Kenichi Suzuki💫鈴木謙一 (@suzukik) September 21, 2023

Forum discussion at X.