Insights ·
Google now counts titles and headings as main content: what the October 2026 helpful-content update means on the page
The short version
On October 1, 2026, Google updated its “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content” documentation. It now says that “one of the most critical factors for assessing page quality is the quality of the main content”, defines what main content is, and lists four attributes its Search Quality raters use to judge it: effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy. Your visible page title and headings are explicitly part of main content. This is not an announcement of a new ranking factor, but it is the clearest statement in Google’s own Search documentation of what a page is judged on.
What changed
Google made the edit without a blog post. The documentation page shows a last-updated date of October 1, 2026, and Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable reported the new sections on October 2. Two things were added: a definition and a yardstick.
The definition: Google describes main content as “any part of the webpage that directly helps the page achieve its purpose”, and lists what falls inside it.
- Primary text and media: the main text, images, audio or video.
- Interactive features such as calculators, tools, games or on-page search.
- User-generated contributions, such as forum discussions, reviews and comments, when they serve the page’s purpose.
- Tabbed or expanded sections.
- Page titles and headings.
The four attributes raters use
The page now sets out four attributes that Search Quality raters consider when assessing main content. None of them is new to anyone who has read the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. What is new is that they sit in the creator-facing documentation, in plain language.
- Effort: how much human work went into the content or the systems behind it.
- Originality: whether it offers information or perspective not already available elsewhere.
- Talent or skill: whether it shows the expertise needed to satisfy a visitor.
- Accuracy: whether it is factually correct. For Your Money or Your Life topics, Google says content must be highly accurate and consistent with established expert consensus.
The AI-content guidance moved the same day
Google’s documentation changelog records an October 1 update to its guidance on using generative AI content, made to align it with the rater guidelines. That page tells site owners it is critical to manually fact-check and review all AI-generated content before publishing, and it extends that to metadata: title tags, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text.
Google repeats an important caveat there. The rater guidelines describe how raters evaluate Google’s ranking systems; they do not directly influence rankings. Treat the four attributes as a description of what Google is trying to reward, not as a checklist an algorithm scores.
Why titles and headings matter more than they look
Titles and headings are usually treated as SEO furniture, written last or generated in bulk. Under this definition they are part of the content being evaluated. A heading that promises something the section does not deliver, or a template title repeated across hundreds of pages, is a main-content problem and not a formatting one.
The same goes for content behind tabs and accordions. Google lists tabbed or expanded sections as main content. If that content matters to the purpose of the page, it deserves the same care as the visible copy, and it should be present in the HTML your server sends, not only after a script runs.
What to check on your pages this week
Five checks, none of which needs a tool to start.
- Read your title and H1 as content. Does the visible title say what the page actually delivers? Is there exactly one clear H1, and does it agree with the title tag?
- Walk the heading outline. Read only the H2s and H3s. They should summarize the page on their own. Remove headings that exist for keywords and add nothing.
- Look at what is in the raw HTML. View source, not the rendered page. If the main text, tab content or reviews are missing from the server response, anything that reads HTML without running JavaScript sees a thinner page than your visitors do.
- Review AI-assisted metadata. If titles, meta descriptions, alt text or JSON-LD were generated, have a person verify them against the page. Google names these fields specifically.
- Ask the four questions honestly. Where is the effort? What is original here? Who has the skill to write this, and does the page show it? Is every claim accurate and sourced?
What a tool can and cannot tell you
SEOAST audits one URL at a time from the server HTML. It can show you whether a title and a single H1 are present, how your heading outline reads, whether your main content exists in the raw HTML, and whether your JSON-LD parses and which types it declares. It does not validate individual schema properties, and it does not judge effort, originality, skill or accuracy. No automated audit can. Those four are editorial decisions.
SEOAST does not query ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews, and it does not read your Search Console data. It tells you whether the page is technically readable; whether the content deserves to be read is the part Google has now written down.
Questions
Is main content a new Google ranking factor?
Google has not announced one. The update is to documentation: it describes what Search Quality raters assess, and Google states that rater guidelines do not directly influence rankings.
Do page titles and headings count as main content?
Yes. Google’s list of what main content includes names page titles and headings alongside primary text and media, interactive features, useful user-generated contributions and tabbed or expanded sections.
What are the four attributes Google lists?
Effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy.
Does Google say AI-generated titles and descriptions need review?
Yes. Its generative AI guidance says to manually fact-check and review all AI-generated content, and names title tags, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text.
Sources
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content — Google Search Central
- Google Search’s guidance on using generative AI content — Google Search Central
- Latest Google Search documentation updates — Google Search Central
- Google says main content is critical and describes how search quality raters evaluate it — Search Engine Land
- Google helpful content documentation adds main content and rater attributes — Search Engine Roundtable