Google Medic

What is Google Medic?

Google Medic – A major Google algorithm update in the summer of 2018 that primarily affected medical, fitness, health-related and “YMYL” websites. Many sites in those fields saw significant drops in rankings, though Google denies specifically targeting these industries. This update is sometimes referred to as the “Query Intent Update”.

The first recovery theory that circulated post-update was flexing your website’s E.A.T.—expertise, authority, and trust. This likely stemmed from Google’s Danny Sullivan tweet (day-of roll out) recommending that SEOs review their 200 pages, Quality Rater Guidelines. Coincidentally enough, these guidelines were updated just one week before the update roll out—acting as another indicator that the algorithm update is somehow tied to E.A.T.

Fixing your E.A.T.

1. Bolstering your company’s about page and individual authors’ bio pages to include details on credentials and expertise.
2. Adding more client reviews and testimonials for products and services. Foster user reviews across the web, such as Glass Door and Yelp as well.
3. Building up your company’s authority on its other platforms, such as Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
4. Adding contact information on every page, or at the very least have a robust Contact Us page with the phone, email, physical address, etc.
5. Getting favorable press coverage in reputable outlets, and getting authors bylined in other high-authority publications.

2) Query Intent Theory:

The newer of the two recovery theories is the Query Intent Theory and hypothesizes that it all comes down to mirroring your website’s content to searchers’ intent. This theory does better explain how some websites with great, highly authoritative content (and good E.A.T!) saw such big declines and vice versa. Not to mention, SEOs have found a positive correlation been the broad core update rollout and an uptick in “People Also Ask” boxes in search results.

The takeaway for this one? Try your best to match top-funnel page content to how a user would ask/expect the question to be answered.

3) Content Theory:

“Content Theory” is less of a stand-alone theory than it is an element test within a larger research project conducted by Canirank.com. They found a moderate correlation between a web page’s content length and its SERP position post algorithm update. Meaning, the longer the page’s content was (relative to its competitors’ similar page) the better results it had from the update.

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.