Significant google algo change in the last few days?

[Larry Linson]

One of my clients who experienced a huge traffic drop post Medic Update (traffic drop of about 150%!) has had a big uptick in the last 2 days. More importantly, his "money maker" keywords that fell off the first page with Medic, are now back on first page, 3-5 position! We have been doing some work on the website for sure, but I am wondering whether we have just had another Google algorithm event. Anyone else seeing similar recovery for Medic victims?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey @Larry Linson I haven't seen this with my own clients but I also didn't have any major drops with medic for them. However, I just opened Marie Haynes' newsletter for this week and the first section said:

December 4-6, 2018 - Mild Quality update
There seems to be an update similar to the August 1 medic update that happened around December 4-6. I am calling this mild as most of the sites that we saw changes in saw just a slight change at this time. We saw drops in some of the following sites:

• A medical site that we are currently reviewing. This site was hit hard on August 1. Our review is finding that the site has a lot of medical advice that contradicts current scientific consensus.
• Another medical site. This site has good information and for the most part appears to have good E-A-T. However, they have a few issues that are outlined in the Quality Raters’ Guidelines as potential trust issues (the “T” in E-A-T). They do not disclose their monetization methods and are a bit sneaky in how they funnel users to become leads.
• A site that competes with large job portal sites. Our review pointed out a lot of thin content for this site. We felt that they did not do much to add value as compared to the sites that are currently ranking well.
• Another medical site that has serious issues with reputation and lack of E-A-T.

We did see some clients have improvements. This site is a local small business. We helped them fix a bunch of technical issues and also filed a disavow.

 

[Marie Haynes]

Hi Larry,

Congrats on this recovery! Does the date of the increase in traffic line up with Dec 4-6 like Joy mentioned? Or is it more recent?

I've just checked a bunch of sites that I monitor as we have access to hundreds of GA profiles for sites that have been hit with quality updates. I'm not seeing anything obvious in the last couple of days.

I'm also not hearing much chatter online (and I pay close attention to this kind of chatter.)

With that said, I recorded a webinar yesterday and one of the participants said that they had seen a massive medic recovery in the last couple of days. If that wasn't you, then we've got a pattern.

I'll come back to this thread if it does turn out that there is an update going on.

 

[Larry Linson]

No sorry that was me. Dramatic improvement started Sunday/Monday of this week. Thank you Marie for your webinar yesterday - most informative - and thank you for your response here.

 

[Larry Linson]

Hey @Larry Linson I haven't seen this with my own clients but I also didn't have any major drops with medic for them. However, I just opened Marie Haynes' newsletter for this week and the first section said:

December 4-6, 2018 - Mild Quality update
There seems to be an update similar to the August 1 medic update that happened around December 4-6. I am calling this mild as most of the sites that we saw changes in saw just a slight change at this time. We saw drops in some of the following sites:

• A medical site that we are currently reviewing. This site was hit hard on August 1. Our review is finding that the site has a lot of medical advice that contradicts current scientific consensus.
• Another medical site. This site has good information and for the most part appears to have good E-A-T. However, they have a few issues that are outlined in the Quality Raters’ Guidelines as potential trust issues (the “T” in E-A-T). They do not disclose their monetization methods and are a bit sneaky in how they funnel users to become leads.
• A site that competes with large job portal sites. Our review pointed out a lot of thin content for this site. We felt that they did not do much to add value as compared to the sites that are currently ranking well.
• Another medical site that has serious issues with reputation and lack of E-A-T.

We did see some clients have improvements. This site is a local small business. We helped them fix a bunch of technical issues and also filed a disavow.

Hey @Larry Linson I haven't seen this with my own clients but I also didn't have any major drops with medic for them. However, I just opened Marie Haynes' newsletter for this week and the first section said:

December 4-6, 2018 - Mild Quality update
There seems to be an update similar to the August 1 medic update that happened around December 4-6. I am calling this mild as most of the sites that we saw changes in saw just a slight change at this time. We saw drops in some of the following sites:

• A medical site that we are currently reviewing. This site was hit hard on August 1. Our review is finding that the site has a lot of medical advice that contradicts current scientific consensus.
• Another medical site. This site has good information and for the most part appears to have good E-A-T. However, they have a few issues that are outlined in the Quality Raters’ Guidelines as potential trust issues (the “T” in E-A-T). They do not disclose their monetization methods and are a bit sneaky in how they funnel users to become leads.
• A site that competes with large job portal sites. Our review pointed out a lot of thin content for this site. We felt that they did not do much to add value as compared to the sites that are currently ranking well.
• Another medical site that has serious issues with reputation and lack of E-A-T.

We did see some clients have improvements. This site is a local small business. We helped them fix a bunch of technical issues and also filed a disavow.

Thank you so much Joy for taking the time out of your busy day to respond. Your response was most helpful.