A fun discovery was posted by Matt Smith on X the other day.
Oh good, Google Store is now publishing health content and outranking MayoClinic, ClevelandClinic, Healthline, and other health websites on weight loss topics. What could go wrong. Have you seen this before? @lilyraynyc @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/U7XwN9OEbe
— Matt Smith (@mattsinla) February 24, 2025
The Google Store, which is the official online shop for Pixel products, smart home devices and more, has a blog. But that blog has a wellness section. This is logical enough, given Google's acquisition of Fitbit as well as the Pixel Watch offering all sorts of fitness tracking options.
But given the world of SEO has been inundated with Helpful Content punishments for some time now, you'd hope a division of Google would practice what the preach.
They do not.
Here's an article about 150+ snack ideas for weight loss. (maybe I'm misreading, I only count 30 ideas)
Here's an article that indicates a high resting heart rate from stress can lead to heart attack or stroke (I'm not disputing this) and to counter it, you should try some breathing exercises.
That pretty much is what you get. Pretty thin articles offering questionable health and nutrition advice.
But hey, since it's a topic where EEAT/YMML are a consideration, at least the people giving the advice are clearly qualified to do so, right?
Maybe?
First article is written by someone who shares the name of an "Award-winning food writer in San Francisco" (per @beckyduffett on Instagram). The second one is written by someone who shares the name of a personal trainer in Canada.
It would be quite the coincidence if those weren't the authors, given their names line up with influencer-types who share the same professional domain as the article topics. But I had to search for their names in order to come to this conclusion. There's no author bio, there's no credentials listed anywhere on the articles. There's no sources cited - just links to other articles on Google Store (and of course, links to products).
Let's Do a Helpful Content Scorecard
So we have advice that is at best subjectively unhelpful (I'd argue that given how it lacks any unique perspective, it's pretty objectively unhelpful. Tangent here, but given how Google sells a number of products/apps in the wellness market, they should be pretty well positioned to give some helpful advice on how to integrate things like Fitbit into your health journey. They touch on that at times, but mostly it's very brief and generic advice about starving yourself of calories). But Google gives a lot of advice about creating "helpful content". Let's dig in!
Article Reviewed
https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/healthy-snack-ideas/
Content and quality questions
- Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis? FAIL
- Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic? FAIL
- Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious? FAIL
- If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources, and instead provide substantial additional value and originality? FAIL
- Does the main heading or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content? FAIL
- Does the main heading or page title avoid exaggerating or being shocking in nature? FAIL
- Is this the sort of page you'd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? FAIL
- Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book? FAIL
- Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? FAIL
- Does the content have any spelling or stylistic issues? PASS
- Is the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced? FAIL
- Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don't get as much attention or care? PASS
Expertise questions
- Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site's About page? FAIL
- If someone researched the site producing the content, would they come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic? FAIL
- Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well? FAIL
- Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors? PASS
Provide a great page experience
Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you're providing an overall great page experience across many aspects. For more advice, see our page, Understanding page experience in Google Search results. FAIL
Focus on people-first content
People-first content means content that's created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings. How can you evaluate if you're creating people-first content? Answering yes to the questions below means you're probably on the right track with a people-first approach:
- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you? PASS
- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)? FAIL
- Does your site have a primary purpose or focus? FAIL
- After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they've learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal? FAIL
- Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they've had a satisfying experience? FAIL
Avoid creating search engine-first content
We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings. Answering yes to some or all of the questions below is a warning sign that you should reevaluate how you're creating content:
- Is the content primarily made to attract visits from search engines? PASS
- Are you producing lots of content on many different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results? FAIL
- Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics? PASS
- Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value? FAIL
- Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you'd write about them otherwise for your existing audience? PASS
- Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources? FAIL
- Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't.) PASS
- Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you'd get search traffic? FAIL
- Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there's a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn't confirmed? PASS
- Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed? PASS
- Are you adding a lot of new content or removing a lot of older content primarily because you believe it will help your search rankings overall by somehow making your site seem "fresh?" (No, it won't) PASS
Obviously some of this is subjective. And I definitely penalized this article for promising 150+ ideas and only giving 30 (and those 30 ideas are hardly great - you're suggesting I chop up a sweet potato and just eat that as-is? Not even cooking it?). I did try and give a little benefit of the doubt on the intention. There's pretty clearly some hope of trying to grab search engine traffic with this and other articles... but I get it, they sell fitness products so they write articles somewhat related to that industry. Everyone has done it for years. It doesn't mean it's a good idea, but I'm not going to say that this is 100% about SEO and zero else.
How These Articles Rank
Per Semrush, the https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/ subfolder is gangbusters with organic traffic. An estimated 533,000 sessions a month from nearly 270,000 keywords.
And 54,000 backlinks!
The trouble is, that subfolder includes both these articles and announcements of major products. So it's certainly skewed. But let's look at the top 25 pages in this section according to Semrush. The image below has green boxes around the articles that are from the Wellness section.
Not great if you're a publisher actually trying to follow Helpful Content guidelines.
A Small Caveat and Wrap Up
To be clear, I'm not saying this is some grand conspiracy. And while a big division within Google should have access to all the public-facing guidelines for SEO, my experience is there's no company-wide directive to follow those guidelines. It's entirely likely Google Store has outsourced their SEO and content production to a third party agency and there's multiple parties to blame. The point is, it's a big company and different segments operate fairly independently.
But it's certainly disappointing to see junk like this coming from Google. Especially since the pure existence of this junk on a Google subdomain increases the chances it will outrank better articles from other publishers. I will withold any further feelings because I don't want to be plausibly accusing Google of lawbreaking... but I think they should be held to at worst the same standards as other publishers. Especially since we're in YMML territory here.
