Hello readers, welcome to another week of SEO news. Google will be releasing the helpful content update pretty soon. Are you prepared? Well, before we dive into that topic. Let’s see what we have in store for this week, shall we? 

• Google Search Console adds video index reporting 
• Google deprecates International Targeting Report, to be removed from Search Console 
• Webmasters on the forthcoming helpful content update 

22/8 – Google Search Console adds video index reporting 

A few weeks back, I told you guys that Google Search Console would be adding a new video index reporting feature. Well, it is finally here! The video index reporting is finally live. 

Do note that this will feature will only show up for websites that have one or more videos. 

Three things are achieved by the video index report, they tell you:

1. how many pages does Google identify a video? 
2. which videos were indexed successfully? 
3. what are the issues preventing videos from being indexed? 

Webmasters on the forthcoming helpful content update 

A recent twitter pool that Aleydas Solis ran showed that generally, webmasters are quite uncertain about the outcome of the helpful outcome update. 

However, some veterans such as Barry Schwartz and Marie Haynes feel that the potential implications of the update would be much more considerable than expected. 

Marie Haynes thinks the helpful content update is comparable to Google’s 2012 Penguin update. 

Meanwhile, Barry Schwartz compared the upcoming update to Google’s Panda update in 2011, which would cause a large-scale impact. Traffic will vanish overnight for some sites; people will lose their jobs, and businesses will shut down. 

Of course, this is all just speculation, so there is no need to panic. We have yet to see the impact of the helpful content update. I guess we would just have to roll with the punches. 

24/8 – Google deprecates International Targeting Report, to be removed from Search Console 

Google has recently tweeted that it deprecates the International Targeting Report and will have it removed from Google Search Console on September 22, 2022. 

However, Google says that it will continue to support hreflang and Google’s recommendation for managing multilingual and multiregional sites still stand. 

The End! 

What do you think about this week’s news? Is your website prepared for Google’s helpful content update? Let me know in the comments below.

Updated: 4 February 2025