The Ultimate Guide to the Google Medic Update Recovery
More than a year removed from today, the Google Medic update left a pretty or ugly (depending on which camp you are in) mark on search results.
And, even now, much of the effects still resonate among site owners.
Since then, lots of studies were conducted to help the SEO community understand the scope of this update.
In this post, I plan to share them with you and I’ll also serve up a solution on how to resuscitate your website and recover to the top of organic search.
So if your site remains in critical condition since the update, then this one’s for you!
And you can use google index checker Linkbox to find out how many backlinks drop out from Google index just after update.
What is the Google Medic Update?
On August 1st, 2018, Google released a broad core algorithm update via Google Search Liason on Twitter.
The tweet referenced to and reinforced a tweet it made on March 13 that same year:
As usual, Google is pretty vague when it comes to announcing changes in its algorithms.
However, one thing is clear:
Compared to the usual algorithm updates in the past, this is a core update.
It’s possible that Google changed how it weighs different ranking factors. What once was a crucial ranking factor may no longer be one and vice versa.
However, no one will ever really know. The tweet above is the best everyone can get.
A week after the core update was announced, Barry Schwartz coined the term ‘Google Medic’ in his coverage here.
He conducted a survey revealing that 42% of websites hit by the algorithm update were from the medical, fitness, lifestyle, and health niches.
The e-commerce niche is the niche with the second most penalized sites with 16%. However, you could make the argument that some e-commerce sites sell health and medical products.
Therefore, it’s possible that half of the penalized sites after the update came from the medical niche.
Thus, Google Medic.
Barry was very clear in saying that other industries suffered after the update to an extent.
Marie Haynes, an SEO expert who specializes in Google penalties, casts a wider net by saying that the update affected Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) sites.
The Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines mention YMYL pages in section 2.3 of the 167-page long document.
In a nutshell, these pages and sites provide users with fuller and happier lives.
A great YMYL page about finances, for instance, should help visitors learn how to save money and spend it wisely.
This reason is why Google is harsh towards these types of sites.
Imagine if a user stumbles upon a YMYL page with terrible advice.
What users thought is a page with quality content happens to contain bad information that could jeopardize their lives!
While all this sounds reasonable, what’s not is that site owners are left on their own to avoid getting penalized by this core update.
What We Know About the Effects of Google Medic So Far
Even though reading Google’s Algos can be an enigma, there’s actually a simple way to read updates. In this case, we can check websites that were affected by the Google Medic update.
From here, we can have a clearer understanding of why they were penalized in the first place.
Piecing together the different factors that caused the downfall of these sites will bring us closer to learning more about this algorithm update (or any update).
Importantly, you can use this information to help rank your site higher on organic search!
But before we proceed, it’s important for us to identify what we know about Google Medic so far.
It’s more than a year removed since the update, so there are lots of already-existing studies conducted by different SEOs to see the common factors that play a crucial role in the drop of the organic ranking of some sites (and the increase of others).
E-A-T
As mentioned earlier, the algorithm change coincided with the update of the Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines at the same time.
In particular, Google most likely emphasized the importance of E-A-T (Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness), which you can read up on the 3.2 section of the guidelines.
I’ve already comprehensively discussed the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines in this post.
Just to recap:
- Expertise – The author of the page must display a great understanding of the topic
- Authoritativeness – The overall quality of the website and content must be top-notch
- Trustworthiness – Your audience is sharing your content across different online platforms because they believe it
Since we know Google attempts to screen sites based on these factors, we can analyze sites based on how they measure up using these key points.
The goal is to limit the scope of observation by isolating the core issues affecting the sites since the update.
Also, instead of exclusively referring to the Search Quality Guidelines, we can lean on case studies that help make sense of the sweeping generalizations mentioned in the guidelines, and how the effect the characteristics of a website.
For example, one of the qualities of high-quality pages according to the guidelines is “[a] satisfying amount of high-quality MC [main content], including a descriptive or helpful title.?
While the quote tells you what you should do, it doesn’t tell you how to do it.
At this point, we need concrete examples to make your site in line with what Google wants.
That’s where the case studies come in.
The website Can I Rank ran a study on affected sites to see which factors weighed the most after the Google Medic update.
Regarding content quality, they observed common elements present in sites that increased its rankings after the update:
- Features visual content (images, videos, etc.)
- Presents information in a clear and organized structure (table of contents, bullet points, pull quotes, etc.)
- Links to relevant and authoritative sites using the dofollow attribute
We can use these points to help check and measure the E-A-T-ability of a site.
Again, we’re monitoring the limited number of sites based on a handful of factors.
Therefore, what you’ll read below is not a comprehensive look at the update. It also doesn’t detail other factors that come into play outside of E-A-T.
At the very least, however, we now have a much clearer picture of how to look at websites affected by the update.
Importantly, you can use the same process to help you understand how your site measures up to the E-A-T standards. This way, you know how to improve your site.
And as you’ll see later, there are websites able to successfully restore its organic traffic and rankings since the update.
Before I crack on and show the case studies we’ve gathered, I want to just explain the ‘sensible’ ad placement variable.
Explaining Sensible Ad Placement
There’s nothing wrong with using ads on your site.
The problem, however, stems from how you use them.
Since Google allows site owners to place as many ads on the site as they please, there’s also a risk of putting too much.
Here’s one site penalized by the update because of excessive ads according to their study:
As you can see, it almost covers the entire page with ads!
At this point, it doesn’t matter how authoritative and good the content of the page is.
If visitors can’t access the page due to multiple ads featured all at once on your screen, then Google has no use for it.
Therefore, sensible Ad Placement refers to having a number of ads on your site that doesn’t make the whole thing unreadable.
Sites that Were Hit by Google Medic
SISTRIX released a list of the top 20 losing domains featured on Search Engine Land because of the update:
A quick look at the list shows you a mix of sites from different industries such as e-commerce, travel, and others.
However, most of the losing domains are from the health and lifestyle niche.
SISTRIX also compiled a list of the top sites that benefited from the update:
Similar to the list above, most of the winners are from the health niche as well.
The next step is to look at some of the sites in the list so we can make sense as to why their organic ranking tanked.
Prevention.com
Prevention.com provides “trustworthy health information” to help readers make well-informed decisions in living a healthier and fuller life.
Using Ahrefs, the estimated organic traffic of the site on August 1, 2019, was 4,150,988.
It was also ranking for 3,194,830 keywords on the same date.
However, as you can see from both graphs, both organic traffic and keywords took a huge beating since then and never fully recovered.
Using Wayback Machine, here’s how the site looked like on August 1:
It’s difficult to see from the screenshot above but I assume the space in between the internal links and the image carousel is reserved for ads.
Scrolling down the page and we can see another white space where visitors can see the ads.
Aside from misplaced ads, there’s also the issue of thin content.
Consider “The Best Wrinkle-Fighting Creams and Serums You Can Buy Without a Prescription” article published on July 12, 2018, here:
I captured the screenshot of links to the page where readers can buy the best anti-ageing creams.
From a user standpoint, the page isn’t something that would convince him or her to buy anti-ageing cream given the content’s quality.
Patient.info
The second domain from the SISTRIX list is GCFLearnFree.org.
However, we’ll have to skip this one because it redirects to a different domain, //edu.gcfglobal.org/
As a result, Wayback Machine can’t access the content from the old site so we can’t analyze why it suffered after the update.
Therefore, we go to the next domain: Patient.info.
Similar to Prevention.com, the site offers tips, advice, and information about topics in the health niche
It had an estimated organic traffic of 5,445,841 on August 1, 2018.
Patient.info was also ranking for 2,268,484 keywords on the same day.
Here’s an example of one of their pages before the Google Medic Update:
Behind the Wayback Machine bar is an ad block that is below the site’s menu.
In the latest design, the ad-block appears below the menu (implying that there were ads here).
Also, there’s another ad block on the right sidebar of both versions of the page.
Compared to the ad on the menu, the one on the sidebar is fixed. So when you scroll the page, the ad block scrolls along with you.
All articles have the same format for ads.
As far as content is concerned, the pages are attributed to a medical doctor who is a certified member of The Information Standard.
If you hover your cursor on the author’s name on the version before Google Medic, you will also see the other doctor who reviewed the content.
As you can see, it’s as authoritative as it gets.
So the question remains:
Why did the site get hit by Google Medic?
Based on the data we gathered, it’s probably because of the ad placements.
Also, showing the name of the author isn’t enough to justify him or her as an expert.
It would help if the site create an author page that talks about who s/he is and why should people take him or her as an expert.
Minted.com
Rounding up our test, this site is an online store of holiday cards with designs from independent artists.
Using Ahrefs, Minted.com had estimated organic traffic of 772,491 prior to the update.
It also had 228,433 organic keywords during that time.
Looking at the graph’s trend, Minted.com never recovered after the update.
As mentioned earlier, Google Medic affected other industries as well, and e-com one of them.
And since Google is observing the E-A-T rating of websites, the site’s content is under scrutiny.
Unfortunately, this type of content simply does not fly with Google.
The content provides a basic description of wedding websites and tips on what to include in it but it’s probably too short for comfort.
If this piece is indicative of the kind of content found on the site, then this is probably the reason why it got hit by the update.
Pro Tip:It's a good idea to use a backlinks monitoring tool and check what backlinks drop down from Google index just after the update.
Algorithmic Penalty or Devaluation?
Now, we normally refer to a site that dropped its rankings as “penalized” after an algorithm update.
However, it’s also possible that Google “devalued” your site after the fact.
The latter is worse than the former.
With an algorithmic penalty, Google slaps your wrist for going against their guidelines.
Expect to see a drop in ranking for a certain number of organic keywords as a result.
But if you stop whatever you’re doing that got you penalized, then you can slowly get your rankings back.
On the other hand, an algorithmic devaluation refers to losing site authority triggered by the update.
Devaluation is not as easy to recover from compared to a penalty.
When Google updates its algorithm, it also changes how it assesses the quality of a site.
That means you need to analyze your entire site and what you’ve been doing with it.
Because if you saw a drop in organic rankings after the Medic update, it’s because Google no longer values your site the way it did.
So it’s not just a slap on the wrist – it’s a complete long-term demotion of your site on organic search!
Also, knowing how cryptic Google is when it comes to providing information about the algorithm update, you’re left scrambling for answers.