The Myths in HCU Recovery Spam and EEAT SEO actually align: which is really interesting (I think)
What is HCU?
Google HCU is the Helpful Content Update that started in 2023 and rolled on until recently. The problem is that the name suggests Google found the “Content” not very useful but have confirmed that it has nothing to do with content.
A lot – thousands of sites got crushed – losing 90-100% of organic traffic in one to three HCU roll-outs, with no sign of recovery.
What are HCU Recovery Myths?
As I’ve been commenting on almost everything and anything SEO on Reddit for 2 years, I noticed that people were posting “Case Studies” where they claimed recovery of a HCU site by doing things like:
- Deleted old posts
- Fixed Internal links
- Pruned old content
- Updated some posts
- Aligned H1s
- Added Author Bios
- Increased PageSpeed
- Fixed/Installed a Sitemap
- Fixed 404s
These are basic checklists that you can get from ANY LLM (this is exactly what made realize 2 years ago that LLMs are not research tools).
These things barely move a needle in Google.
- Pruning content is a myth – there’s no science for it. In fact, it could inadvertently destroy your topcial authority dynamic
- There are no “punishments” in Google for broken links. Sure – if your page has one internal link and its broken, you’re not going to rank.
- Google cannot dictate web page structures: this would be censorship and destroy innovation in communications. This myth is tied strongly to copywriter SEO Demand Gen and “tools” that seek to uncover successful “structures” – but its just nonsense.
Well – now you’re seeing these myths enter the AI conjecture narrative.
