Has Google’s Medic Update wrecked your ranking?

by Online marketing

This summer saw a big algorithm change by Google that’s been dubbed the Medic Update. That’s because it is understood to have hit health and medical related websites the hardest.

Here’s the latest data and explanation taken from the Search Engine Round Table forum:

I reviewed over 300 sites, sites that said they were impacted by this update. The first bit of data that sorely stood out around this was that a huge percentage of the sites impacted were specifically in the medical, health, fitness, healthy lifestyle space. In fact, over 42% of the sites submitted were. Here is a pie chart showing how I personally categorized all of these sites:

It’s upset a lot of people. Mike Schnell, a user on the forum, writes: “I have a website in health niche. This google update hits my website ranking drastically. It downs [sic] from first page to 4-5th page.”

The new algorithm began in July and is still being rolled out so we don’t know the full extent of it yet, but many other websites have suffered similarly dramatic drops from page one to page four or worse. In fact it’s happened to one of our clients.

Where your website ranks on Google matters. On the first page alone, the first five results account for 67.60% of total clicks and the results from six to 10 account for just 3.73%.

Clear your cache and do a Google search for your dental practice right now — are you ranking where you expected to be? You need to be aware if you’ve been affected because sudden drops in ranking can have correspondingly brutal effects on your bottom line.

Where drops in page ranking do occur, Google is stating that the only remedy is to focus on making a great user experience, offering better content and a more useful website. Currently there is still little official news on the update, because it is still playing out, so accurate reasons for page ranking drops cannot yet be confirmed.

But having a user-friendly site with original, quality content looks to be more important than ever before within the health industry. If you’ve seen an unexpected drop in your Google ranking get in touch and we’ll troubleshoot to get you back where you need to be as soon as possible.

Andrew

[email protected]

Screen Shot 2017-08-29 at 16.12.00

“Clear your cache and do a Google search for your dental practice right now”

Andrew Thomas, online marketing
Author: