Personal insights and experiences from social media blog posts and forums will be surfaced by Google. This is not an update to useful content
Google has implemented ranking changes aimed at displaying more content from social media, blog posts, forums, and other sources that share personal insights and experiences. This is the announcement Google made in May about hidden gems, but this update is not part of the helpful content system. According to Brad Kellett, Senior Director of Google Search Product and Engineering, it is part of the Google core ranking system.
Hidden gems. According to Google, “hidden gems” are when people share their first-hand knowledge, personal insights, and experiences with others on the public web. Google intends to emphasize such content in its search results and search interfaces.
This is not a critical or useful content update. When Google first announced the hidden gems ranking topic, it stated that it would be included in a future useful content update. Instead, it became a component of Google’s core ranking system, which was designed to promote more “authentic” content.
This information could come from forum posts, social media posts, blog posts, or other web pages. It may appear if the content is authentic and shares personal insights and experiences, and if the content is found to be useful. It is not explicitly labeling something as a “gem,” but the idea is that this type of content can be perceived as particularly useful and, in the past, may have been more difficult to appear in the results.
Google said back then that the hidden gems feature was not yet available, but it appears that it was. Google today confirmed that it was live as part of the core ranking system a few months ago, but it was not live less than a month ago. However, Danny Sullivan stated at the time, “This work is still continuing and is not part of this particular update. We’ll share more about our work in this area in the future.” So, while we all assumed it wasn’t live yet, that wasn’t always the case.
When asked how Google knows if the person posting is genuine. People make up personas and names and post anything on the web, social media, and forums. Google refused to reveal its secret sauce but implied that it is less about the person posting and more about the content that person posts.
It appears that if the content triggers some sort of authenticity signal, not that Google has an authenticity ranking signal, but if the signals Google uses for this ranking system show that the content is helpful, insightful, and based on personal experiences, then Google may prioritize that content in search.
Google began introducing this improvement to core ranking a few months ago and has now fully implemented it, and you may begin to see more search results from forum posts, social media posts, blog posts, and other sources showing up in searches.
This could affect where your site or a client’s site ranks for a given query, so keep an eye on the search results to see if your keywords and content are impacted by Google’s new hidden gems ranking algorithm.